Hmmm I don't know if I qualify as 'a young guy' anymore 'cause I turn 40 tonight at midnight.....and not a second before.
But I still think like an 18 year old, some would say a 12 year old, especially my 12 year old daughter, kids these days have no respect
I suspect you're correct grey beard about the circling approach skills of the 20 somethings, particularly those who have rushed into, or started in the airlines. But I'm sure the kids who are out in the bush in Australia, Alaska, PNG or Africa in C402s, Twin Otters etc are getting their fair share, unfortunate isn't it that airlines don't seem to appreciate that sort of experience much these days.
I would think we're only a few years away from being asked by a young F/O, "Hey you would have been around in the days of NDBs?" and "How did they work, what was it like doing one of those in pi$$ing rain and low cloud?"
I'll go one better! In PNG we used to regularly do REAL DME homing and DME letdowns. Even in the F28s!! Done one of those down to 400' over the jungle 411a? We used to depart Port Moresby in a Bandit(single pilot) for Kiunga or Tububil and track the aids outbound till we were out of range, turn 'over' Kikori(whose NDB didn't work in the Gulf wet season)by using an NDB/DME 109nm away as a 'fix'(when it was working, otherwise just turn on time) then fly another 200 odd nm before picking up the Kiunga DME. We would bracket it, get overhead within 2nm(usually a lot less) and then carry out the letdown till we popped out the bottom over the Kiunga river in, more often than not, very poor vis and low cloud circle at 200' and land on the crushed gravel strip! Did we have fuel to divert to Daru, the nearest suitable alternate, not after leaving cruise we didn't! Now THAT'S Charachter building stuff.
At PX DME Homing and Let Downs were also common at Hoskins in it's wet season, followed by manouvres at 400 or 500 feet to position for a straight in over the water for landing, real 'white out stuff'.
When we did NDB approaches they were always flown at Flight Idle using a drift down method. We'd start overhead at 10000' and not spool up till the gear went down at 1500 AGL. When you know how much fuel a Spey uses down low you know why! If we had to circle, as we often did, it would be at 400 or 500' in tropical rain to a limiting runway.
I did a drift down NDB approach at Siem Rieb in Cambodia some months back, just for fun and to keep my currency. I briefed what I was going to do to the F/O who sat there watching in wonderment cause he'd never seen one before, the tower never had either judging by the number of queries we had about what altitude and where are you now
All great fun though
A thing of beauty when done right!
But the 20 somethings will just say "Yeah yeah so what, we don't need to be able to do any of that" and they are fast approaching being right, but not yet!
Chuck.
[ 11 December 2001: Message edited by: Chimbu chuckles ]