An ILS Approach After 14 Years – A Journey Through Time and Skills

 Shooting an ILS approach after 14 years. It was on Microsoft flight simulator, but it was worth knowing, it was consoling to know that I still know the things.

I decided to fly out from Lakefront airport, as I was familiar with the environment. I decided to fly out to Gulfport airport which is just over 50 nautical miles from Lakefront airport at New Orleans.

It was the flight path which was flown by me when I did my first cross-country flight.

I asked for an IFR clearance and it was given as cleared for Gulfport airport as filed asking me to climb to 3000 feet.

I was on runways 18R and decided to keep the climate foggy to get a real feel of using the ILS approach.

I put in the throttle and climbed out, after a positive rate of climb I made a left turn to 067 degrees. The GPS showed that the airport was 54 NM from here.

Since it was all white outside there was not anything to look around except to track the instruments. It was easy to maintain the altitude however, it was difficult to maintain the heading.

I must say that I was all over the place and at times having a difference of more than 10 degrees. After some time, Lakefront tower handed me to approach.

I had already tuned in to the approach frequency, however I was not receiving the signal as I was more than 40 nm from Gulfport airport. I wanted to do VOR tracking to fly to the airport, but it would add another task. I decided to try it out some other day.

After crossing the halfway point I started to receive a signal and I identified it with the morse code. Di di  di da da di di da da, listening to these morse code signals is interesting, and more interesting is make a sense of them. 

You have to be really attentive when you hear the signal or you will not be able to catch it right. I feel for the guy who used to decode these morse codes during those times. It is a cumbersome task instead. 

There was complete silence for most part of the flight. Flying in many parts is boring as you don’t really have to do anything except for monitoring things that everything is in order.

I guess the aerobatic pilots enjoy flying in the real sense, as for normal commercial pilots or private pilots things are automated for the most part. I am sure flying forty years from now must have been more interesting, as there was more risk involved. 

At around 20 nautical miles from the destination airport I switched to Gulfport approach and it asked me to turn left heading 005 degrees. It was tricky and maintaining that heading was difficult as the aircraft did not stay at one position.

After a few minutes, I must have been around 15 nm from the airport when I was asked to turn 045 degrees. I was more strict in keeping my heading this time and kept myself close to the assigned heading.

I knew that if I moved around too much then I would not be able to be at the right place and would not be able to make it to the runway. A couple of days back, I had tried that same approach and ended up in a field, although just by the side of the runway.

I must be 10 nm out when the approach asked me to turn right heading 105 degrees and descend to 2000 feet until established on the localizer and tune to Gulfport tower frequency. The simulator does the tedious task of copying this handover from the approach for you. In real life, things are not as easy and one has to be more ready for it. There is a way to note down the instructions quickly.

I reduced the throttle to 1800 rpm and this put the aircraft on a gentle descent without making any other effort.

I immediately start turning to 105 degrees and put in effort to maintain the heading. Soon the localizer needle began to move slowly and as it started to move I also started to turn toward 140 degrees.

The glideslope needle too became active within a few minutes and with a slight pitch down and maintaining the same 1800 rpm it gave me a descent of 500 feet per minute which was good enough to keep the glideslope needle right on the mark.

When everything looked under control I had a look at the GPS and it showed that I am in the right position. With some small corrections every now and then I was able to keep that perfect cross.

The map shown on the GPS is quite comforting, as it does provide better situational awareness giving a pictorial view of where you are. Such luxury was not available when I was learning to fly and you are required to create a mental picture of the situation you are in.

Soon I broke out of fog and the runway was right in front of me. Jai Shree Ram, the euphoric shout came out instantly on its own.

I put in the second notch of flaps and looked at the airspeed and I was just above 60 knots.

Everything was going as it should be. As I came over the runway number, the throttle was reduced to idle and I started to glide, and within a few seconds the aircraft started sinking and touched down, making a smooth screeching sound.

Microsoft flight simulator reduces some of the load, such as talking on the radio to reply back and the critical part of copying the approach. Plus the tuning of frequencies is done by it, so you don’t have to worry about maintaining a list of frequencies that you will be using. 

I will continue to do instrument flying regularly and make things difficult for me in the coming approaches. I also want to switch to a faster and complex airplane 

Those were the busiest and most absorbing 15 minutes in the past many years. During that I forgot where I was sitting and when I came out of it, the clock said 8:30 pm and it was time to cook some food for myself.

Happy Landings!