Grand Junction to Farmington with a Twist!

I had business in Farmington this past week, and the weather in the Rockies was gorgeous. Nothing makes me want to fly more than turning a 6 hour trip into a 1-1/2 hour trip.

I filed GJT JNC V391 PLATA FMN at 12000'. It was such a beautiful day that I almost skipped IFR and went for VFR.... but nothing doing. Lets be on the safe side and let someone follow us on radar.

The weather briefing showed nothing to be excited about and the take off and climb out went well.


It was truely a beautiful day to be in the air.

The GNS-530 shows the course.

Unbeknownst to me, and aparantly the weather briefer, Farmington had extremely dense low fog over the airport. The red flag on the next photo shows area for concern. Click on the image to make it bigger.If you can see the arrow near the middle of the screen, there is a red flag above it meaning the airport is IFR, possibly closed.

I listened to the traffic on approach. There were professionals 3 in front of me that went missed on the approach, meaning the visibility was too low to land. ATC asked me what I wanted to do and I told them I would fly my flight plan.... try to land if if not go to my filed alternate.

I shot the ILS-25 and got just above minimums (200') I could see a bit of junk out the window, but no RW lights or other features of the airport, so as Curt Thomas always says, 'Cram it, Climb it, Clean it, Cool it, and Call it' and off to Durango.

What a 'go missed' looks like on 'Flight Aware'.

Durango is a non-towered airport, but it has an ILS. I set it the nav radios and tried to shoot it, but couldn't find the localizer (radio that gives you horizontal navigation). I could see the glide slope (vertical navigation) which was odd.

When I got to the FBO, I had a cup of coffee with an FAA radio repairman and asked him what was up with the ILS. He said it had been down for a month.

Someone will need to remind me why we call for a weather briefing, if the airport is below minimums due to fog and the ILS is out-of-service at my alternate.

Anyway... after a quick cup of coffee, the fog had partially burned off at Farmington, so I headed back toward Farmington, got a pop-up IFR clearance and landed with the fog only down to 700'.

Good flying!