This is one of those "there I was" threads. So......

There I was, on my way with my family to Aracata/Eureka California to visit the Redwood forests. I knew they were going to be socked in with a thick, juicy marine layer and it was going to be questionable as to whether or not we could get in. They were probably reporting 100' overcast when we departed Camarillo and I was hoping for conditions to improve during the 500 NM flight.

My alternate was Redding, CA (about 90 NM away and it was severe clear). Conservatively I figured I had enough fuel to get to Aracata, shoot the approach twice (if necessary) then I'd have to go to Redding and either rent a car there and drive or wait for conditions to improve and refuel.

It was VFR the whole way so I simply used flight following to avoid the delays and reroutes that one gets when IFR in CA.

Nearing Arcata I advised Center that I wanted the ILS for Arcata. It turns out there was a twin Cessna (Golden Eagle IIRC) right behind me inbound on an IFR flight plan so I was given hold instructions. I picked up the ATIS/ASOS info. and the ceiling was right at minimums but visibility was good.

Meanwhile I held. And held. And held. Turns out the Cessna shot the ILS but then, once under the clouds he asked for and received some type of clearance to scud run (technical term) just offshore South down to Murray airport (a VFR field I think).

So we held some more. Finally the Twin Cessna got on the ground and called Center on the telephone advising he had landed and I was cleared for the approach.

By then I figured we had enough fuel to shoot the approach once and if I didn't get in it was off to Redding and possibly a 100+ mile drive over curvaceous mountain roads in mist and fog to get to Aracata. Not the best choice. Oh well...

The ILS runway 32 goes down to 200' AGL (421' MSL). At 450' MSL we were in solid pea soup and I was thinking ruh roh as my hand crept over to the throttle. I was spring loaded to get out of there ASAP at 421' MSL.

Literally right as we got to minimums it was if someone had pulled a sheet off the windscreen. Visibility was at least 5 miles and the runway was smack dab right in front of me and all was good.

That was very satisfying for me because I knew I had only one shot at it and the alternative was going to be a PITA. And I handled it perfectly. Hand flown as always.

So let's hear 'em. Your most satisfying instrument approach tale!

Cool thread.

My most satisfying was my first IMC all-by-myself, at night. First ever by myself.
Headed from New Bedford, MA to Sidney, Ohio in January, at night. The forecast west of Pittsburgh was for clear conditions. So I am trucking along, probably at 8,000, watching all my perfectly aligned needles as the ETE on the M3 ticked down. Good thing not the usual punish you as you go west headwinds. I look out the window, and since this was my first night flight on my instrument ticket, I marveled at the sight below. All the cute little towns cast all their fuzzy warm lights into the overcast above them, but below me. Little yellow dots as far as I could see. WTH, it was supposed to be clear! I leave the frequency, to go, where else, flight watch. Yep, as I far as I could see, and further, solid overcast with 800 foot ceilings. So I need a plan; no way am I flying two more hours to do a non-precision approach after 5 hours in the saddle at night. Let's find an ILS, scope it out, go to the bathroom and then, if I like what I see, head for Sidney. Ah ha, Mansfield, Ohio. They vector me in for my first ILS, at night all-by-myself, and I got the locallizer, but flew right through the glide slope, which the tower brought to my attention. This is not hard to do with a Century HSI with the little arrow on the left side that is the glide slope display. Only time I ever did it!. So they vector me around, all the while still in the soup and now worrying about ice. In any event, did the second approach perfectly, and through the clouds I came to see that big, beautiful runway laid out directly in front of me.

Landed, attended to the things I mentioned earlier, more fuel, and the weather. This is very doable, let's do it. Off we launched, at night, and shortly busted through to be on top for one of my best rides to Sidney.

The concern about ice at Mansfield was ill-founded. It was too dang cold, and all I had was a little tiny sliver of frost along the leading edge.

Good stuff, next.

Early morning flight from Hilton Head, SC to Marco Island, FL, supposedly scattered clouds. As I got closer and closer the weather went from scattered to broken at 5,000, to overcast at 2,000 to overcast at 1,000. As I switched to the Fort Meyers approach facility, ATC asked me what kind of approach I wanted into Marco. I asked ATC what was every one else shooting this morning? They replied that I was the first one to come in. It was already 10:00 AM.

I asked for the GPS approach which had a 500 foot minimum. Watching the altimeter and counting down from 1,000 to 900, to 800, (still nothing), to 700, to 600 (still nothing), and just as I was ready to perform a missed approach, we broke out at 500 and there was the runway...right where it belonged!! With only about three hundred hours of flight time under my belt, this was the lowest instrument approach I had ever performed by myself. Although I've had a few approaches since which were lower, that one was definitely the most satisfying.

It was a day of firsts and one last. My first flight as PIC after getting my Private was with my CFI on our first instrument flight together. We were flying up to Big Bear to do a mountain flying checkout, but there was a marine layer over Torrance airport, so the only way to go that day was to file IFR. My PIC time would only be as sole manipulator of the controls, and not truly as pilot-IN-COMMAND of the flight, but I didn’t mind.

The flight out was fun, because we were in IMC before reaching typical pattern altitude. We had done a fair amount of “hood time” during my training for the Private. But, this was the first time I had ever flown in the clouds as the pilot. I was surprised how bumpy it got as we entered. I had always thought of clouds as being serene and smooth. But, they weren’t serene that day. I had to work much harder than expected to keep the C172 flying where I wanted to go. I found that smaller corrections made us both feel more comfortable. Soon we were up and over the cloud layer at about 5000 feet. We were only in it for about five minutes, but it felt like 25.

En route to Big Bear we found that most of LA was under the big white blanket, with the exception of snow dusted mountains poking up to the east. It was surreal for me. The sprawling metropolis I knew was hidden underneath, and the mountains called to us to come and play.

I learned to land fast over the ground, but by the same numbers on the airspeed indicator that I always used. The landing felt fast, but normal. The take off was much longer than normal, and the climb out was very slow. I’m sure the summertime would provide even more of a challenge.

From Big Bear we flew again over the clouds, but headed directly toward the coast. Despite being over a city of millions, the only other visible signs of civilization were the three or four airliners lined up for LAX. I smiled knowing that I was flying by the same rules for instrument flight. The feeling of being separated from those below made me feel quite privileged to have the ability to fly above the hoi polloi.

Once over the coast, ATC had us descend into the soup. Once there, they began giving us a seemingly endless stream of new altitudes and headings. I had the sneaking suspicion that my CFI told them it was a training flight when she filed the plan. In between changes, we somehow had just enough time to review the approach plate for the ILS back to Torrance.

Without a frame of reference, and with so many changes in direction, I found I felt lost. Outside the windows was a complete whiteout, and we were getting bumped around a lot. I let my CFI know my concern, and she smiled brightly. She said I was doing fine, and that I’d know where we were momentarily. Within seconds of her calm reassurance, I was told to intercept an outbound radial from Seal Beach VOR. Once I tuned it in I instantly had the picture. The realization of that was mildly emotional.

ATC came back with “maintain present heading, descend and maintain 2000 until established, cleared ILS approach, contact Torrance tower, good day.” I somehow managed to write down the vitals and read them back. It was show time. I tuned in the ILS and COM frequencies and waited for some movement of the needles. Once the ILS started to move, I called Torrance tower.

“Cessna 123 Foxtrot Romeo established, inbound ILS”

“Roger Cessna Three Foxtrot Romeo, continue, report the outer marker.”

We were flying at about 100 miles an hour toward the ground and blind, except for the instruments. I literally bounced in my seat with excitement knowing that this is the way it was supposed to work. My CFI could not quite restrain a chuckle at my enthusiasm. The outer marker began its insistent drone, and I keyed the mic.

“Cessna Three Foxtrot Romeo, outer marker"

And then, there it was! The sky had parted and the airport was waiting for us, directly ahead.

Faintly, I said simply, “wow.”

My CFI nodded and said, “I know.”

“Cessna Three Foxtrot Romeo, you are cleared to land runway 2 9 right. Welcome back.”

After landing, and tying down the plane, my CFI informed me that she was leaving to go fly for American Airlines. That was unfortunately our last lesson. I was happy for our accomplishment, but sad to be saying goodbye.

Any of the many my students have flown to minimums or near min's and the look on their faces when it all "works"...magic that first time. Well, except for this one guy who turned to look at me, on the roll out, and said something like "You actually think this stuff is fun, don't you??? You are freakin' nuts." But that was just one guy. On the other end, there was the guy who also turned to me, grinning ear to ear, and said it was the best day of his flying life [that first ILS]. Makes it all worth while.

Note: dark night even more fun, all those pretty lights in the windscreen when you break out....

About two months after getting my instrument rating, I had a flight to Indianapolis. The weather forecast was for 1000' overcast, visibility of two miles or less in light rain. Nothing serious, but before the ticket, it would have been no go. Departure and enroute were uneventful. The big difference being no instructor. This was not my first solo IFR trip, but the first one with clouds for most of the trip. AT 7000' I was well clear of the cloud tops and it was beautiful. My J35 was performing well, and it was a quick trip. Indy approach did some vectors and got me sequenced for the ILS 23R. (In those days 23L was a big construction zone.)The ATIS gave winds from the west-northwest. Normally 31 would have been the runway of choice, but the ILS and part of the runway was out of service due to construction. I entered the clouds at about 4000' MSL on the localizer. I intercepted the glideslope and put the gear down. At the time I noticed the big cut necessary to keep the localizer needle centered, but it didn't really compute with me what the sight picture was going to be when I broke out. (Previously all my ILS approaches had been to 200' AGL, so no matter big the wind correction angle, the touchdown zone was right in front of me.) The clouds parted, and I was surprised. I was higher than I had ever been on breakout before. (All my training was done to minimums.) But, I could not see the airport! I could see some anonymous office park. I could see I465 so I knew the airport had to be close. I couldn't see the airport expressway though. (As the name implies it runs to the airport.) Then I realized, WIND CORRECTION ANGLE! Duh! I looked left and there was Runway 23R. I was still lined up perfectly, just crabbing in the WCA. I transitioned to the zero side slip maneuver to correct the sight picture and landed. What a feeling of accomplishment. I had done it, IFR from beginning to end without any help and a wrinkle thrown in. Since then, I've done lots of approaches in actual weather some to minimums, but none as satisfying as the accomplishment of that first one.

Alan Bradley

I have done so many approaches over my long career that I don't categorize them as satisfying or not. They are either easy, or hard. The easy ones are the ones down to mins and then the whole world opens up. The hard ones are the ones where you get to mins and just see the red side bars or terminating bars of the approach light system. This only gets you down to 100'. Then you finally see the runway environment with only a few runway lights in sight on each side. It is good enough to land, you just can't see much. Then, once you land, the task becomes finding the proper taxiway and getting to the FBO.

I am a firm believer in using the autopilot to do the grunt work of flying the approach if I am flying single pilot IFR. It is hard enough doing the single IFR gig, so why tie one hand behind your back? Threat and Error Management (the new 121 buzzword) is all about keeping the load on each pilot balanced and "in the green" (think of a dartboard with three colors, green being the center, yellow the next ring out, and red the final outer ring). If you insist on flying an ILS by hand in hard IFR, you have loaded yourself up in the red but good. So you have to ask yourself, what does that prove?

I realize that not everyone has at least a two axis autopilot with tracking capability. While the craze is to go glass, my first priority would be to get a decent autopilot before I even thought about glass. Do you know why? Because even glass will not fly the approach for you. This probably deserves a new thread because there is a lot more to safely flying approaches.

I've not had any tough ones in a well equipped turbine aircraft, they're all relatively easy. The tough ones were in the Travel Air, single pilot, in bad weather.

The toughest was within the first 50 hours after buying my TA, with my wife on board, in a blizzard, with a failed DG. I flew the ILS down to just prior to going missed on account of the swinging compass and deflecting CDI, got the airport in sight and landed uneventfully, and my wife never knew a thing. It is extremely difficult to fly an ILS to min's on a wet compass. Anyone done it?

Hi Scott,

Only during training. My CFII opined that I actually did better when partial panel. Less stuff to look at perhaps? Well done, Scott.

Scott

I had recently obtained my IR. I was returning to Cape Town International Airport in a Piper Warrior. The weather was IMC to 500', rain but fortunately light winds. The vacuum pump failed, I did an ILS to minima on partial panel. It was not pretty but safe, thanks to an instructor who was a fanatic about partial panel proficiency.

Eric

This get's me to thinking; it's time for some partial panel practice. I train every year in the sim and we never do any partial panel, only reversions to different screens.

Mine was on my long IFR cross country. It was a very dreary TN morning, 500 foot ceilings across the state, nothing convective - just a perfect IFR day.

My CFII and I took off in a 2007 DA-40XL. It was my first flight into actual with the G1000, and I have to say, despite being a 6 pack guy, I was impressed. There's nothing like a 10" horizon bar to instill confidence in a neophyte IFR aviator.

Our first leg was to Pulaski Co (KGZS) and we were in and out of layers the whole way.





AWOS was calling for minimums but good visibility at Pulaski. I admit, I was nervous because I had a habit of screwing up something fairly major on all of my recent approaches. I had no expectation this would be any different except that we were in IMC... mistakes were going to be a bit less forgiving than before.

I started the RNAV 16 approach and had it nailed all the way to minimums. When I got there, I leveled out and began looking. We could clearly see the ground in spots, but I could not yet see the runway. After about 30-45 seconds (felt longer!) I broke through what must have been a lone, straggler cloud and the runway popped into view exactly where it was supposed to be. It was a proud moment in my IFR training, probably never will forget it.

Oh, greased the landing too.

My most memorable approach was into stillwater, OK. I was flying my father there from tulsa, which is only about a 25min flight in my baron. Tulsa was about 010ovc and light rain (no big deal)..stillwater was 005ovc heavey rain and only getting worse...enroute listened to the awos ceiling reported variable from 300 to 600 and vis 2sm due to the heavy rain...shot the ils17 and broke out of the clouds at about 400ft agl only to see the approach lighting system and about half the runway...very very neat and satisfying.....after takeoff from tulsa didn't see the ground again untill 400ft...the entire flight was in IMC. I hand flew the approach but autopilot used at cruise.

A few years ago my wife, wife's sister, brother-in-law and I were heading to our nephew's 18th birthday at Noosa (YNSH). We had always planned to fly as it would have been a 16hr round trip by road, but as it turned out it rained heavily all the week before and all the roads were cut that weekend. It was fly or don't go!

With a relatively new IR under my belt I was cautious in checking the weather, but we were good to go. We took off from our farm strip, and at 1000ft were into the soup. No bumps, just solid IMC and some rain. 200nm later and approaching our inital stop of Toowoomba (YTWB) we were still in the soup! My 3 passengers were IFR virgins, and the whole flight was a series of "how do you know where we are?" and " are you SURE you know where we are?"

The level of nervousness increased as I started our descent and they still couldn't see the ground. The AWIS had confirmed the ceilings at 1500ft and we just descended straight in on a DME/GPS arrival (Australian peculiar procedure). As I had promised, 5nm from the airport we popped out with the city and runway dead ahead.

This trip was memorable and satisfying for me on several fronts. It was good to finally practice for real what I had learned doing my IR (mainly under the hood due to severe clear), particularly as the aircraft had no autopilot and I had to hand fly the entire time. It was also good to show SWMBO and other family that IFR was safe and reliable. IFR is now SOP for us, but it was all new back then.

Cheers,

Hugh

The one that I said to myself, "self you almost became a statistic"

At first I thought this would be a tough one. Not having as many hours total flying time as many of you have flying IFR/IMC.

Then it hit me... It was the one I flew on my check ride when I got my IR ticket last June.

Sep/Oct - South of France - USS Independence - dog squeeze weather - night as dark as three feet up a...
CATCC: "You're on glide slope, on center line - call the ball."
Me: Quick look up and all I see, through the pouring rain, is the yellow-orange glow from the sodium vapor lights on the island. No ball - no center line lights - no drop lights. "Clara." Which means, "I got nothing." Back on the gauges.
LSO: "Keep it coming, you sound good." Which means, "I can't see you, either."
Silence...
LSO: "Call the ball."
Me: Another peek and back to the needles. "Clara."
LSO: "Keep it coming, you look good." He finally sees me.
Silence...
LSO: "Call the ball."
Me: "Clara."
BAM! On the three wire - never saw a thing.
LSO: "OK underline - no comments - night, pitching deck."
Air wing flight surgeon: "The ship's Medical Officer wouldn't authorize medicinal brandy."
Me: "Never mind, I got my own - want some?"

Cripes! How tough was it to get the smell of human excrement out of your flight suit?

Pretty good one yesterday at Willow Run. Seemed like almost everything there was NOTAMed out of service, and while being vectored for the LOC 5R approach (the ILS was OTS) and about to turn to intercept final, Approach informs me that the LOC 5R just went out of service, too.

He clears me for the GPS approach to that runway, but I have to decline, since my GPS is not IFR certified. "What are your intentions?" (Almost wanted to quote Walter Atkinson - "My intention is to not look stupid on the NTSB report.") "How about the VOR approach?"

New clearance, new vectors, very, very busy in the cockpit flipping pages to find that approach, and finally, a successful landing.

So, I imagine I will remember that one for a while.

Before yesterday, I would have to say a night time GCA into Khontum when the Viet Cong owned half of the airport and we had to go around the first time due to almost no lighting on the runway... managed to land the second time, but very tense... took automatic weapons fire during the offload of a cargo of ammunition. Combat controller calls me and says, "Sir, would you mind turning off your taxi lights? We're getting a little ground fire." I see tracers coming at the back of the C-130. OK, I guess I can turn off the lights for the nice man.

Gil, Don,

Thank you guys for your service to our Country!!!!!