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Alright which one of you was this?


natdm

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I'm surprised that he wasn't given a phone number to call.  Wow, just Wow.

Agreed, but we don’t know if the controller referred him to the FSDO and what the FSDO may do about it. I hope there is more to the story before his actions lead to a fatal accident; since unchecked they most certainly will.

Some years ago another Mooney J pilot did the same thing late at night in much worse weather killing himself and 2 others after his third failed approach attempt. I was shocked he even made it to a third attempt since he went missed without ever following the missed approach procedure.


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5 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:


Don’t they do that after you land? So may not have been on ATC frequency.

Frequently done in the air, sometimes by a tower/controller further down the flight path from where the deviation occurred.

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I would say good on the controller for not rattling that pilot with a brasher warning while flying IMC on an approach everyone was pretty sure he didn’t know how to fly. That would have just made a bad situation worse. 

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16 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:


Don’t they do that after you land? So may not have been on ATC frequency.

They give you the warning in the air. The whole purpose is to give you timely notice that ATC thinks you did something wrong. 

In this case, I suspect the controller felt the pilot was having so much trouble he didn't want to pile it on. Like refusing to accept IFR cancellation, the controller was treating it as an emergency - safety first, rulebook last.

FWIW, I don't think this situation  requires a Brasher for the FAA to do something about it. If not instrument rated (a definite possibility), there was a serious violation before he left the ground. If rated, this is exactly the kind of thing a 709 ride is for. 

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I may be wrong but to me it just sounds like a pilot that was overwhelmed because his iPad died so he couldn’t see the approach plate. I didn’t hear him say he was using the iPad as his source of navigation but the controller interpreted it that way. 

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2 hours ago, 201er said:

I may be wrong but to me it just sounds like a pilot that was overwhelmed because his iPad died so he couldn’t see the approach plate. I didn’t hear him say he was using the iPad as his source of navigation but the controller interpreted it that way. 

I had more or less the same impression. He was clearly flustered, and he may well have had a panel full of certified gear, but the iPad issue was a huge distraction. 

I have absolutely seen this in instrument rated pilots, where the presence of an inop iPad just throws them for a loop and they find it hard to concentrate on anything other than the tablet (even though the avionics in the panel are more than capable of getting them safely on the ground). 

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I keep my transponder set to 7600 for two reasons.  One I am a CB and rotating the knobs wears things out.  The other thing is it’s football season which is always up on the ADF.  I can’t have some controller interrupting the big game.  

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43 minutes ago, NewMoon said:

A  classic situation of a pilot not being proficient with his equipment.  The controller is 100%, an IFR approach must be flown with a panel mounted, IFR approved GPS. Scary pilot

I think its much worse. I am pretty confident the pilot is not instrument rated. Assuming the owner is the pilot, as pointed out by Mark in the other thread, there is no record of an instrument rating. Although its possible the ink is still wet on a new IR there is no just way he could have passed a check ride using an iPad for anything more than situational awareness and any sign of ipad dependency would have the ipad immediately failed by the Examiner or on the back seat. 

Sadly this pilot was attempting to fly IFR by following the magenta line; not by reference to instruments. We all know this isn't legal. The following day this pilot flew two more 3hr+ IFR flights with tracks at the destination looking like this one.

I knew the 2 previous owners of this aircraft and did the transition training for the prior owner. It was a well equipped F model.  

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On 10/8/2023 at 7:26 PM, kortopates said:

any sign of ipad dependency would have the ipad immediately failed by the Examiner. 

This is not what I’ve been told but maybe things have changed recently. I’ve talked to several guys that have taken their IR ride. All used tablets with geo-referenced approach plates throughout the ride. I acted as safety pilot on a few occasions and these guys appeared to be using the icon on the plate as primary for horizontal guidance.

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6 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

This is not what I’ve been told but maybe things have changed recently. I’ve talked to several guys that have taken their IR ride. All used tablets with geo-referenced approach plates throughout the ride. I acted as safety pilot on a few occasions and these guys were appeared to be using the icon on the plate as primary for horizontal guidance.

I started my IFR training in '83, when situational awareness occurred solely between the ears.   When I was working to finish the rating in 2018 after buying our Mooney, my instructor asked me "Why don't you refer to the moving maps?"   I replied "Because it seems like cheating to me".  He said "cheat."  In other words, anything that helps with SA is a good thing.  Over-reliance on moving maps is surely bad, at the expense of developing good SA between the ears.

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46 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

This is not what I’ve been told but maybe things have changed recently. I’ve talked to several guys that have taken their IR ride. All used tablets with geo-referenced approach plates throughout the ride. I acted as safety pilot on a few occasions and these guys were appeared to be using the icon on the plate as primary for horizontal guidance.

It's often easy to tell when the pilot is doing primary rather than situational - the CDI is rarely centered. In his Aviation NewsTalk podcast a few years ago, Max Trescott talked about a fatal accident on an instrument approach. Max's take was that the pilot was following the magenta line on his panel GPS (which has the same legal status as an iPad) rather than the CDI. The problem is how close you really are compared to what you see depends on zoom level. You can be at full scale deflection on the CDI but still look like you are in the course.

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15 hours ago, 0TreeLemur said:

I started my IFR training in '83, when situational awareness occurred solely between the ears.   When I was working to finish the rating in 2018 after buying our Mooney, my instructor asked me "Why don't you refer to the moving maps?"   I replied "Because it seems like cheating to me".  He said "cheat."  In other words, anything that helps with SA is a good thing.  Over-reliance on moving maps is surely bad, at the expense of developing good SA between the ears.

My observation of folks that rely heavily on geo-referencing is that they don’t fine tune an approach course so much as fly back and forth across the correct course as they chase the icon delay. It works out ok but seems sub optimal to say the least.

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I'll give you a real example of how a DPE has failed a candidate for using the iPad as primary.

The pilot was flying a departure procedure to a slam dunk approach start. The pilot loaded the graphical ODP that was essentially to depart westbound to 400' AGL and then make a full 270 degree turn to the south and intercept a radial west bound about 3 miles south of the airport. The DP continues west bound for near 10 miles but the approach he was requesting had its final approach course only a couple miles from intercepting the west inbound radial of the DP.

Because these are so close together, DP and Approach, its common practice to get vectors to final on the approach before even intercepting the radial inbound westerly course. The pilot had to be recognize as soon as they're no longer on the DP and being vectored for the approach. But there is a lot going on in a short amount of time. 

How this student messed up is he didn't immediately activate the approach on the GPS as soon as he was being vectored onto the approach. Then seeing he was crossing the centerline of final on his ipad he turned to follow the final approach path; attempting to save the approach. Instant failure because the approach wasn't even active yet, and his instruments where still giving him guidance on the DP.  The examiner had no other choice - he was clearly navigating by the ipad not his instruments.

The Pilot could have confessed to the to the controller that he wasn't ready to intercept it yet and to ask for vectors around for another try while the pilot finished up the activating the approach. That would have been the right call to fix it and I doubt the examiner would have given him a hard time about it. Simply activating vectors to final would have worked out fine on this approach too even though that's not always the correct way to activate a non-precision approach because of potential step down fixes.

 

 

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