VOR approach- when to descend from the FAF

"Mark Hansen" wrote in message
...

I spend that minute or so making sure my heading and approach airspeed
are
under control, and then simply catch up to the descent afterward when the
needle comes back. It'll be interesting to see how other people do it,
but
that's the way I was trained.

I was taught to begin the descent at station passage (using the 5 'T's).
It's never taken more than just a very few seconds for the CDI to start
coming back in. A minute seems awfully long.

Yeah, I was just throwing that out as a ballpark figure. It shouldn't take
very long at all, which means it's even less of a problem to catch up to the
descent afterward.

I prefer to have the altitude under me rather than above me throughout the
approach, but, at that point it's not like you're going to fly into anything
if you're 50 feet lower immediately after crossing the station than if you
waited. Or, you have bigger issues.

If I were taking the IFR checkride, though, I'd definately hold the altitude
until I could demonstrate to the examiner that I had recaptured the CDI was
100% established. That's the kind of thing my examiner would have expected
and how I was taught to do it. (caveat: Since they almost always use the
examiner, they teach to his specific expectations, which may be a factor.)

-c
CP-ASEL-IA