I agree that it is not the fault of the pilot in this case. They obviously did not receive the appropriate training or practice to be able to operate fully and confidently in the IFR system. That is simply a fact of life with the 10 hours or less IMC rating training.
Shunter,
I know what the rules are,
At the end of the day we knew full well that the cloudbase was well above approach minima and there was no danger of anything other than me looking a pratt.
Unfortunately you most certainly do
not know the rules.
Anyone could end up in the position you were in. With more experience, some would question ATC and be repositioned etc. No problem with that and you are trying to learn from your mistake.
However, you can not descend below the MSA unless you are established on an appropriate procedure or are being radar vectored by ATC and have crosschecked that they are descending you to a correct level. Established does not mean +/- 30 degrees.
I sincerely hope that you wanted to say that the cloud base was above MSA and you were visual (under the hood?) from the moment you were unsure of position or you were above MSA while this was going on.
Otherwise, you were flying round below MSA and unsure of your position relative to obstacles, airspace and other aircraft.........That can happen but requires prompt action to fix it.
I would receomend that you invest in RANT or similar and spend time orientating yourself and then get some instruction from an experienced instructor (not the friend who accompanied you while lost).
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IO540,
You need to get your ADF system checked. You also need to understand that
pilots fly a (rough guess at) wind corrected heading until the VOR sorts itself out. Obviously this won't be done with serious terrain around.
Is how all instrment procedures are flown - you fly a wind corrected heading, see what happens to the pointer and if necessary adjust the heading. To do otherwise would be to chase the pointer and in the case of the NDB would require lots of heading changes.
Of course everyone knows that with dip, quadrantal error, deviation and so on, chasing the pointer while doing an NDB approach causes it to swing round quite a lot..........just like you describe.
Airlines, I gather, do the same. Last I heard, Ryanair fly NDB approaches on the FMS, checking the ADF at the FAF only.
No. many airlines use the FMS to provide the notional track and the notional descent path. However, the primary reference for the approach remains the ADF and this will be overlaid on the display. So if the indications exceed the +/- 5 requirement even if the FMS says the track is being maintained then a missed approach will be flown unless the crew are visual or can use another approved aid.
Which is why most smart pilots, flying an NDB procedure, use the moving map GPS as primary (especially to quickly work out the heading required to offset the wind drift) and monitor the ADF here and there.
Smart pilots can work out the wind correction (and the timing correction) using their brain. When flying an XXX approach the XXX is the primary indicator. Everything is simple back-up.
If the back-up says that the primary aid is taking you in the wrong direction then it is not a case of following the back-up it is a case of missed approach and when at a safe altitude with low workload sort out which of the two is having a problem.
If you find that the GPS is correct and thus the ADF is at fault, you can not try the approach again you have to use another approved aid or divert.
I get the impression that when faced with an NDB approach you simply fly an unapproved GPS approach and even if the ADF stopped transmitting you would not notice or care. That is not something that should be recomended to others.
Regards,
DFC