gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
Sunday I planned to fly to KGHW (Glenwood) an airport near Alexandria MN (about 100 NM from home) to get to a waterski tournament. The AM briefing wasn't so good with 1/8 to 1/4 vis and 100 ft ceilings in rain and mist. My intended dest has a GPS approach with 400-1 mins (actually 372 AGL MDA) and Alex has an ILS with the usual 200 - 1/2 so we waited a while for the conditions to lift before taking off. Conditions at my point of orgin (KFCM) were very VFR making me wonder more than once why I'd want to fly to somewhere it was raining to ski, but that's another story.
An hour later Alex was up to 300 - 2 so we departed even though GHW wx was still below mins. A little past halfway there we started getting into IMC but the clouds were broken and we could still see the ground occasionally. Coming into GHW ATC cleared me for the GPS 33 without the vector to final I was hoping for. When I queried, I was told "we don't vector for GPS approaches, that's what they're there for" (news to me, I've gotten vectors to GPS approaches lots of times). Of course by the time she cleared me for the approach I was well past the IAF and had to reverse course to get there. I suppose I should have filed to the IAF, sigh. As we turned my copilot (newly IFR rated) spotted the airport through a hole and wondered if we could go down that way. I told him a contact approach would allow that, but given the lousy wx in the area I wasn't willing to try it. Sure enough after the HILPT (hey I get to log a hold!), and a descent to MDA after the FAF we passed the MAP without ever seeing a runway or even lights. Kinda validated my point to my copilot about dropping through a convenient hole. The miss at GHW takes you to the VOR north of Alex 19 miles away. On the way to the VOR I asked for vectors to the ILS (I'd already told ATC that I planned to try the ILS if I couldn't get into GHW but they seemed to have lost that bit of info), but apparently we were too far from the radar for that so I fumbled around and got myself near the IAF, flew a sort of PT and got lined up on the LOC inbound. It was quite a scramble for me to switch from approach into GHW, miss there, and then set up and fly the ILS at AXN as this is something I rarely have to do and I was sure glad I had another pilot along to help.
An hour later Alex was up to 300 - 2 so we departed even though GHW wx was still below mins. A little past halfway there we started getting into IMC but the clouds were broken and we could still see the ground occasionally. Coming into GHW ATC cleared me for the GPS 33 without the vector to final I was hoping for. When I queried, I was told "we don't vector for GPS approaches, that's what they're there for" (news to me, I've gotten vectors to GPS approaches lots of times). Of course by the time she cleared me for the approach I was well past the IAF and had to reverse course to get there. I suppose I should have filed to the IAF, sigh. As we turned my copilot (newly IFR rated) spotted the airport through a hole and wondered if we could go down that way. I told him a contact approach would allow that, but given the lousy wx in the area I wasn't willing to try it. Sure enough after the HILPT (hey I get to log a hold!), and a descent to MDA after the FAF we passed the MAP without ever seeing a runway or even lights. Kinda validated my point to my copilot about dropping through a convenient hole. The miss at GHW takes you to the VOR north of Alex 19 miles away. On the way to the VOR I asked for vectors to the ILS (I'd already told ATC that I planned to try the ILS if I couldn't get into GHW but they seemed to have lost that bit of info), but apparently we were too far from the radar for that so I fumbled around and got myself near the IAF, flew a sort of PT and got lined up on the LOC inbound. It was quite a scramble for me to switch from approach into GHW, miss there, and then set up and fly the ILS at AXN as this is something I rarely have to do and I was sure glad I had another pilot along to help.
