IFR to Shenandoah

The weather today looked great for some IFR practice, as well to get the rust off my unused flying skills.  I reached Jean-Pierre Leal Garcia, newly minted CSIP CFI, and we agreed to meet at 1300 at JYO. The avionics needed updating, and I was just finishing that when Jean-Pierre arrived.  After a quick look at a new Cirrus in an adjoining hangar, we filed for an IFR flight to Shenandoah Valley Regional in southwestern Virginia.

Upon lift off, we were in the soup almost immediately.  Jean-Pierre cautioned me about flying at less than full power in cruise climb and showed me how to use the IAS or Indicated Air Speed climb on our DFC-90 autopilot.  We set her for 130 knots and the plane set it's own vertical ascent rate.  I'll be using this trick from now on!

We got a few vectors from Potomac which gradually turned us toward CSN (Casanova VOR), and then gave us direct to KSHD.  While the MFD continually gives weather along the route of flight, I could not seem to raise the KSHD weather (AWOS broadcast) on the radios. I had about given up when Jean-Pierre pushed the squelch button.  Immediately we had sound. That's the second thing I learned in the first half hour!  With the weather in hand, we asked for the RNAV 23 approach to KSHD.

We were in the clouds all the way, with no sight of the ground since we left Leesburg.  Weather at KSHD was reporting about a 1000 foot ceiling, but we did not really have good visibility until we were about 600 feet above the ground.  We caught sight of the runway lights just a few hundred feet above the decision altitude, and slid in to a near-perfect landing.   The video here is compressed (I cut out many minutes of looking at the insides of clouds) but shows the landing and roll out.

After a little difficulty reaching Potomac Departure on the radio, we called on the phone to pick up our clearance.  Jean-Pierre swears by his new Bose aviation headset with the Bluetooth feature that connects your phone call through the headset.

Potomac gave us a SID, Shenandoah Two, because of the conditions.  You fly a climbing left turn off runway 23 to a 200 degree heading until you intercept the Montebello VOR (aka MOL) radial 036 inbound, and then continue to Casanova and STILL enroute to KJYO.

The requirement to pick up that MOL radial 036 was unexpected for me, and the SID did not pop up on the Garmin 430W "procedures" page.  Jean-Pierre explained a couple of different ways to do it, using the heading indicator with the VOR dialed in, or using the OBS key on the Garmin 430W.

We rocketed home with a 35 mile per hour tailwind, making about 185 knots over the ground (213 mph).  Requesting the RNAV 17 approach, we set up for HOAGE but in fact got vectored in at KORNY.  The glide slope refused to come in, so I hand flew the approach.  Later, on the ground, I realized that I had kept the PFD locked on VLOC-1 and so even though I had switched to GPSS on the autopilot, it could not pick up the glide slope without being in GPS mode.

Things were busy at JYO, with several planes jockeying for position in the pattern and one guy in a Cessna who appeared lost.  We chose the safe way and flew upwind, crosswind and downwind to enter final for Runway 17.  I'll post the video  of that landing too.

It was two.one hours of good fun and good training too.