One more for the road
Tonight we decided to head out to Santa Barbara (SBA) for one last cross country, and do it to checkride standards. Departed Van Nuys around 5:30pm, and climbed on top of a pretty nasty haze layer. Smooth and clear (from what I hear) the whole way from there. That is until we got to SBA – clouds over the coast meant we’d get some actual on the VOR 26 approach.
Not quite. I started my descent, and Kent had me lift the hood just before we hit the clouds. Problem was, that was right when I got to the MDA! We were AT the minimum altitude for the approach, and still on TOP of the overcast! I thought about continuing to the missed, but we figured we had better just ask for the ILS instead. Turns out if we had just continued the approach, we’d have been able to land anyway – the overcast stopped right at the coastline. Good lesson there.
So we got vectored around for the ILS. I was cleared for the approach and told to maintain 2000 until established. This was where I made my first disqualifying mistake, had it been a checkride. The localizer started coming in, and for some reason I didn’t start to descend – I waited until the needle was centered. By that time, the glideslope needle was pegged. I flew the rest of the approach fine, but didn’t really give any thought to what happened.
From there, we headed back to Van Nuys, via a very strange clearance: runway heading, vectors CMA, then the Lima-1 routing. Not at ALL sure what that routing was, and can’t find it anywhere. We got vectored for the ILS once we got to CMA, but had to ask for it. I’ll have to look that one up. The approach SHOULD have been a snap, but instead I did the SAME thing I did at SBA! By the time I noticed the problem, the glideslope needle was pegged. Good experience all the way around.
When I said we decided to fly one more cross country, that was because I scheduled my checkride today! Next Saturday, October 28 will be the big day. This leaves only a few days for tuning and other practice. Written is tomorrow, phase check is Monday, after a VFR flight to Vegas for my sister’s wedding.