![]() If you’re inside CFCHP heading back to AMORE, you can descend to 2,000 feet. You also might see the fix in your GPS’s flight plan when you load the approach. You’ll never get “Direct CFCHP.” However, you can see your position relative to that fix on this chart if it’s geo-referenced and you have software that shows your position. These fixes don’t appear on controllers’ scopes, which is why they don’t need to be pronounceable. These parentheticals are Computer Navigation Fixes and allow GPS navigators to handle navigation where humans would use timing. So, here’s your hack: When in doubt, don’t descend until within 4 miles from the final approach fix.Īnother hack is the “(CFCHP)” in the plan view. However, the smallest possible number is 4 NM. It turns out there are all sorts of factors that get consideration before a final number is scribed. ![]() I’d love to tell you exactly how far is safe on this chart-but I don’t know the answer. Can’t you go down sooner? Surely if a one-minute from AMORE is safe for a jet still flying 200 knots, then two or three minutes from AMORE must be safe in a Skyhawk. Practically speaking, you could guess that if you’re only a minute from AMORE, you could descend, because that’s a one-minute holding pattern, but that’s 1,000 feet in a minute if you want to cross AMORE at 2,000 feet. You receive the clearance, ‘… 7 miles from AMORE, fly heading 120, maintain 3,000 until established, cleared Localizer Runway Zero Eight approach.’” The complete question was this: “Suppose you’re being vectored onto the approach from the northwest at 3,000 feet and well outside the final approach fix at AMORE. These can be handy for all sorts of descents, even under VFR. The best I could do was a few different hacks that did the job without fuss. My leading question to the group was, “When can you descend?” The question had been posed to me by a reader weeks earlier-and I realized I had no idea how to answer it precisely. Such was the case when I projected the Localizer Runway 8 approach to Danbury, Connecticut (KDXR), on the wall. I’ve even had fellow pilots ask me about some IFR procedure by prefacing the question, “Don’t tell me why. My greatest instructional weakness might be exploring the complexity of an answer when a monosyllabic reply would have sufficed. I recently hosted a get-together of pilots working on their instrument ratings and instrument instructors for what we jokingly called “IFR Bible Study.” It was an open evening of questions on approach charts and avionics use, lubricated by pizza and beer. Knowing when to start your approach can be tricky.
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