Pelican's Perch #24: Sloppy, Sorry VNAV
I think this is a good article written by John Deakin. It explains the issues involved when CANPA can work and when it can't. There is a follow up article too.
Pelican's Perch #25: How I Learned to Love CANPA
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And from an Australian perspective...
DME Arrivals - Especially for those who use Airservices DAPs since Jeppesen present them slightly differently as I understand.
The DME Arrival is a procedure unique to Australia and involves descending in steps at certain DME distances on a particular inbound track to an aerodrome. These charts actually have the phrase "AT DME or GPS DISTANCE...NM DECEND TO....FT" Seeming to discourage a constant descent.
Here is an example
BUT, in the latest amendment, they have basically made them look like the profile view of an ILS approach and now present an altitude/distance scale to give a constant descent to the MDA. I.e. arrive at the MAPt at MDA. Another confirmation that constant angle approaches are becoming the norm. Is this good or bad?
Here is an example
and here
Looking at the first arrival from
TBD I can't see how arriving on top of the airport at MDA is any help to you when you could be happily (and safely) flying along level at the appropriate MDA for your aircraft category before the MAPt ready to manoeuvre within the circling area to line up with a runway. But in the second example in Sector A they do depict a level segment. I guess this is to keep a standard 3 degree approach angle from 6 miles out. The actual chart used to fly the approach without the explanations is
here.
Sorry for my ramblings I just found all this rather interesting. I am keen to know how pilots that perform DME arrivals actually do them.
Any comments?