sba55
En-Route
I wasn't going to post this at first because I'm not sure if it's all that interesting and because the way I handled this is far from perfect. Nevertheless, I hope it's somewhat interesting and I'd love to hear what people would have done differently.
All of California had pretty bad (for this area, at least) weather on Monday. Down in Los Angeles, it was fairly warm (about 55 degrees or so on the ground). The entire area was broken-overcast, with tops around 9000'. Our destination, the Bay Area, was worse. Tops were about the same, but the bases were down around 3000' and the temps were much lower. At our destination, it was raining and about 45 degrees when we left Ontaria Intl. There was also an AIRMET for light ice, but looking at that situation more closely, I didn't expect to have any sort of significant icing encounter.
We had a beautiful 2 hour flight from Ontario to the Bay. Until we were about 50 miles from landing, we were on top at 10,000', it was smooth and sunny, and the visibility was great. Then we descended into the clouds, which were a bit bumpy.
Right as we were about to intercept the localizer, things started going a bit wrong (at that point, we were in solid IMC). We had just received our approach clearance and were on a vector to intercept. First I noticed that the nav flag had come on, but at that point, we were quite a ways away from the localizer (something like 15 miles or so) and outside the charted approach so I figured that it was a temporary, terrain induced issue. I did check the ident tone, though, and I remember thinking that it wasn't a good sign that it sounded just fine, like we should be receiving it. We were also picking up DME for the loc just fine, so I had a feeling that something wasn't right.
I told ATC that we had lost the localizer. Since we were still a few miles away from the very first fix on the approach, I figured that we might pick it up again and that we might be able to re-intercept. ATC gave us vectors, and right at that moment, the HSI flag came on. It's amazing how training really helps out here. I was concerned about being at 4000' right next to Mt Diablo (~3900') and I had decided beforehand that if I ever lost the HSI/AI in IMC, I'd declare. Because of that, making that decision only took me a few seconds.
Luckily, the cloud bases were high enough so that ATC could just vector us down over the airport. We still had the AI and the #2 CDI.
I figured we had one good shot at getting into Hayward because if we had passed it, then we'd be right over Oakland/SFO and that probably wouldn't help things. I was also trying to decide if I wanted to climb and take some delay vectors to troubleshoot a bit more, but the HSI hickup had also knocked out our autopilot, so I figured that troubleshooting in IMC while hand-flying probably wasn't the best idea.
Anyways, hope you enjoy the
clip!
Criticism more than welcome!
-Felix
PS: Please try to ignore my horrendous accent!
All of California had pretty bad (for this area, at least) weather on Monday. Down in Los Angeles, it was fairly warm (about 55 degrees or so on the ground). The entire area was broken-overcast, with tops around 9000'. Our destination, the Bay Area, was worse. Tops were about the same, but the bases were down around 3000' and the temps were much lower. At our destination, it was raining and about 45 degrees when we left Ontaria Intl. There was also an AIRMET for light ice, but looking at that situation more closely, I didn't expect to have any sort of significant icing encounter.
We had a beautiful 2 hour flight from Ontario to the Bay. Until we were about 50 miles from landing, we were on top at 10,000', it was smooth and sunny, and the visibility was great. Then we descended into the clouds, which were a bit bumpy.
Right as we were about to intercept the localizer, things started going a bit wrong (at that point, we were in solid IMC). We had just received our approach clearance and were on a vector to intercept. First I noticed that the nav flag had come on, but at that point, we were quite a ways away from the localizer (something like 15 miles or so) and outside the charted approach so I figured that it was a temporary, terrain induced issue. I did check the ident tone, though, and I remember thinking that it wasn't a good sign that it sounded just fine, like we should be receiving it. We were also picking up DME for the loc just fine, so I had a feeling that something wasn't right.
I told ATC that we had lost the localizer. Since we were still a few miles away from the very first fix on the approach, I figured that we might pick it up again and that we might be able to re-intercept. ATC gave us vectors, and right at that moment, the HSI flag came on. It's amazing how training really helps out here. I was concerned about being at 4000' right next to Mt Diablo (~3900') and I had decided beforehand that if I ever lost the HSI/AI in IMC, I'd declare. Because of that, making that decision only took me a few seconds.
Luckily, the cloud bases were high enough so that ATC could just vector us down over the airport. We still had the AI and the #2 CDI.
I figured we had one good shot at getting into Hayward because if we had passed it, then we'd be right over Oakland/SFO and that probably wouldn't help things. I was also trying to decide if I wanted to climb and take some delay vectors to troubleshoot a bit more, but the HSI hickup had also knocked out our autopilot, so I figured that troubleshooting in IMC while hand-flying probably wasn't the best idea.
Anyways, hope you enjoy the
clip!
Criticism more than welcome!
-Felix
PS: Please try to ignore my horrendous accent!
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