Its been a while since I could enjoy time flying my beloved flight sim 2004. Last Friday evening late I was granted the free time to enjoy a quiet flight without little ones tugging at my joystick wires and pushing buttons randomly on my keyboard with usually desasterous consequences!
After seeing the movie “Did you hear about the Morgans”, I decided to go check out Cody Airport. I loaded a flight from KCOD to KGCC (Gillette-Campbell County Airport) in Wyoming USA. The AI traffic control at COD was non existing and I had to call traffic to the Unicom as I taxi-ed and departed on runway 22. There was a 14 knots wind at 160 degrees on Friday evening (flying real weather).
I flew the default King Air 350. After starting my roll and lifting, I realised how rusted I was. I did not do my proper pre flight checklist and so also failed to have some flaps on for the take off. I heaved the aircraft with effort in the air and quickly steared off the run way centre line while climbing through 1000 ft. After getting it steady at a shallow climb of 1000 ft per min I banked left and headed for a NDB (cant remember which one). As the ADF did not pick it up yet, I noted the direction from the flight planner and loaded that into the auto pilot until teh ADF needle jumped to life. I climbed to 11500 ft and after reaching it, trimmed the aircraft at medium rpms and brought back the mixture and prop levers.
I was now heading east. After reaching the NDB, I tuned on to GCC VOR and tracked it on the 105 inbound radial. I saw some mountain terrain infront of me, so I increased altitude to 15000 ft.
I descended to 6500 ft when I reached the 55nm mark from GCC and at 25nm I contacted GCC tower. It was overcast and the tower directed me to land on runway 34. A chance to use the ILS on 337 degrees.
Tower directed me to join the left hand downwind traffic for runway 34 which made me turn right into the traffic pattern. I intercepted the ILS localizer and without trying to see the runway performed the instrument approach. All went well untill about 1000ft or less where I lost control and yawed to the righty of the runway. When I finally lowered the nose of the aircraft, I was way off target to the right.
Completely disappointed about my first effort after a long time, I taxied to the parking area and shut down the aircraft.
Next time I will make more of the procedures and I will be more safety aware on the landing – rather do that go around in stead of getting it wrong.
