Freight Dog Story
About 5 or 6 years ago a friend of mine and I were flying down the Oregon and Calif coast, landed at EKA (Murry) and spent the night in Eureka. The next morning, as often happens in that area I guess, there was a really low solid marine layer. The ceiling was like "on the deck" (less than a 100') and ground visibility was maybe half mile. While we were waiting it out we could hear a couple of planes buzzing around overhead wanting to get in. We were on the ramp by our planes when this FedEx Cessna Caravan comes down through the soup trying to find the runway. When it broke through he was so far off, banking hard and heading for us only about 50' agl or less that my buddy took off running, scared the crap out of him thinking it might crash. Then back up into the soup it went. Five or ten minutes later tries again, pops out not lined up, does a couple more wild banks but cannot line up in time so back up again. It was the 4th try that he made it and then two other freight Caravans came in behind him.
I am not that familiar with instrument flying rules but my guess is they were way, way over the line. No precision approach here. Could this be normal for these guys? Arcata is only 10 miles away and has an ILS, GPS and runways twice as long but for some reason they did not want to go there. Maybe some kind of pressure from the 'Company', their ground crews were waiting for them at Murry Field.
Sure wish I could have made a video of that, it was amazing and entertaining, kind of like an air show.
Jay
