Is it just me or was the towers repeated instructions to maintain "west of the center line" quite some time after takeoff a little confusing for a pilot at night?
Depending on the winds this could be a little difficult to judge, especially in a climb, at night. Yes, I understand he probably had the electronic equipment on board to judge this - if he had the time and ability to scan the instruments.
Since inbound traffic seemed to be a concern for the controller, I kept wondering, why the controller didn't give him a vector to turn to, instead of repeatedly insisting on maintaining west of the center line quite some time after takeoff.
Strangely, the last two directives from the control tower are to remain east of the center line (the earlier directives were to remain west of the center line). Using the runway center line for direction, at night in low vis just seems, well, stupid.
In the end this probably made no difference to the outcome but it did seem a little strange to me. Still, I don't think the controller did this pilot any favors with his attempts at providing guidance to this pilot.
Normally the instruction is “remain West of I-25” which is quite visible day or night, and the modification is likely because the tower knew practice approaches were breaking out around 6800’ from the Army aircraft and other Cirrus shooting multiple approaches. So they watched some guy take off VFR and climb into an increasingly foggy mess and modified the instruction.
There’s no indication he picked up an IFR clearance (yet), but APA does have a CD frequency and he may have done it there. But it sounded like Tower/Ground/CD were combined which is pretty common late in the evening and overnight and whenever weather goes down, because the number of operations falls dramatically.
Another hint number of ops was low and weather was going to crap was the Tower instruction to make a LEFT downwind departing 35R. That puts you over 35L and even in Marginal VFR there’s usually someone doing T&G work on the short runway. At 8:15 in spring twilight the T&G pattern is usually three to four students and instructors going round and round waiting for it to get to one hour after sunset for night work and seeing the transition hour.
Official sunset tonight was 20:05. It’s not dark at 20:15 right now by a long shot. It’s not truly dark until about 20:50 right now and only because the mountains to the west mess with the sun angle. It’d be closer to 21:05 for full dark if it was a flat horizon to the west.
I think what you’re hearing there in the change in instruction from the controller is he wanted him to stay west of I-25 and then he went a-wandering across the final while the other Cirrus was on a five mile final (that high low tone in the background of his exasperated “you need to follow my instructions” transmission is the traffic collision warning, and he’s only working three aircraft and obviously annoyed at the now deceased pilot). He completely cut off the other instrument approach which were breaking out in the beginnings of fog that eventually went to 300 OVC in fog/mist not long after the accident. (You can see the fog in the background in the street lights in the neighborhood shots of the house that got hit by the engine.)
I think if a) the pilot would have ‘fessed up that he was disoriented and asked for a specific vector he MIGHT have gotten it, but remember he never left the Delta. He’s not talking to Denver Approach in the recording. So technically the tower usually won’t give you a vector that takes you out of the Delta if you’re saying you’re not leaving.
(Approach is in that recording because that’s a LiveATC scanner that’s got all the APA frequencies in it. When I lived close enough to APA I fed a Tower/Ground only feed as a secondary feed because on a busy day that other guy’s feed jumps to Approach and gets a bunch of non-APA radio traffic so I wanted a way to listen only to APA and Dave Pascoe approved a second feed for APA from my old house...)
Or b) The controller realized the pilot wasn’t responding well and prompted him asking if he was having a situational awareness or control issue instead of scolding... might have jolted that pilot into realizing he was in more trouble than he thought he was.
This thing may have worked out better.
Obviously b) is not truly the controller’s job when he has an aircraft crossing the ILS and someone cleared for the approach.
Terrain climbs to the south of the airport. If that pilot was scud running trying to stay below a lowering fog/cloud bank after his announcement he was returning, and looking for landmarks in twilight, he was likely just horribly disoriented.
We almost never see fog like that here. And he was from Grand Junction which also rarely sees it. That was also likely a factor.
He needed to climb, confess, and comply... really that’s it. If it was a typical SR22 and everything was working, the autopilot could have taken him up and brought him back down if he knew how to use it.
I think he launched looking for a VFR hole to climb on top and go west with the turbo to home. And then temp/dew point merged 15 minutes after sunset.
There was also something wrong on the ground. The ATIS says you notify ground if you need a run up and he gave that information late to ground. They never taxied him to a run up area. Normally that would have made APA mad to allow him to “do a run up right here” but with only three aircraft moving on a spring night anywhere on the airport, that’s a huge sign the WX had already gone to crap.
Friday night is usually multiple inbound bizjets and three to five in the pattern minimum. Folks knew the weather was closing down and the place was empty.
Bunch of hints in that recording to an APA pilot that may not be obvious to someone listening from elsewhere. Omitting I-25. Not caring where he did the run up. (Took him ten minutes, did anyone notice that? What was he doing??) Asking the other aircraft for bases. Asking the accident aircraft essentially “now what do you want to do?” and him never leaving the Delta... unless I’m mis-hearing that... it all sounds to me like an ill-advised launch into weather that hit temp/dewpoint spread of zero at around the time he launched.
