Night IFR – Kingaroy – RNAV

Every two years private pilots have to undergo a biennial flight review with a qualified instructor to demonstrate we can still fly to a satisfactory standard and iron out any bugs that may have crept in over the previous two years. I had one on 17th July 2020 in Cessna 182 VH-ROC. It was perfect weather for it with not a cloud in the sky. Dave Rogers was the instructor who was assessing me. The idea was to fly IFR out to Kingaroy in the late afternoon, do some instrument approaches followed by a bit of air work. Then, after last light we’d fly IFR back to Redcliffe and do a night landing.

We took off from Redcliffe IFR and obtained a clearance from ATC to climb to 6000 ft. I donned “the hood” to simulate IMC (cloud) as we passed over Dayboro and then tracked to Kingaroy.

At 25 miles from Kingaroy I tracked straight to waypoint SE on the RNAV for RWY34, did a sector entry and hold and heard on the radio that another pilot was doing the instrument approach from the other direction for RWY 16. We’d have to ensure we didn’t conflict with one another.

So I let him know we’d wait for him to complete his approach and did another couple of holding patterns while we waited for him to land. Then I flew in and conducted a missed approach, climbing out to the north east. On reaching 3700 feet, I loaded the RNAV for RWY 16 via waypoint ND and flew that, this time without a hold. With me still wearing the hood we descended to the circling minimum of 2400ft when I removed the hood, overflew the runway at about 1000ft AGL and completed a circuit followed by a “touch and go” on RWY 16.

Next we climbed out west for some steep turns and stall practice at 4500ft then returned to Kingaroy for a simulated engine failure and glide approach to RWY 34. The sun had set by now and last light was nigh so I did a missed approach from about 200ft AGL and climbed out over the field and set course for Redcliffe, this time night IFR at 7000ft. I had the luxury of not wearing the hood on the return journey which was nice given the clear air and the view of the lights as we approached the coast. We followed the IFR route with a turn over Imbil. ATC stepped us down through the controlled air space and we reached Redcliffe at about 2500ft, above the lowest safe altitude, circled down and landed on RWY 07. All in all a great exercise.