Night Visual Approaches

Those who fly at night seem to share one thing in common -- a general dislike of visual approaches. 'Nothing wrong with visual approaches, its the challenge of picking out the airport from the millions of city lights. It goes like this: you are flying an RNAV (area navigation which in smaller general aviation airplanes means navigation by the use of GPS) instrument flight plan direct to your intended destination and approach control asks you to report the field in sight at which time they will turn you over to the control tower who may or may not offer a vector to help set up the final segment of your approach prior to landing the airplane. The issue here is that when flying into an airport in a populated area, the sighting of the rotating beacon (which establishes visual contact with the airport) is just the beginning of the process of actually finding your assigned runway and establishing an appropriate track and decent rate in order to land the airplane.

My first rule for briefing a visual approach involves establishing the location on the airfield of the rotating beacon. This tidbit of information can be found on the airport diagram included with instrument approach charts. Coupled with the knowledge of which runway will be assigned for landing, the beacon location can be a great help in establishing situational awareness. My other trick is to set my CDI to the runway heading and press the OBS button on my Garmin 430W GPS unit. This establishes an extended runway centerline for me to intercept.

This past week I was following this procedure right down to the letter. I was approaching KMKC, my home airport, from the east southeast with winds from the northeast. Approach control released me to the tower upon my recognition of the beacon approximately eight miles from the airport. I slowed my airplane down to about 140 KIAS and said into the radio, "Downtown Tower, Twin Cessna blah, blah, blah, eight to the east visual one." Nothing. First notch of flaps. Airspeed down to 135 indicated. "Downtown Tower, Twin Cessna blah, blah, blah, six to the east for the visual one." Nothing... Come on guys, you're expecting me! "Downtown Tower, how do you read?" "Twin Cessna blah, blah, blah cross midfield, enter left downwind for runway one."

Meanwhile a Cherokee is checking in from the south and by the sound of his position report, he's on a four mile final for runway one. I'm midfield at this point setting up nicely for runway one. "Twin Cessna blah, blah, blah, enter left base for runway three, cleared to land runway three." Quick, spin the CDI to 30 degrees in order to see an extended centerline. I'm right on the centerline!, or perhaps not. The OBS trick on the Garmin 430W is for situational awareness only and does not guarantee its point of origin to be the runway aligned with the radial on the CDI. Regardless, this is a mess. I'm at pattern altitude almost parallel to the runway knowing that it lies under or perhaps south of me and as I look outside the cockpit for a visual clue, all I can see is runway one. I come clean with the tower and admit that I do not have the runway in sight and tower turns up the lights to full power while calling off the Cherokee. I turn left for a 180 degree power off approach transitioning to a normal landing with the runway in sight. This is a tactic I see performed frequently at this airport by the freight dogs looking to get down quickly and save fuel but its less than comfortable at night with the lights of the city calling from below. Its been another uneventful trip home but, as usual, they made me work for it.

Slow Month of March

Since my flight to Charleston I have flown only 16.7 hours. This is light for me as I average about 20 hours per month. Also, this is the first time in many months that I have no long cross-country flights planned. I have a couple of sub 100 mile flights on the schedule but nothing that takes any sort of in-depth planning.

This is unfortunate as I find flight planning to be quite enjoyable. I have fond memories of sitting over a VFR chart, plotter in hand, planning a route with fuel stops. More often I now fly IFR direct by way of the GPS but I still enjoy the process of looking at proposed routings on SkyVector or RunwayFinder. I do my flight planning on FltPlan.com these days as it gives me the option to print out itineraries and to file flight plans directly from the website. For weather, I use web templates provided by Scott Dennstaedt in addition aviationweather.gov. I still stop by duat.com or duats.com for my official briefing but its rare that I discover anything in the official briefing that I did not find elsewhere.

Well, chances are reasonable that I will make a last minute flight to Minneapolis this month or next so my lust for flight planning may be satisfied again soon.