Near miss

The toughest part of being an instrument instructor is the sheer volume of things that are going on during any given lesson.

There's looking for traffic, spotting deviations in altitude and heading, figuring out what question to ask the student to get them back on track, looking for traffic, paying attention to what ATC is saying, paying attention to what other airplanes on the frequency are saying, looking for traffic, keeping track of where you are and what altitude you're supposed to be at, coaching the student through an approach and oh yeah, looking for traffic.

It's basically a matter of keeping a massive three-dimensional picture in your head, not only of where you are but where other airplanes are, where the airport is, where obstructions are, where the navaids are and then trying to get your student to see that picture as well.

Yesterday that workload caught up with me a bit.

We'd just flown the VOR-B approach into Buffalo, gone missed and done a few turns around the hold at the LORDY intersection and I asked my student to head up to YAZMA, the initial approach fix for the VOR-A approach into Maple Lake.

We'd briefed the sequence on the ground and he had a good grasp of what he needed to do, but it started falling apart in the airplane. In this case, it was the notion of a crossing radial off of the St. Cloud VOR that defines YAZMA that was causing confusion.

We were right on the 059 radial that makes up the final approach course into Maple Lake and headed northbound, so it should have been a matter of just determining if we were east or west of YAZMA. Since we needed to fly outbound first no matter what to fly a procedure turn the hot ticket was to just turn outbound, figure out if we were inside or outside of YAZMA and do a procedure turn.

Instead, my student started focusing on how to fly to the crossing radial and I watched in dismay as we flew through the approach course. It was obvious he had no idea where he was.

So I looked down for a moment, pointed out what was happening with our two VOR receivers, our heading and our altitude, the approach plate and asked the question that's the bane of instrument students everywhere: Where are you?

Then I looked up just in time to see another 172 diving below us, opposite direction and a few hundred yards ahead. Luckily, they'd seen us because I never saw them until it was almost too late.

My student was blissfully unaware under the hood and finally started getting caught up on where he was and what he needed to do.

By the time we'd completed the procedure turn my heart rate was back to normal and I pointed out that while he might be having a tough day at least he was spared the sight of the top of a 172 wing diving below our nose.

We finished up the approach then headed back to Crystal where he flew a very nice VOR-A approach and we circled to land.

It was a good learning experience all around.

I'm obsessive about looking for traffic, always have been, but it just goes to show that it only takes a few moments of inattention to what's happening outside the window to cause a big problem.