peerlesscowboy
Line Up and Wait
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2014
- Messages
- 817
- Location
- Peerless, Montana
- Display Name
Display name:
John C Saubak
1700 scattered, yeah that might'a been the case. It was a few years ago and at 66 y/o I'll claim "senior moment" on that. Perhaps it was broke up enuf' at the airport to be less than 50% cloud cover while 6 miles northeast it wasn't broke up that much? I dunno' At any rate both approach and I expected a visual but as I didn't have the airport at MVA 6 miles out it seemed prudent to revise the plan (either the ILS or a contact approach) rather than just keep motoring along this way. Requesting the contact approach with good ground contact and dropping down a hundred feet seemed like a better plan here than vectors way out to the west for the ILS with 1700' whatever. I suppose the controller thought that way too as "do you have ground contact out there" one might take as a hint? Like hey buddy, if you say the magic word I can let you come driving right inThe reported ceiling isn't the same as the lowest cloud layer. Once can be in and out of the bases of a scattered deck but still be more than 500 below the reported ceiling. In that case, the pilot may have ground contact but not be able to see the airport. Thus, the controller is playing by the book for vectors for the visual but the pilot can't call "field in sight" to receive the clearance for the visual. That's a case where a contact approach may make good sense. However, with 1700 broken reported, the controller should not have offered vectors for the visual. OTOH, I don't know that there is any prohibition on the controller providing such vectors if the pilot initiates the request.
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