loosing altitude on vor approach

[napalm]

The other day I was flying into KDUG (SW Arizona) IFR and about 30 miles NW of the Vor I was cleared by ATC for the VOR rwy 17 approach. The clearance was something like this "N567gk you are cleared for the VOR rwy 17 approach maintain 11000 until crossed douglas VOR. Contact advisor frequency," Now we were doing the full approach but ATC wanted to keep us high until over the VOR. They would not give us lower because of terrain. The approach is IAF outbound descend to 6000ft and then PT inbound and positive course guidance down to I think MDA of 4850ft. My question is once I have been cleared for that approach and handed off to advisory, could I have entered a hold over the VOR to loose altitude prior to proceeding outbound in order to not have such a high rate of descent? (passenger comfort, not pressurized). I know I could have requested this but I was wondering if after switching to advisory ATC wouldn't mind if I just did that to loose some altitude before going outbound. Just wondering what people think. I my opinion ATC is expecting me to proceed outbound so I have 2 choices. 1. Proceed outbound and use a higher rate of descent. 2. request to hold over the VOR with ATC to loose some altitude and then proceed outbound. Thoughts.

[topdrop]

Just use your Option 2 and descend to the minimum level allowed in the pattern or a level above that which gives an acceptable rate of descent.

[DFC]

In the absence of other replies, I think that you should remember the following;

You say that you were inbound from the NW. The MEA on V66 between SULLI and DUG is 9500. This makes 11000 the minimum IFR level available. Therefore I would be surprised if you received much lower since there is an MOA etc in the area.

Radar service terminates as soon as you are told to contact CTAF. Therefore, in ATC terms you have the airspace from 11000 down available to you in accordance with the procedure (you have to comply with the clearance).

Since you are blocking all that airspace until you either land and close the plan or go missed and contact ARTCC, it is good practice to ensure that the controller is aware of what you are going to do - in this case shuttle in the hold until 8000ft before starting the reversal procedure. Then it is possible for ATC to tell following traffic or traffic that is awaiting an IFR departure clearance what is happening.

It is important pre-flight to run through the flight and pick up things like the fact that the lowest IFR level prior to the IAF is 11000 and that you will need to loose a lot of altitude in the procedure - If you had been inbound from the North east, you could have been kept at 12000.

Even if it is a surprise, there is nothing wrong with letting the ARTCC know what your intentions are.