Step Down or Track Glide slope on GPS overlay approach

On Apr 14, 9:04 am, "Mooney" wrote:
On Apr 13, 11:27 pm, "Viperdoc" wrote:

I have a 530W/430W combo recently, and in fact did some RNAV/GPS approaches
tonight. I find it easier to let the autopilot track the GS in LNAV/VNAV
approaches rather than dive and drive. It's identical to an ILS- when the DH
is reached, then either land or go around.

It's probably the same reason why precision approaches with GS are easier to
fly than non precision approaches.

By the way, tracking the VNAV or LPV glideslope and GPS "localizer" were
much smoother than a traditinional ILS or localizer approach.

I agree that this is easier to just fly the GPS glideslope and my
temptation is to just do it that way, but I'm trying to figure out why
my instructor is adamant that I use the stepdown process. Can you be
confident if you fly the glideslope that you will not violate the
minimum altitudes at each stepdown fix? If you are below these BUT ON
THE GS are you legal or does the GS have no legal status? More
importantly is there any safety issue of just flying the GS?


Probably because GPS 5@LWM does not have a LPV or VNAV minimum
published. Even in that case there is nothing wrong with flying the
GPS GS, but it becomes your responsibility to ensure that you cross
HAGET and KRIED intersections above the specified altitudes.