An Interesting Approach at Rochester (KROC)
William Green, webmaster of CNY Aviation.com and newly minted Private Pilot as of September 2004, talks about his first experience with an out of the ordinary approach to final at Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC).
Being a relatively new pilot in the grand scheme of things, all of my approaches have been the nice, easy straight in to final or standard traffic pattern approaches...the basic stuff we learn early in our training to become private pilots. Even landing at any of the four possible directions at Syracuse has never been rocket science. The worst that can happen there is a land and hold short procedure...never a big deal in the Cessna 172's that I'm rated to fly. Last Saturday, I decided to get some cross country time logged with a flight from Syracuse (SYR) to Rochester (ROC). I had been to Rochester twice before during my training to complete solo cross country requirements, so flying there was going to bring no big surprises...so I thought.After an uneventful takeoff from Syracuse's runway 10, departure directed me north to 360 degrees to vector me around traffic for a few miles. Minutes later, they let me make my left turn on course to Rochester. I climbed to a nice 6,500 feet, turned on the autopilot and enjoyed the view of a cloudless, calm winds afternoon in Central New York.After Syracuse handed me off to Rochester approach, the controller told me to expect right traffic to runway 7. I pulled out the airport diagram to have a look at the runway layout and immediately noticed how close the end of runway 7 was to runway 4. Having listened to Rochester's ATIS report a few minutes earlier, I knew that runway 4 was an active runway. Curiosity started to take over because I didn't know how close those two runways actually were by looking at the diagram...so I did what every pilot should do when they're not sure about something...I asked. The conversation with the Rochester approach controller went something like this:Me: "Rochester Approach, 190 Lima Papa has a question if you have a moment"Controller: "190 Lima Papa, go ahead, sir."Me: "Yes sir, I was wondering about the approach to runway 7...am I going to have to make the base pretty tight to get in there?"Controller: "Not really, it's pretty standard...as long as you stay south and east of runway 4 you'll be ok. "Me: "Thanks for the info, sir...190 lima papa."Naturally, I'm thinking since he said it was pretty standard, that the runways were far enough apart that I could do a standard downwind, base and final. Wrong!After having the airport in sight I was handed off to tower. I'm still a few miles southeast of the airport at this point because approach had vectored me on a 260 heading for traffic for a few miles. Because of all the hangars next to runway 7, I still couldn't see the runway I needed to land on. Tower was quick to remind me as I got closer to stay south and east of runway 4 at all times due to landing jet traffic. I acknowledged that I would do so, of course. Finally about 1 to 2 miles out, I could see the approach end of runway 7...and how close it looked from a birds eye view to runway 4! I thought to myself, "I guess this is going to be a pretty short final!". There was obviously not enough room to fly downwind until the threshold was behind me at 45 degrees like you do in a standard approach. Already at traffic pattern altitude at this point and closing in on the threshold from the south I throttled back and let her slowly glide down towards the threshold. As the threshold found it's way close to my nose, I smoothly banked the aircraft right to final and made one of my smoothest landings yet. It was as if I had done it a million times.Looking back, I had more room than I thought I did between the runways...but since I had been alerted twice about staying away from runway 4, my gut was telling me to stay as close to the threshold of 7 as I could while still making a safe approach. Now I'm hoping the next time I go to Rochester, I get that approach again...it was actually kind of fun!
William Green