Airborne Radar Approaches

1 February, 1995.  

Flew last night – An LP (Local Pilot Proficiency) mission up to Youngstown for ‘crashes and dashes.’ Not nearly as bad as it used to be in the B-52. Of course, I’m up in the cockpit in this airplane and not out of the loop.

I had a good mission; which was a surprise since I pretty much planned to take a book along and read the two hours away. After take-off I generally have about three things to say on the rest of an LP sortie, but the weather was too bumpy for that.

Last night I decide to get in an ARA (Airborne Radar-directed Approach - the pilots rely on me and the radar scope to guide them to the airport and a safe descent to the runway) – I kind of pride myself in keeping up to speed on those things – I have yet to need to do one (and in truth I may go 20 years and never do one for real), but I want to be able to spit one out without thinking about it if the need ever comes up. 

Gary Fogle, the AC (Aircraft Commander) asked me, right after take-off if I could make the first approach at Youngstown an ARA – I said, “Sure!” and then frantically scrambled to get my feces together. 

Usually, to practice an ARA, you do it in a box pattern around the airport, so you know where everything is already. It’s more realistic, of course, to fly into the airport environment from afar, and try to ID the runway and then safely land at it without the box pattern.

The drift was horrendous – we had 22 degrees of drift on the approach, which really threw the pilots off – they kept pointing the nose at their typical visual acquisition points for the airfield and I would have to keep coaching them (via my radar) back to crabbing into the wind. 

Worked like a charm. Flew to intercept centerline about 20 miles out, then turned onto runway heading, killed the drift and flew all the way into the field with 15 degrees of heading correction until the flair. Impressed the pilots.

The rest of the flight I just sat back and backed up the pilots on their headings, altitudes and timing. Made quite a few saves as the wind kept their hands full.

(Editor’s note (2023): I did this for real going into Mosul in early 2004. Lights were out (or awful dim) and the pilot was debating how we were going to get in for an 0-dark thirty landing in a combat zone. Tom Huzzard asked if I could set us up for an ARA? No problem. So we did.)