I See What You Did There
Author: Bert Booth
Laughlin AFB 85-02, November 1984 (about a month, maybe only 6 +/- rides left, to graduation)
Cruising along in the program. Nav, so last month or so of flying?
Occasionally we'd depart from the practice area, fly east, and hit the HI-Tacan IAF from the only (?) IAF to the east (south and west didn't work because of Mexico, north didn't work because of T-38 practice areas). Required a turn in holding to get oriented, and then shoot the Hi-Tacan (basically a STAR with a transition to an approach).
I'm with my primary IP (thought it was a new 2LT FAIP but nothing in my logbook matched the flight in question). Departing the practice area cleared direct to the IAF (40 miles east? IDK). Fix to fix practice. Easy-peasy. Off we go.
Me? I'm a chatter box. After a while the IP is getting less responsive. Yeah, yeah, I KNOW he's sweating my fix to fix now. I gots it!
To make matters worse I'm NOT slowing down... you know... within 3 minutes slow to yada yada yada. Adjust, correction, analyze, adjust, correction... and lo and behold we DON'T have to use a procedure turn/holding pattern to get within 30 degrees. Within 30 degrees of the outbound course, still at speed (300 KIAS?), hit the fix and start down.
IP is deathly silent. He's probably been thinking for the last 5 minutes: "Oh, no. Am I going to have to hook him?!?! Please fix this!"
So a couple thousand feet after starting our descent he, finally, speaks up after a long period of silence: "I see what you did there."
The requirement was to hit the fix within 2 (?) miles. Leaving the practice area I deliberately was F2F'ing to a place (10 miles?) north of the IAF. As I got closer I moved that to the northeast, then east, then 5 miles east... and then ultimately turned directly towards the IAF. That put us within 30 degrees of the outbound course, hit the IAF dead on, slight correction to the outbound course, and voila—no speed reduction, no PT/holding to get aligned nonsense, etc.
A different IP afterwards: "Well you certainly started a conversation among the IPs at the morning brief today (the morning after). Don't do that on your NAV check." 🙂
