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Author Topic: Pilot Deviation Opinions  (Read 9903 times)

Offline bwildcat

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Pilot Deviation Opinions
« on: January 27, 2017, 12:50:55 AM »
I would like opinions on this following scenario...I filed a flight plan on Foreflight, anyone who has used Foreflight knows that you can brief and file right in one spot, Foreflight even emails you the briefing to your personal email. My airplane that I fly has a Tacan/ w DME (which is exactly how I filed). Thats about the extent of it but lets be honest, my Foreflight and Stratus are handy tools that make things a lot easier in a simple cockpit. After filing, I read the brief (NOTAMS, weather, forecasts) and went to the airplane. The flight plan was a 30 minute IFR flight that I flied to 11,000'. Clearance delivery told me to fly a departure, and then read that the rest of my route was "As Filed." The departure serviced me to the first fix on my filed route. The departure uses a TACAN that is about 5 miles away from the field that I took off from. Essentially on this departure it says to intercept a radial off of the tacan and fly it out bound to the first fix on my route. This particular departure ends up being an immediate right turn to intercept the radial outbound however, the narrative on the departure says to "intercept the 360 radial off the XYZ tacan" not "Make an immediate right turn to intercept the 360 radial off the XYZ tacan." So, I tune everything up and take off. After Im airborne I receive no TACAN azimuth  which for those not familiar with TACAN, would be like taking off with your HSI set to intercept a radial outbound and then that radial never "coming alive" even though out fully expect it to come alive. Thinking I must not be high enough to receive the TACAN I continue climbing on runway heading to my assigned altitude with still not indications. ATC then starts telling me to turn right immediately and then gives me vectors back on the departure. They then give me a number to call for a possible pilot deviation. I land and call and they tell me that I came within a mile of a Piper Cherokee and the Cherokee driver is upset/mad. I tell them that the course never came active on the TACAN and they say well we see here that that particular TACAN's azimuth is NOTAMd out of service. This would totally explain why I never got course guidance as it would be equivalent to to being cleared on a VOR/DME departure with the VOR portion being NOTAMd out of service. Now, I know that you are all wondering if I check NOTAMS and the answer is yes I looked at them. However, this NOTAM was burried way down in the NOTAMS and I honestly never even saw that it was there let alone that it would affect my flight. I have 2200 hours and about 1600 of them are under IFR control. Admittedly, I should have seen the NOTAM. But the real thing I want to know is why was I cleared on a TACAN departure in a TACAN only aircraft when the TACAN azimuth was out of service. Should I have connected the dots and denied that clearance citing that I am unable to fly it based on one of the 50 NOTAMS that I looked at? I can honestly say that in a perfect world, I would have / could have done that but the human in my never drew a connection between that NOTAMd out azimuth and the clearance that I was issued. Sorry this is long winded. The FAA is now wanting to dig into my rectum over this whole thing and it is getting me uneasy.



Offline Rick108

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Re: Pilot Deviation Opinions
« Reply #1 on: January 27, 2017, 08:33:35 AM »
Assuming this happened less than 10 days ago, you need to file a NASA report ASAP.  This will keep the FAA from adding a suspension of your license to all the other crap they will put you through over the next few months.  I agree, ATC should not have given you that departure with the TACAN NOTAM'ed out of service. But you also should not have accepted the clearance, knowing the TACAN was out of service, either.  File the NASA report, it will save you in the end.