Doherty’s Difficult and Dangerous Approaches

By Eric van der Veen (24 February 2005)

 

 

t the time of writing review, Michael Doherty has recently uploaded volume 65 of his ‘Difficult and Dangerous Approaches’ series. I had seen them all passing by since the first one at the beginning of 2004, but never bothered to try. But once I realized the significance of having no less than 65 volumes in the first place, I got suspicious. With every volume containing 10 approaches, this means a total of more than 650 dangerous approaches. And if there are 650 dangerous (and thus potentially unsafe) approaches out there, aviation does have a fair problem… We can all come up with a few spectacular and demanding approaches. Obvious ones are Hong Kong Kai Tak, St. Maarten and Courchevel, and many airfields in mountainous area. But there can’t be 650 of them, right?

 

But I was wrong. These 650 approaches do concern almost (but not quite) 650 different airfields. They are, however, not necessarily inherently difficult or dangerous. It’s like in real aviation; no single event or failure is dangerous, it’s the combination that makes them unsafe. Look at the NTSB aircraft accident records. By definition, there is always a main cause and a contributing cause, and usually several of the latter.

 

And this is what Michael Doherty did: take approaches that are challenging (but in themselves not always unsafe), put up some challenging weather (which is in itself not unsafe) and a bit of a short or narrow runway for your aircraft (but in itself not unsafe), and mix it together. And voila, there’s your 650 approaches….

 

The DDDA series contains 650 of such combinations, to put your flying skills to the test. You start in mid-air, just before starting your approach in a potentially dangerous combination of circumstances.

 

Now, personally, I always felt that ‘what goes up must come down’. So conversely, ‘what comes down must have gone up’. I just feel uncomfortable with starting an FS flight in mid-air. I never do it. I don’t like it. I want to have a flight plan, and I want to taxi and take-off. And I want to build and maintain situational awareness. And I want to calculate top-of-descent, plan my approach. All this builds up tension towards the climax called landing. Starting in mid-air, you don’t have that.

 

And I was wrong again. It’s plain fun! And Michael did a great job. You get to do just landings, landings and more landings. Upon loading a flight, you find yourself in mid-air, more or less stabilized, and at an appropriate distance and altitude to your destination airfield. Not too near, taking away your margins, and not too far to take forever to get there. It’s just about right. The GPS window is already open for your convenience and quickly giving you situational awareness. Just spot the airfield and off you go. You start in the excitement right away!

 

Oh, just some facts before we start. The very first volume of DDDA appeared in our library at the beginning of 2004. Since then, each volume has had anything between a few hundred to more than 5000 downloads. And that is on FlightSim.Com alone. The total tally is probably a bit higher. And Michael hasn’t finished just yet…

 

Installation

Each volume comes as a single zip file of less than 1 Mb. In each file, you’ll find a folder with 10 flights with associated weather, as well as screenshots for the flights in that volume. Simply put the folder with the flights in your FS2004 flights folder and you’re ready. It’s real easy, and doesn’t contaminate your FS2004 installation.

Alternatively, you can download the recently published collection of volumes 1 through 63 in a single file and install that in a similar manner.

 

Once inside FS2004, each volume is listed in the ‘select a flight’ window. Pick one and grab your stick! A short description for each flight is included. In particular, you should take note of the runway elevation and length.

 

The only inconvenience for me is that in the collection volume, the files are sorted by location and the reference to their original volume has been lost. This makes it a bit more difficult to keep track of which approaches you’ve done and which you haven’t if you started out by using the individual volumes. However, an Excel overview file has also been provided that has this reference, and you can use the sheet to keep track of your progress. Or check the program FLTIDX.ZIP by Bernard Rausch here at FlightSim.Com to create you own overview of DDDA or any other saved flights.

 

Finally, the zip file contains a number of text files dealing with installation, tips and tricks and a further elaboration of the approaches. This is a fair amount of documentation for you to read which might be discouraging. Don’t worry. Although it makes fine and interesting reading, it’s not really required for enjoying the approaches.

A separate download file contains screenshots for all flights in the 63 volumes. A fairly large download, I didn’t really use it, though it may help you to select an approach of your liking.

 

Impressions

For the purpose of this review I’ve shot a fair number of these approaches, chosen at random from volumes 1 to 65 (lucky me…), and I’ll give you an impression.

 

V C Bird, Antigua (Volume 1). This is a fairly straightforward landing with the B737 on an airfield without landing aids and a fair crosswind.

 

Cape Verde, Sao Pedro (Volume 3). Oh, dear, a hill is in the approach path. And, well, a hill is a hill is a hill. Choose for a flight slicing over the hill (sacrificing your margins for stall, engine failure or other situations) or a steep approach. Not too difficult.

 

R311, Korea (Volume 3). This obscure little airfield is actually one for which I needed several tries. I simply kept visually misjudging my altitude because of the poor visibility of the runway in the terrain. Try it yourself!

 

Apolo, Bolivia (Volume 26). Apolo-with-a-single-L is a tough one. It feels like someone built an airfield on the bottom of a bath tub. And you’re supposed to go in with the Cessna Caravan. It can be done, though, and there are probably more ways to it. Don’t forget to use the Caravan’s prop reverse. Nice one! It’s a grass runway rather than asphalt as the accompanying text suggests.

 

Biskra, Algeria (Volume 29). I hadn’t seen much of desert in FS myself. This approach puts you in Algeria, where the airport is situated in what looks like a large crater (look out for a Martian explorer to crawl out…). The approach is modestly difficult because the airport is not directly spotted in the crater and in less-than-perfect visibility. Runway length is good, and so no real problems here.

 

Greece, Volos Army (Volume 39). Well wouldn’t you know it. Another one where it’s downhill on approach. And with a short runway this one will overheat your brakes. Luckily they are not flammable in MSFS. Tricky, but quite manageable.

 

Eastside, New Mexico (Volume 39). Steep down with the Learjet onto a somewhat short and particularly narrow runway. Mix that with poor visibility from the cockpit at low speeds. Also, the high altitude of the airport puts you in some cloud puffs. Rather difficult.

 

Courchevel, France (Volume 51). A special case! One of the most difficult approaches in existence, but much easier in FS2004 than in real life. In reality, commercial flights are required to have two captain-rated pilots on board. I found this one to be nearly impossible! Apparently there was a catch. I had installed third party mesh scenery for the area. Now you should know that in reality Courchevel is an uphill-landing. Since MSFS cannot handle this, the area the airport is in is flattened in the mesh. And this is what makes it nearly impossible depending on your landing direction. The direction intended by Michael is really impossible with the add-on mesh. The opposite side is not impossible, and I managed that one (well, of course I did, you didn’t doubt that, did you?). When I removed the mesh and tried the default scenery I found the approach much more easy, almost too much so. Look at some shots to get the point. You might get similar or other issues as a result of the use of add-on mesh.

 

 

 

I also found some notorious approaches not present in the listing, although here we must take into account that Michael hasn’t finished his oeuvre yet. For example Katmandu, Nepal is challenging in a procedural way.

 

Difficult and Dangerous?

So, what exactly are those factors in DDDA to make them dangerous or difficult? From the above impressions it’s easy to get a picture. Let’s see….I have encountered short and/or narrow runways, terrain and/or structures in approach path, visual distractions such as beautiful scenery and frightening cliffs, steep approaches or approaches at an angle to the runway, snow, rain, wind gusts, clouds, poor visibility and turbulence, or a difficult-to-judge airfield. But I also did some real easy ones. There is a bit for all of us.

 

What could come in handy is something like a difficulty rating or denominator for each approach. This could help you to sift through the approaches and select those of interest to you. It could also support a systematic learning curve by gradually increasing difficulty and addressing specific themes.

 

What bothered me a bit is that the tower view is ill-placed. It’s not on the airport. Especially after these difficult and therefore sometimes non-smooth approaches it’s worthwhile to replay them from the tower. This requires you to manually move the tower in map view.

 

Note that if you’re used to flying the approach and landing on autopilot, or if you usually fly in clear weather, you may be up for a challenge. In most cases any valuable landing aids are not available. Vigilance and attention are required, as is thinking ahead. You need to do flap planning and speeds planning.

 :

Aircraft

The flights put you in control of default MSFS aircraft. This is understandable, because Michael cannot know which aircraft each of us have installed. This is a bit of disappointment if you are used to flying some of the more fancy 3^rd party aircraft. But you don’t have too much time for visual enjoyment of the aircraft model anyway. It’s a different thing for the flight models. If some default models have a less-than-realistic flight model, this is where you’ll need to be in perfect control of an aircraft. Fortunately, it’s entirely up to you to change the aircraft after starting the flight.

 

Alternative aircraft also can make the approaches even more challenging. Particularly if you are facing a short runway, a heavier aircraft will really make things hard on you. I often found myself substituting a B757 for the B737, and an Aero Commander for the King Air.

 

Using general aviation aircraft makes DDDA accessible to newcomers to the FS, who haven’t yet mastered the heavy jets or sophisticated add-ons. DDDA can thus provide you with a significant stepping stone in learning to fly.

 

Restrictions

Now there are other issues that can make approaches more difficult, or dangerous. Some of them are not included in DDDA simply because they are not implemented in FS2004. They might be implemented in future versions of MSFS, providing for new possibilities. Now I don’t want to turn this review into criticism of MS FS.  I’m too big a fan for that. It’s just to point out that Michael did a great job within constraints present. It also means that there is significant growth potential for DDDA as MS FS continues to evolve.

 

What to think about sloping runways?

What about wind shear and wake vortices?

What about slippery runways or objects on the runway?  

What about bird strikes against the windshield or into an engine?

What about aircraft icing on approach?

What about ATC diversions or complex noise-abatement procedures?

 

For you to decide is if you contact ATC or not? If you do, you have some more work and ATC might steer you to the other approach end of the runway. If you don’t you may find another aircraft on the runway just when you’re coming in.

 

Places to go to

I should mention one other aspect of DDDA. If you are not into challenges, it provides you with very nice suggestions of ‘places to go’. In fact, such a message is the opening line for Michael’s file description; tired of flying to the same places all the time, the place where you happened to live nearby, or placed you’ve been to yourself? Then DDDA provides a nice portfolio of interesting airports. You can tell that Michael has really been scavenging the globe for places. He probably put up with quite a few flight hours while doing so. What to think about, for example, Alderney. A little island off the French coast, which really belongs to the UK (Channel Islands). I didn’t know that it was there…

 

Obviously, many western airports are very safe. So that’s not where you’ll go. Although the majority of airports is in the USA (35% in volumes 1 to 63), many airports are located in non western countries.

 

Why not venture into Papua New Guinea, Zambia or Comoros? Free virtual tickets!

 

Conclusions

So, how do I feel after shooting approaches?

 

First off, it’s a fun thing to do. It never failed to amaze me. Michael has well understood some basic psychology. In his documentation he writes that a failed approach “will play on your mind until it has been done properly”.

 

Although DDDA cannot be compared to full-swing and scripted adventures you’re surely in for a challenge, lots of hand-flying and sight-seeing. DDDA will hone you pilot skills. It’s perfect when you’re in a hurry. Each approach takes no more than a few minutes (well, if you succeed on the first attempt). It’s also great if you don’t know where to fly today. How did Michael Doherty find all these places? That's one of the greatest credits to give him; he did a lot of work for us.

 

I can only strongly suggest that you download at least a few of the volumes to get sufficient diversity. Better still, download download the package containing volumes 1 through 63. It’s not a large download by today’s standards.

 

I noted some minor issues, but nothing to keep you lying awake at nights. Better use the night time to clock up some more flight hours. What are you still sitting there reading this review?

 

Eric van der Veen
e.v.d.veen@fel.tno.nl

Download Doherty's Difficult And Dangerous Approaches