Andrew Gideon wrote:
Dave Butler wrote:

It sounds like you are doing your practicing under IFR. That's probably a
good idea from the POV of working within the system and practicing
procedures with a real controller. I don't feel the need to do that.


Psst...wanna know a secret? I do it because I'm lazy. It's more work if I
have to deal with acquiring Flight Following, at least in my neighborhood.

Hmmm. If I recall your original post you were complaining about having to do
full stop landings and getting a new clearance for each approach. That's easier
than getting flight following? Anyway, flight following is optional, of course.

There's also a fair chance that I'll not be able to speak to anyone while
approaching my "home" airport, which means one less approach.

I don't understand this statement. Your home airport has an approach control? If
you can't speak to them, how are you going to get home at all? If your home
airport has no approach control, how does not being able to speak prevent you
from doing an approach? Anyway, why are you unable to speak?


But I do also like the practice of being in the system.

[...]


Controllers here (Raleigh, NC) are usually happy to accomodate requests
for VFR practice approaches. Sometimes they get too busy for that, so I
terminate radar advisories and do full procedures (no vectors).


I don't know that I'm so comfortable with this idea. Being on an approach
w/o talking to someone because that someone is too busy? What if the
someone is busy because of others on the approach (or perhaps a conflicting
approach)?

Well, that's life. VFR services are on a workload-permitting basis for
controllers. What you are saying is that you are not comfortable flying VFR, I
guess.

As for others on the approach, well you can monitor the approach control
frequency, and you have a safety pilot looking out the window.

In the Raleigh-Durham area, if the RDU controllers are busy enough to say
"unable VFR practice approaches", it's usually because they are busy with
traffic into and out of RDU. The satellite fields are not equally busy.

When you're IFR in VMC, you still have a responsibility to see and avoid, that
doesn't change just because you're on an instrument flight plan. You still can
have others (VFR) on the approach or on a conflicting approach.



I usually
do my approaches at nearby non-towered fields that are under the Raleigh
TRACON jurisdiction, followed by an approach to a full stop at RDU, where
I'm based.


I dislike practicing approaches to nontowered fields VFR. It's not very
good practice, I've found, because I need to behave in a "non-IFR" way
towards the end of the approach to avoid other traffic.

Must be a difference in the traffic density where you live versus piedmont NC.
That happens occasionally, but it beats having to land and get a new clearance
as you described in your original posting.


I'll often have to skip the final stepdown entirely, in fact, to stay
sufficiently high that I can join the pattern.

Practicing in controlled airspace lets me behave more realistically, in my
experience.

I'm practicing in controlled airspace, too.


I'm curious what others think on this, though.

Me too.

Remove SHIRT to reply directly.
Dave