On Sat, 14 May 2005 18:07:04 -0400, Ron Rosenfeld wrote:

In addition to the above considerations, there is also the fact that the
minimum visibility for this approach (for a Category A a/c) is one mile.
MAFCA is only 1000' from the runway. If I do not pick up the runway prior
to MAFCA, it is likely I will not have the required visibility to make the
approach. (Not definite, as there could be an obstruction to visibility
that clears up directly over the airport). So it is likely that if I just
barely see the airport upon reaching the MAP, I'll have to execute a "miss"
anyway.

Thanks Ron!

You did clear up one thing. I was thinking that 5.0 DME was mid field for
MBO, when in reality it is MAFCA.

Duhh, read the chart Allen.....

If you are interested,
http://www.archive.org/details/ALieb...pproachintoMBO is the
actual approach. I took a VFR pilot friend up who had never been in IMC.
File is 40 meg. For my DSL, it takes 2 1/2 minutes to download.

This was the first time I did it by myself down this close to minimums.
Ceilings were right at 1000, and visibility was about 2 miles below the
ceiling. I broke out 4.8 DME from the JAN VOR.

Couple of things to note...

Below NAV one, I have a "digital" VOR. It tells me what radial I am on
when I switch it from NAV1 or NAV2. I can tell it to indicate to or from
the VOR. So, you can see, I was as close as I can be on that 137 radial.

I overshot final, as I didn't take into account the tail wind on my turn to
base. I had a 40 knot tail wind!

Surface winds were 21 gusting to 29 knots, so I did a no flaps landing.

I have done the approach with my instructor 2 other times right at minimums
in my IFR training, and when we broke out, it was right at mid field, which
maybe because of my prior experiences had in my mind that mid field was
MAFCA for my missed approaches. On these two approaches we used 17.

There was one other lesson, where we did a missed approach for the real
deal, as ceilings dropped below minimums after we left.

I have noticed in my experiences that the ceilings tend to be a little
higher east of the field. Probably the reservoir has something to do with
that, though I don't know for sure.

Allen