quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
we had a lear jet land on the taxi way here at Tucson yesterday

interestingly enough, its has the word 'taxiway' painted on it in big white letters and the crew still missed it...

Landing on the parallel taxiway has become a regular occurrence at PBI (West Palm Beach). We are not going to discuss my involvement in one such incident there. Nor are we going to discuss the landing on runway 10 (Roman Numeral 10) in Georgetown, Bahamas. And about the incident at Nassau, nope, we are not going to discuss that one either.

ANYTHING GOES in the Bahamas so long as you don't hit anything, so you can't count that one!!!!!!!!!

I once landed on US93 between Ely and Wells NV when I was out of options with weather. Plenty of gas, but I was a young pilot scud running under thunderstorms. When I finally got scared and made a 180* turn, I discovered what I'd just picked my way around had closed up behind me. I decided to land on the highway and take my lumps with the FAA and PD.

I was on the highway about 45 minutes, stuck in blinding rain in the plane and never saw any traffic in either direction. The wx cleared, I took off and continued onto Wendover UT. Decided I'd better the file the "get out of jail" NASA ASRS report.

I had the luxury of making a low pass over the highway to look for poles and signs, but wouldn't hesitate a moment to land on a sparsely occupied road.

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Originally posted by RaiseHal:
Glad everyone survived. However a pilot should loose his license if he runs out of gas, there is no excuse-NONE!

I'm pretty hard on pilots, but I have to side with Vtail that shit can happen. Now if it happens to you often (like Harrison Ford), it's you the pilot. But if it's many years between incidents, it can be the unforgiving nature of aviation.

I had a similar experience in a F-18 flying from the East Coast into Fallon NV - Forecasted VFR for hours before and after our land time. We checked and updated WX forecast at our intermediate stops for fuel. Checked ATIS as we got closer and it still reported that Fallon was VFR as we approached from the East.

When we checked in our division, asking for the overhead break, approach advised us that NAS Fallon had snow squalls and was 100'-1/4 vis. Well, that's kinda inconvenient.

Reno had better but not great WX, with pop up snow - and due to NAVAIRs infinite wisdom, the F-18 lacks civilian ILS capability (don't get me started), so even with the better weather at Reno, we had no approach to shoot. So PARs at Fallon was our only option. Awesome.

So we told approach to give us the MotherFuck-ing PAR even though we are below mins, or we'll have to take 3 of the 4 jets in the division to the ranges to eject (-4 had 3 EFTs vice everyone else's single centerline). So we all shot the approach below minimums and made it safe on deck, backed up by the patented Hornet 1 self contained radar approach.

When we landed, we had enough fuel for a short hook back to final for a second try but with -2 and -3 behind us, it would have been iffy.

So yeah, if you fly enough on other than CAVU days, shit can happen.

quote:

Originally posted by aileron:
I once landed on US93 between Ely and Wells NV when I was out of options with weather. Plenty of gas, but I was a young pilot scud running under thunderstorms. When I finally got scared and made a 180* turn, I discovered what I'd just picked my way around had closed up behind me. I decided to land on the highway and take my lumps with the FAA and PD.

I was on the highway about 45 minutes, stuck in blinding rain in the plane and never saw any traffic in either direction. The wx cleared, I took off and continued onto Wendover UT. Decided I'd better the file the "get out of jail" NASA ASRS report.

I had the luxury of making a low pass over the highway to look for poles and signs, but wouldn't hesitate a moment to land on a sparsely occupied road.

My instructor, an old guy whose flying license was signed by Orville Wright, told about the guy ferrying planes between Texas and Kansas. He was flying at night watching a highway below.

Suddenly, it got real quiet, he had no engine, no lights. Traffic on the highway was gone. He came down, lined up, landed on the highway, and pushed the plane off the road to wait for morning. At dawn, he looked around and saw the overpass a few hundred yards further from where he landed.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
the F-18 lacks civilian ILS capability (don't get me started), so even with the better weather at Reno, we had no approach to shoot. So PARs at Fallon was our only option.

No ILS receiver? Good grief! The cost of these things nowadays is a couple thousand bucks. Wouldn't even be noticeable in the budget on a multi-million dollar airplane. Who was the genius who made that decision?

Re PAR -- I never did one "for real." I did take some of my students over to the Air Force base on the west end of Puerto Rico (was that Ramey? Long time ago) when I was instructing in the San Juan area. The Air Force guys were very accommodating. No landing permitted, but we could fly practice approaches down to DH and then go missed.

The only RADAR approach I ever flew in actual weather was the ASR into KEYW. The Navy controllers provided that service for Key West International. The day I used it, everybody trying to get into KEYW using the VOR approach was going missed. I looked at the charts and noticed that MDA for the VOR approach was 460' and it was 400' for the ASR, so I figured I could get sixty feet lower, and I requested the ASR.

The Navy controller was really sharp. As I descended through 410' I saw the runway environment, so I was legal to continue the approach and land. I was the first one to get into KEYW that day (low overcast). As soon as I reported success, all of the arrivals following me requested the ASR. I guess the Navy guy logged a lot of approaches that morning.

I used to do PARs all the time at CFB Shearwater - they were so infrequently used that the operators were losing certifications so quite often I'd fly for a few hours doing nothing but PARs for a couple of shifts

ah, the good old days

I used to pick them up into Mosul from time to time. The approach and the radar approach both coincided, crossed over a point we called "marguritaville," which was a small villiage from which we'd get ground fire. As a result, I always offset right, over the Tigris river.

The controller on a PAR provides constant feedback about high, low, left, right to keep the aircraft on course. No way to tell them we'd intentionally stay right all the way down the final course, and they were always concerned (but grateful for the practice, and I was always grateful for the guidance).