The Garmin 430W suddenly lights up with a bright yellow banner and the following error message:
Loss of GPS Navigation – DEAD RECKONING – Use other NAV
What the ….? My primary means of navigation has just quit on me! I am wearing view-limiting glasses and cannot look outside for orientation. This is my Instrument Proficiency Check; I am required to navigate a trip of almost three hours by instruments alone. The Flight Test Examiner is waiting for me to do something.
But what?
My mind is squeezed in a vice.
I can’t think.
It was eight months earlier that instrument flying first trawled its lure through my thoughts. When flying up the coast from my home airfield at Warnervale (YWVA), located on the Central Coast between Sydney and Newcastle, I couldn’t help but notice how the close proximity of mountains to parts of the eastern seaboard, such as around Coffs Harbour, causes swirling masses of humid oceanic air to rise and cool, the moisture then condensing into clouds and forcing VFR pilots like myself to turn back to try another day.
Apart from wanting to avoid the annoyance of being turned back by cloud, there was also my ‘satiable curiosity, as much part of me as for the elephant that got its trunk in the Rudyard Kipling story. According to a Flight Safety Australia article titled “178 Seconds To Live”, a non-instrument pilot lives no more than three minutes after entering cloud before they lose control and crash. I wanted to know what were the god-like abilities that allowed IFR-rated pilots to survive this forbidden realm.
I would need an IFR airplane to learn on and, by happy circumstance, four of us had recently purchased an IFR-certified Piper Arrow III. Beautifully dressed in white and ocean-blue, VH-BIB was a 135 knot retractable with constant speed propeller that cruised the outback as easy as a cocky’s elbow sliding across the counter for a beer, burning 46 l/hr whilst doing so.
She couldn’t compare with the performance and efficiency of a modern glass cockpit airplane like a Cirrus of course. But our machine was built in 1977, back when the Space Shuttle was having its first test flight. The plane has since passed through the hands of a multitude of owners including WW2 Spitfire pilot Haydon Skudder, now sadly deceased and the second-last owner before us.
My instructor also happened to be intertwined with the history of VH-BIB, having trained many an aspiring airline pilot on this same aircraft while it was based at Cessnock (YCNK).
“How do you like your new plane?” he asked.
“We’ve had her for a few weeks now, but it still doesn’t feel like it’s our plane,” I answered.
“You don’t ever really own a plane like this,” he said, “You’re just the custodian.”
Not having flown a glass cockpit airplane, I was reassured by the traditional steam gauges in VH-BIB. The S-Tec 50 autopilot held heading and altitude as tight as a homing pigeon, especially useful when in the high workload environment of single-pilot IFR. We were inordinately proud of the raspy roar of the 200HP IO-360 Lycoming on take-off and the delicate folding in of her undercarriage as she accelerated upwards towards the heavens.
And so our newly-acquired Piper Arrow III served as the platform for my instrument training, as it had done for so many others before.
How I got into flying, was through my father. He himself learnt to fly while I was a young boy growing up in South Africa and I accompanied him on flights to rustic coastal hamlets like Coffee Bay and Trennery’s along the spectacular Wild Coast – aptly named, as demonstrated by the numerous shipwrecks strewn along the shores – as well as on longer cross-country flights to Cape Town, Margate and Kruger National Park. My father went on to gain his commercial and instructor ratings and succumbed to the siren call of a beautiful Twin Comanche (callsign ZS-FPR, later changed to VH-DVR after being freighted to Australia) which he eventually sold to someone on King Island when my mother finally had enough of the large bills and infrequent use. My father taught me to fly when I was still at school in South Africa and I logged 130 hours before moving to Australia at age 20.
Getting a degree, getting a job and supporting a growing family took precedence in my newly adopted country and decades passed while the cover of my logbook slowly warped from the damp as it lay forgotten in the cellar. It wasn’t until 2017 that I finally climbed back into the cockpit at the Central Coast Aero Cub, Warnervale. The CCAC is smaller than its metropolitan counterparts but includes a cadre of highly experienced instructors who teach because they love flying, rather than as a convenient shortcut to the airlines.
It had been so long since I last flew that there was a lot to re-learn. After getting back my PPL, I flew the club’s Cessna 172 VH-MNF and Piper Arrow VH-PRF as well as Caitlin’s Piper Cherokee VH-AUR on a number of coastal and inland trips. I had logged a total of around 300 hours when I caught the instrument flying bug.
Which was it to be? The Private Instrument Rating (PIFR) or the Command Instrument Rating (CIR)?
With the base PIFR, you need to be in VMC for take-off and landing but can fly through cloud along the way. You do, however, have the option of adding instrument departures, instrument approaches and night flying as additional authorisations to the PIFR. The PIFR requires 20 hours of instrument flight training. The theory exam is two hours long. This qualification is recognised only in Australia.
The Command Instrument Rating (CIR) covers all phases of instrument flight in the one rating. With a CIR you can climb out on instruments, fly cross-country in cloud and perform an instrument approach at the end, as well as fly VFR at night. The CIR requires a minimum of 40 hours instrument training, twice as much as the PIFR, and is recognised internationally, should you ever want to fly in another country.
I decided on the Command Instrument Rating. I already had the 50 hours of cross-country flying as pilot in command that was one of the pre-requisites for the CIR. I also needed to score at least 70% in the three and a half hour instrument rating examination (IREX) however, known colloquially as “the exam from hell”. The IREX could be done at any time and, once passed, did not appear to expire. I decided to attempt the IREX first, before getting too deep into any flight training. That way, if it turned out I fitted into instrument flying like a bullfrog in a birthday cake, I could bow out early without spending too much money.
I purchased an instrument rating study guide to work through from home. With the benefit of hindsight, online classes would have prepared me a lot quicker.
“This is killing me,” I said to my girlfriend.
“What is?”
“Since 2016, all IFR aircraft in Australia have to have GNSS or Global Navigation Satellite System capability. Because GPS uses satellites, almost two hundred ground-based aids have now been decommissioned and in a few years’ time, we will have as much chance of coming across one as seeing the Tasmanian Tiger.”
“If you can use GPS, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that the study guide includes almost one hundred pages on these soon-to-be obsolete aids.”
I had to do it though, the book told me that there would be questions on ground-based aids in the exam. So I waded into the turgid waters of the non-directional beacon (NDB) and very high frequency omnidirectional range (VOR), with page after page on skywaves, ground waves, refraction, the quadrantal error, the vertical polarisation effect, dials, pointers and aircraft symbols, reams of questions and answers for calculating headings, radials, drift and track errors using mathematics that seemed completely divorced from the real cockpit environment.
It took weeks of study before my mental fog cleared sufficiently for me to progress beyond NDB’s and VOR’s and onto the section called “What is IFR?”.
It felt as if this was where the book was truly meant to start.
The instrument rating study guide states you can file IFR on a VMC day. You may ask why would someone want to do this?
Let’s say I wanted to fly from Warnervale (YWVA) to Shellharbour (YSHL), home of the HARS aviation museum and the still-flying Lockheed Super Constellation and many other fascinating historic aircraft.
If I fly VFR to Shellharbour, one option is the Victor 1 air corridor where you descend in steps until flying 500′ over the ocean in order to stay clear of the jets flying into Sydney Airport, wearing your lifejacket of course.
Another VFR option is to navigate inland via Brooklyn Bridge to Prospect Reservoir (ensuring you don’t wander into the adjacent Richmond restricted area on the way!) and then picking your way around the busy Bankstown airspace and Holsworthy restricted areas before finally setting course for Wollongong.
Flying IFR to Shellharbour would be much simpler and safer. My butt wouldn’t be hanging 500′ over the pitching ocean. I would be cruising up on high with automatic flight following.
Having introduced the concept of IFR, the book continues on to describe the different types of instruments needed for an IFR airplane. You also learn what makes you legal as an IFR pilot. You need your instrument rating of course, which you maintain through an annual instrument rating proficiency check, or IPC. This takes the place of the biennial flight review.
You stay current by conducting at least three (3) Instrument Approaches in the last 90 days and with no more than 90 days from the last time you conducted the particular type of approach you wish to fly. In order to carry passengers in night VFR conditions, you need to have flown three night VFR take-offs and landings in the last 90 days.
You need to have demonstrated a circling approach in your last IPC to stay current with this potentially dangerous manoeuvre. This is when you break off an instrument approach and circle to land – often because the instrument approach is not runway aligned due to mountain obstacles or when the wind direction favours a different runway.
The book describes IFR flight preparation, including taking into account weather forecasts and calculating lowest safe altitudes and knowing when you need to specify an Alternate destination due to weather, navaid or airfield lighting considerations.
The next section deals with Instrument Departures from controlled and non-controlled airfields. A minimum of 2km visibility and a 300′ ceiling are required in order to depart IFR in a single engine aircraft.
Instrument Approaches are all about to getting down safely. Airports can have a number of different approach procedures, each with a different set of visibility and ceiling minimums. Many airports in Australia also deploy PAPI (precision approach path indicator) or T-VASIS (T visual approach slope indicator) lights and high intensity runway and approach lighting to help guide the earthbound aviator when flying conditions are especially miserable.
The study guide also covers when you can perform an IFR Visual Approach and the different ways of entering a Holding Pattern, when you need to conduct a Missed Approach, the different Altitude Restrictions as you approach an airfield, Performance Based Navigation (PBN), Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) and the different failure modes of a GNSS unit.
After two months of cramming from the study guide, I scored 85% in a practice exam. It was time for me to book the IREX.
Cessnock was the closest approved exam venue. I drove up the day before to familiarise myself with where the exam room was at the Hunter TAFE and not be in a rush the next morning. I spent the night in a peaceful little hotel decorated with period furniture and quaint memorabilia. Even though my room was quiet and comfortable, my mind skipped over slumber like a stone skipping over water, frequently touching but never quite entering deep sleep. The dawn chorus of magpies competed with sound of my thongs slapping down the deserted streets on my way to the public pool, where I swam ten laps to try to freshen up for the forthcoming ordeal.
At the TAFE, I huffed and puffed my way up the stairs with my boat-anchor box of permitted materials including the CAR, CASR, CAO and CAAP as well as the more familiar ERSA and AIP. Because the exam questions could reference any part of the country, the box also contained neat bundles of all the DAPs, ERCs and TACs for Australia.
Two other exam candidates were already waiting outside the closed door for CPL subject exams, of shorter duration than the IREX. Our desultory small talk dried up and we sunk into inwards contemplation. The seconds dragged like a spoon through treacle. At last, the invigilator opened the door from the inside. She was a little bird-like woman with keen eyes and a no-nonsense demeanour that brooked no dissent. She carefully sifted through all my permitted materials to ensure there were no hidden notes or cheat sheets, shaking out the pages of each of the binders.
Soon after the 9am start, I found myself adrift, losing focus and taking too long with the questions. Was it my lack of sleep?The other two candidates, having completed their shorter CPL subject exams, vanished from the room. I was only 40% through the questions at halftime. Ruthlessly abandoning all questions I was struggling with, I only just managed to finish by the 12:30pm deadline.
Feeling like my cottonwool head was on sharp edge of a guillotine, I waited for the verdict. I needed 70% and wasn’t feeling positive.
“You passed,” she said calmly, handing over a printout with my 78% score. Also included was the list of areas I was defective in, the Knowledge Deficiency Report or KDR.
A wave of relief swept over me. I wasn’t terribly proud of my score, but it didn’t really matter – I had passed the “exam from hell” and no-one could take that away from me.
Now for my first taste of instrument flying. Only it wasn’t in an aircraft. My instructor alternately cajoled, tickled and slapped an ancient PC hidden away at the back of one of the YCNK airport hangars into an agonisingly slow boot-up sequence that eventually brought up the simulator screen. He then alternated between a whiteboard explanation of some of the key concepts regarding NDB intercepts, VOR tracking and entering holding patterns and then having me practice these on the simulator.
Once he was satisfied with my simulator skills, we took to the air and began flying NDB approaches at Scone (YSCO) and RNAV approaches into Maitland (YMND), Taree (YTRE), Mudgee (YMDG) and Williamtown (YWLM). On one particularly memorable occasion we flew into an eerily quiet Bankstown (YSBK) on a rainy day when there were absolutely no other planes in the air.
The instrument approach workload overwhelmed me at first. Even with my instructor handling the radio calls, I struggled with trying to stay ahead of what buttons I needed to push on the Garmin 430W GPS, often forgetting to activate the approach procedure or forgetting to push the OBS button before entering a hold, not remembering to extend the undercarriage, not slowing down for the approach, losing track of where I was on the approach chart, not descending when I needed to and drifting off track – all the time trying not to lose control of the airplane and all the while under the hood and not able to see a damn thing outside.
I knew what you were supposed to do. Keep your eyes glued to the Attitude Indicator 99% of the time, with only very fleeting glances to the GPS, throttle quadrant, DI, OBI needle, GPS and other instruments. But I found it hard not to get distracted when there were so many things for my overwhelmed mind to keep track of.
Gradually I began to assimilate all the detail and synthesise it into a bigger picture until I could just about cope with the radio work on top of everything else.
My 40 hours of instrument training took seven months. This included downtime due to a COVID-19 lockdown, plus my instructor being unavailable for a period of time. Most people would do it in half the time. In fact, I’ve heard of some people completing the full 40 hours in as little as four weeks with access to an instructor that can fly with them ten hours a week and where they can take the time off work.
I also completed the required five hours of Night VFR including one hour of solo night circuits. With my instructor, I practised Limited Panel in case of vacuum failure and Recovery from Unusual Attitudes whilst under the hood. My instructor pronounced me ready for my flight test day.
I had also prepared for the oral test, including the items on my IREX Knowledge Deficiency Report. The IFR Cheat Sheet from weflyplanes.com.au was perfect preparation for this and they fully deserve the financial contribution I sent their way.
It is now 31st July 2020, the long awaited day of my Flight Test examination. The weather is fine with a moderate breeze and some scattered cloud. I come early and pre-flight the aircraft. My examiner and I sit down in the Warnervale Aero Club briefing room. My Instrument Proficiency Check begins, the culmination of eight months of toil.
The examiner prods me like a meat inspector checking out a sheep carcass, outlining various real world scenarios and probing deeper and deeper in order satisfy himself that I really do understand the plethora of rules governing the world of instrument flying.
Eventually he concedes that I do have a smidgen of knowledge about the subject. We depart the briefing room for the waiting Piper Arrow, rechecking the vitals before climbing in and settling down. Departure and climb-out on instruments proceed normally. I’m staying ahead of the plane and radio calls when, at 6,000 feet en-route to Scone, the Garmin 430W lights up with its error message:
Loss of GPS Navigation – DEAD RECKONING – Use other NAV
The Flight Test Examiner sits without expression.
Think, Derek, think.
But what can I do?
I’ve lost the GPS. Without the GPS, how can I navigate?
Out of desperation, I cycle the power on the Garmin. It starts its interminable sequence of self-check and bootup.
Stop thinking about what you’ve lost.
What do you still have?
Why, the ADF of course! Which you have already tuned to the Scone NDB, don’t you remember? The needle’s already pointing to where you need to go! Ah, gratitude for the old faithful ground-based aids. Maybe all those weeks studying the NDB and VOR sections of the study guide weren’t such a waste of time after all. The examiner nods when I indicate I am following the ADF needle now, instead of the OBI.
While I’m mentally composing how to tell Brisbane Centre about my flight path not being within the same tight tolerance regime with the ADF as it was with the GPS, the Garmin finishes booting up. The garish yellow box on the display has gone. I re-enter the flight plan. All looks to be well. The vice releases its squeeze on my brain and I dare to hope again.
After the NDB approach at Scone, I fly to Maitland for the RNAV approach, during which the examiner covers up the Attitude Indicator and I fly on limited panel until he uncovers it again. I remove my view-liming glasses to perform a circling approach and a touch-and-go on the duty runway at Maitland before climbing out, replacing the glasses and heading back to Warnervale.
On the way back, the examiner talks to ATC, then takes control and tells me to lower my head and look at the floor while he takes the aircraft through a convoluted sequence of manoeuvres and asks me to recover.
The wind noise and sound of the engine cue me towards the right response. I confirm by glancing at the airspeed indicator and altimeter before cutting the throttle, levelling the wings and gradually easing back on the stick in the event of a dive; pushing the stick forward, adding power and levelling the wings in the case of a climb.
“Congratulations,” the examiner says as we taxi back to the refuelling bowser, “Get some experience in light IMC conditions before taking on the heavier stuff and you’ll do fine.”
He completes the paperwork inside the clubhouse and inscribes my licence with the coveted cyphers “IR-SEA-IAP2D”. I am now instrument rated in single engine aircraft for 2D instrument approaches. I walk back to the car in a daze, mentally wrung out but immensely relieved at the happy outcome of my eight months of toil.
I plan to fly to Queensland the very next day. This is the first leg of a club fly-out to Shute Harbour, Townsville, Karumba on the gulf, Emerald and Longreach. We are due to leave on the very last day before the QLD border shuts due to COVID-19 restrictions.
I am wanting to give my niece a lift to Archerfield on the first leg. The weather is looking marginal. Will I fly inland or coastal? Will I fly VFR – or will I make use of my newly-minted instrument rating?
Turns out I have to make a number of diversions around the weather and get into a spot of bother with ATC whilst flying near the Gold Coast airport (YBCG).
But that’s a story for another day.