ILS RWY8 KJAX

[Lance F]

I had a first for me Friday morning for "getting in" on the ragged edge. Going to KJAX from my Atlanta area home base in my Mooney fog had enveloped everything from middle Georgia down the northeast coast of FL. the AWOS was an indefinite ceiling of 100' and RVR of 1000'. I have made approaches where I saw nothing at minimums and went elsewhere, so I gave it a shot.

I went from crystal clear skies to solid IMC at 1400'. The tower advised rhat midfield RVR had hone up to 3000'. I let my stec50 autopilot do the localizer, but had to handfly the glide slope. At exactly 200' agl I saw one little light in the ALSF2 approach lighting so on down I went. At 100' there was the runway environment right in front of me. Cool stuff. And a heck of a good feeling. I landed at 7:45am and was instructed by the tower to tell them when I turned off cause they couldn't see in the fog. I had this big airport to myself as I taxied over to Signature for the privilege of buying their $8+/gal gas.

To those working on your instrument rating I commend you and urge you to finish. To those with the rating but don't use it much keep in practice. IFR is a great tool. I sure had fun with it on that trip.

 

[Dave Siciliano]

Good job Lance! I've only had to do that once in recent years other than in a sim, but it's great to have that tool in the kit when you need it!
I've done several actual instrument approaches this year, but none to minimums. Feel comfortable there, but have always broken out early. Still, I've gotten to my destination many times when I would have had to pull up VFR.

Best,

Dave

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Excellent, Lance! We need to get you and Dave to mount GoPro HD's so we can share it visually!

 

[Threefingeredjack]

Good job. Nothing beats bottoming out and having the runway be right where it is supposed to be. When I was stationed at Sacramento we could always count on finding good practice ceilings at either Arcata or Crescent City.

 

[darrell]

Yeah I was supposed to have my Stage III check (PP-ASEL student) Friday morning out of KNIP. As you can imagine, it did not happen. When we finally cancelled the flight, I told my instructor "See, this is why I intend to get my instrument rating as soon as possible."

 

[dell30rb]

I had a new experience this weekend as well! A low pressure off the coast of NC was slinging all kinds of bad stuff.. departing from the Norfolk area yesterday afternoon with a warrior loaded within 50lbs of gross (had to break out the scale) and 3 passengers into 800 foot ceilings with 2mi visibility. Climbing through light turbulence and light rain with splotches of heavy rain.. finally getting a vector away from the rain shower and then breaking out at 6000 for a few minutes.. then back into the clouds.. looking back and finding my backseat passengers asleep... 1.4 hobbs and .9 actual logged.

Just two months ago, I had no time in actual and was studying like mad for the IR checkride!

 

[TangoWhiskey]

I had a new experience this weekend as well! A low pressure off the coast of NC was slinging all kinds of bad stuff.. departing from the Norfolk area yesterday afternoon with a warrior loaded within 50lbs of gross (had to break out the scale) and 3 passengers into 800 foot ceilings with 2mi visibility. Climbing through light turbulence and light rain with splotches of heavy rain.. finally getting a vector away from the rain shower and then breaking out at 6000 for a few minutes.. then back into the clouds.. looking back and finding my backseat passengers asleep... 1.4 hobbs and .9 actual logged.

Just two months ago, I had no time in actual and was studying like mad for the IR checkride!

Awesome.