A great IFR simming story

[Kilstorm]

Ever have one of those flights that just makes for a great story to tell after its over...this is one of those stories. To preface this story you should know have a little of know what my sim looks like.  Heres a video if you havent seen it: https://vimeo.com/124166475

 

Now I have a friend who owns a brand new C182 and he has it loaded with redundancy of high end gear and is currently working towards getting his Instrument Rating.  He like many simmers likes his tech gadgets but he is not a simmer but has dones some flying in my sim before.  I wanted to show him a good demo of my sim so I created a Majestic Dash 8 Pro flight from FSDreamTeams KIAH to ImagineSims KAUS  using a Dispatch from SimBrief.  The flight was going to be some interesting weather since theres a system over Texas causing havoc with Tornado's and Blizzards but for the most part this flight was light rain, wind gust to 25kts and low ceilings (all thanks to Active Sky Next ) but nothing crazy.  In addition to those addons was GSX, FS2Crew and FSPassengerP3d to round out my P3Dv3 flight.  There was also FTXG and Vector but we didnt see much ground in all that soup enroute.

 

With completing a good flight I wanted to set him up for an IFR flight in the A2A C182.  For that flight, where we were at Nantucket KACK, we have been socked in all day with fog so we took off from Hyannis KHYA and flew the 30nm over the sound to shoot the ILS 24 approach using the Flight1 GTN750 and autopilot from GoFlight. Upon reaching the IAF I was noticing that the Localizer was alive but not the Glidescope. We flew on Nav inbound and I used the audio to confirm the ILS and freq using the morse code but no Glide scope so we determined that the glidescope was out but by then we were way too high to try the approach as we had missed the glide.

 

That's when it got real because I said to him, were are going to make it in and use this as a great example of what could happen in flight as he was working on getting his I rating remember.  So we left the approach and headed back to try it again stating with the understanding that we would treat this as real and do nothing we couldnt do in a plane. There was two altitude marks in the approach plate, one at the outer marker and the other was the MAP. So the profile didnt really do good for steping down on the glide but with the Nav 1 and Nav 2 working for the localizer and the GPS we felt we had a good hold on being down the runway and we would just use a 700'/minute descent rate. 

 

The weather we took off from Huannis was reporting KACK to have a 600'ceiling and half mile viz so we were above mins that the approached called for with 420' and 2400'rvr for the LOC where with the ILS it was published at 248 and 1800rvr.  He focused on flying and navigating and I was his support for DME calls and looking over everything so that we had double redundancy of CRM. 

 

When we got down to 400' we hadnt busted out of the clouds and couldnt see anything yet.  So the weather had changed from what we had received as reported when we took of which is very typical of the fog here but I wasnt expecting it in the sim but good old ASN was doing its part and keeping the weather up to date.  Finally I saw runway lights at the beginning of the rabbit but we were just a bit left of the field.  I could of made it but since this is a sim and not his plane he tried but it wasnt looking good and we did a second go around as we quickly slipped back into the fog and lost contact with the ground and lights.

 

He asked me if I wanted to try this time and I said yes, that we could easily get back into there so we switched seats while back on the downwind leg to the IAP as the A2A plane doesnt have Co-pilot gauges so I didnt have a good panel infront of me plus I like my pilot side hardware setup better than my co-pilot side. Something strange happened abeam the field this time as the Gildescope started working where it hadnt for the other two approaches. I couldnt figure out what had cause it not to work in the first place and had no idea why it started working in the second. Was it Accusim or ASN or just plain randomness but I loved it!  We checked ATIS (both in the sim and with his Garmin Pilot App on his phone) and sure enough the weather had dropped and now the the ceiling was 200 and less range but since we had a working ILS now instead of just a Loc, we had better numbers and I decided to hand fly the approach from the IAP after getting set up on a good approach with the auto pilot. 

 

Thats a long hand flight down in such a slow plane and as he was helping with call outs of DME as I had did for him, my approach was certainly more intense than the last as it seemed we were never going to breakout and I was handflying not using auto pilot. I got her in and I knew he needed to give it just one more shot.  As he didnt have a working glidescope on his approach so we switched seats again and took off for this time for him to let the autopilot fly the approach down to MAP and let him take over once we had the lights.

 

We did and this approach had the fog lift giving much improved viz and ceiling like 1,000' and 3 miles.  So for those keeping record we had shot what was now 4 approaches, 2 as a LOC and 2 as an ILS  and saw 3 different weather settings which is very realistic to how the fog can role in and out here on what is called the Grey Lady for that reason and why many pilots will shoot the approach a few times before returning to Hyannis on days when its fog here and clear there.  We got in and really enjoyed all that those flights gave us in immersion and testament to what P3Dv3 and ASN can give with some good weather settings on the sliders!