Originally Posted by
GJM
We had a flight planned for this morning from Montana to Ohio, and with good weather forecast for the destination and enroute, with 2,000 foot ceilings forecast at destination, it seemed like it would be a relaxing flight. It was low to mid 30's at the airport, which is crazy cold for this time of year. Ground control had "an odd" question for United coming out of the gate, would they need a delay for deicing -- and the answer was yes. Deicing in mid summer!
Departure was uneventful, and winds aloft at altitude were light, 20-50 knots. Starting over South Dakota, at 410 we encountered honest moderate turbulence. The auto pilot was working hard, and I was close by the controls in case it disconnected or was unable to keep us on our altitude. We asked for a block 410-430, and after a few minutes it improved to just moderate chop.
Some time later, over Indiana, the AHRS 2 went off line, which auto switches the right side PFD to AHARS 1 and disconnects the auto pilot and yaw dampener. I started hand flying, Charlie who was in the right seat got the checklist, and about then Center started us down on our descent. Resetting the circuit breaker for that AHRS, we were able to get it on line which brought the yaw dampener and auto pilot back, although we were hand flying anyways for the remainder of the flight. Indianapolis had us 15 miles from the IAF for the GPS approach. Then they disappeared and we couldn't raise them. We dug out the freq for Columbus approach and were able to reach them as we went over our IAF at 14,000 feet. They gave us a series of vectors to another IAF. About then we broke out and there was an airport in sight, but not our airport although the runway was about the same length and direction. We didn't fall for that, flew the rest of the approach, and as I came to the touch down zone I planted it firmly, smiling about this thread and not trying to grease it into short strips. Just when you think things are going to be easy, you get a chance to aviate.