Around Anchorage Last Friday

[Jon]

Friday was supposedly a beautiful day in Anchorage, perfect for committing aviation. I wouldn't know, though, since I was on my instrument rating checkride, and all I could see was the panel. Fortunately, the lack of views were more than compensated for by passing.

While a photo of the apparently stellar day would be nice, the best I can do is a map with the track I took that shows an unusual attitude entry and recovery, a DME arc, landing after a circling approach, going missed, holding, and getting vectored for both an ILS and then a localizer approach:


I hope some of the local Maule pilots were out and able to take advantage of the day.

[crbnunit]

Congrats on a successful mission! I need to get that rating of these days.

[taildragger]

Great you passed! That should take some stress out of your life! I have never regretted getting my instrument rating but for what it's worth I spent all that time and money learning how to fly in bad weather just to find out I don't even like to fly in bad weather. lol

Scott

[chetharris]

Congratulations Jon,

I committed some aviation, but you accomplished something. Did you fly it in your Maule. I really like that graphic. Where did you get it? Who was your examiner?

Chet

[Jon]

Thanks, guys!

I did almost all of the flying for the rating in my M-5, and was very glad I did so. The avionics might be old, but it's nice and stable and easy to fly, and it's the plane I'll be flying anyways should I do real IMC, though I don't expect I'll do that until I get back down to California.

My examiner was Steven Williams (proprietor of Acme Cub).

The image is just a screenshot of Google Earth. The track is from a handheld GPS (a Garmin eTrex 30, IIRC) I have. I took the GPX file of the track and ran it through a script I wrote that converts it to KML (Google Earth's native file format). The airspace outlines are another KML file that I hand-wrote to easily visualize the local airspace in 3-D. I'd be happy to send either one along to anyone who's interested. Now that I think about it, I could easily make that GPX -> KML converter available to run on my website if anyone thought it might be useful.

[MAU MAU]

Congratulations on your hard earned rating!

You will now start to wonder how they ever allowed you to fly with just a PPL.