Surveillance approach

This morning I got up early to take a short flight over to KGMU for the Southeast Aviation show. The flight didn't start too well when I couldn't get Charlotte Clearance to respond on the radio. I tried multiple times, on each radio, and got a good radio check from the local UNICOM. After waiting until the hour changed over to 8 AM (thinking maybe someone on break might be back then) I gave up and called flight service on the phone. They were able to get me a clearance after about 8-9 minutes.

Most days I would have taken off without clearance and gotten it airborne. But today had clouds around 500' so I couldn't do that maneuver.

Once I got through the clouds Approach was their usual helpful selves and had me pointed to Greenville in no time. The Greer Approach controller asked if I would do a Surveillance approach into GMU so he could practice it. I said sure, but that I had never done one before. He explained it to me, and it was what I remembered - essentially ATC talks you down along the approach. The idea is that you have minimal-to-no navigation gear working in the airplane due to some electrical problem.

As you get close to the airport they give you heading changes like "You are right of centerline, correcting slowly, turn 2 degrees left". They also instruct you not to respond to all of those commands to keep the air clear for near real-time corrections.

It worked out well with me being just a touch off center when 2 miles out. I let him know I had the airport in sight and he handed me off to tower.

The show was great and I got to meet plenty of local aviators. I also got to shoot the ILS approach back into Rock Hill a few hours later which was great practice.

Here's a shot I took when starting the GMU approach:

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