Page 16 - Volume 18 Number 6

PAJN, and we must be certain the weather on the ground is such that the airplane will not get all iced up while parked. If this happens, we would be grounded regardless of how many cans of $10 automotive windshield deicer the local NAPA store has left.
It is three degrees Fahrenheit on the ground as we arrive over the Johnstone Point VOR to start the LDA/DME approach to runway 6. The runway itself is almost at sea level, but the minimums for the usual published approach (Hotel) are way up there at 4,460 feet and 5 miles. This is because the airport lies at the beginning of a dead-end canyon, making a go-around from low altitude very difficult. To be practical about it, if those were our lowest minimums in the winter, we would hardly ever be able to land there, but we have approval to fly the LDA/DME Golf approach, which has much lower minimums (1,340 feet and 1 1⁄2 miles), so that’s what
we ask for. Luckily, we break out at 3,500 feet and see the runway at the valley’s entrance, about five miles away. The landing goes smooth enough, and the reversers help get us slowed down as the wheels bump over patches of ice the snowplow couldn’t remove. I am running the
checklist as we exit the runway and click off the thrust reverser “armed” switches. Doug (a former Lear air ambulance pilot in Alaska) looks down the taxiway, glances briefly at me, and promptly re-arms them.
Keeping a hand on the reverse-
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SMARTech Industries, LLC
15935 Assembly Loop, Suite D, Jupiter, FL 33478
P 734.277.5759 • F 561.624.2900 www.SMARTug.com
14 • TWIN & TURBINE
JUNE 2014