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Archiver > MEMORY-LANE > 2006-12 > 1165111679


From: WJFreeman <>
Subject: Re: [ML] Here in Pahrump
Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2006 21:07:59 -0500
References: <20061202.190646.3460.0.Wallace26@juno.com>
In-Reply-To: <20061202.190646.3460.0.Wallace26@juno.com>


grace w gathman wrote:

> I tease my husband that the pilots use
>our house as a sighting on the glide path into O'Hare field!
>

Having flown a number of instrument approaches (probably into the
thousands) and many times that number of landings under visual flight
rules, I can say that pilots do not much notice other things, while
tracking inbound on the localizer.


And as you near the missed-approach point (aka MAP, roughly 200 ft above
ground level on the glide slope), you are even more focused.


Generally you are looking at the REIL (runway end identifier lights) and
the threshold lights just beyond them with the view of the RCL (runway
center lights set into the tarmac) and the runway edge lights stretching
off into the distance.


If, on an instrument approach, you do not even look up from the
instruments (horizontal situation indicator (HSI), glideslope and
localizer needles, which must be near centered on the radio beams or you
are going to miss the runway and spoil your whole day, or if equipped,
the flight director bars), until you are at the MAP which is usually at
the middle marker radio beacon.


Then it is one quick look out the windscreen, and if you see the
threshold lights, the "rabbit" (strobe lights running sequentially
towards the runway), or the REIL, then you "transition" to visual
control and by this time since you are very, very close to the runway,
you proceed with reducing power once you have the runway made to flare
for the landing.


If, in that glance, you do not see any of the above, then it is a missed
approach, and it is full power, rotate to a nose up 5° to stop the sink,
and start cleaning up the aircraft from landing configuration by raising
the gear, milking off the flaps, etc, while holding runway heading for a
few moments and then a climbing turn as proscribed by the missed
approach procedure on your instrument approach plates (actually, they
are called plates, but are really just paper charts replaced every 56 days).


The ground could be on fire, and unless it is in your focussed field of
view, you would probably not pay much attention to it. Mainly because,
you are going real fast, and are getting ever nearer the ground, so not
much time for rubber necking.


So unless your house with or without lights is within a very few yards
of the edge of the runway pavement, pilots are not going to see them as
they are in one of the busiest phases of flight.


Might work for Santa Claus, but it don't work for pilots on approach.


Walter

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