ILS?...We don' need no stinkin' ILS.....

[Effoh]

Gents,

Indulge me...

From the book 'BEAline to the Islands'

Barra approach, 1950s style...

'You leave Tiree on something like 310 degrees (magnetic) and stay below cloud because there is no let-down facility. Visibility is poor and you are in and out of rain at two or three hundred feet. You pay close attention to the water, reading the strength and direction of the wind. With practice, your tracking is reasonably accurate but, as you near Barra, you get a bearing from Tiree to confirm it. As you enter what is virtually the approach channel, now down low over the water, you keep a small conical rock close on your right. Here you note the amount of seaweed showing, which is an indication of the tide and the amount of beach to expect. Because of wind, this is not always the tabled figure. Passing the rock, you turn three degrees to the right, on final, and look for the seagulls.

When you see them walking, you are safe to touch down'

:prayer:

[Garry Russell]

Great.........I love that sort of practical solution.

Thanks for that

Garry

[nigelb]

Thanks for posting that excerpt. By coincidence, I just made that flight in the Auster Autocar! Didn't see any seaweed or seagulls though, but I can appreciate how difficult Bara must be in reality with the tides to worry about.

Nigel²

[Effoh]

Thanks chaps....it's a good read with lots of little snippets like that. If there's any interest I can post a few more that tickled me ;-)

Rgds,

Colin

[Garry Russell]

Please do Colin

It's nice to read these olden methods that had more practical use that can be imagined now

The bit above would be all you need in a Rapide.

Those were the days when you just looked where you were going and stuck it down in to right field..or beach

Garry

[Effoh]

Please do Colin Garry

Right-oh!

One for Nigel first to complete the 'Barra experience'

'the touchdown has been aptly described as landing on corrugated paper with water flying everywhere - yet Orcadian Vivian Bird compares his own arrival as 'more steady than I remember Westray or North Ronaldsay field landings'

...and now a 'technique' one for Mr Russell.....on landing a Pionair at Stornoway

'Stornoway, in the Hebrides, was prone to extremely strong westerly winds from the Atlantic and the runway headed out to the western shore. At times when heavy gales were blowing, the procedure was to land on the runway, stop, maintain the lock on the tailwheel, release the main brakes and select full flaps. The aircraft thus became a sailing ship and would be blown sedately backwards down to the beginning of the runway. A van would be waiting with passengers to the mainland and to take away those disembarking. As soon as the loading process was completed we would be in a perfect position to take off straight down the runway.'

Simplez!!

Rgds,

Colin

[Garry Russell]

Love it....cheers Colin

Now who's going to try and do that in FS


Garry

[nigelb]

I am sure you know, the default Barra in FS9 has runway 07/25 located at some distance from the other two - completely wrong per the aerodrome chart on NATS. I found an AFCAD for Scotflight (I think it was that) and tried it. Almost worked - I added a flatten and an exclude which I am sure were needed due to mesh differences or some such and it worked. That is why I was flying to Bara. BTW, in the default scenery there is a nice clump of rocks forming a small hill as you approach runway 25. I did not flatten that, to increase the fun of landing. The runway has a long displaced threshold so it was not as big a hazard in the Auster as I first thought it could be. Of course, I had no tides to contend with.

Another good challange is landing at EGEO - runway 19 (Scenery available from "the pond".) Well, its is a challenge if you follow the route FSNAV suggests and run into the very large hill about 3 miles out.

Nigel²