Roomie was talking about a kind of instrument approach she made in the Army, where the tower would maintain a constant dialogue as she came in to land. Basically the controller would say ‘Turn 3 degrees right… on glidepath… a little low… on glidepath…’ I’m not instrument rated, and I never heard that sort of guidance when I was flying with him. He’d have his approach plate on his lap, line up the VOR/Glideslope indicator, and listen for the outer, middle, and inner markers, and land on his own.
Is there a name for the kind of approach where the tower talks you down in IMC? Is it an Army thing, or do they do it for civilians as well?
Oddly enough, I could come up with the answer on account of having read an Arthur C. Clarke novel many years ago. “Gee, that dialogue from the OP sounds awfully like that non-science fiction semi-autobiographical novel Clarke wrote set in World War II…Glide Path, that was the name of it. I’ll bet Wikipedia has an article on that book…”
When I was still an active student pilot, a pilot friend of mine told me there were a couple military airfields here in Washington state that would, workload permitting, offer such approaches to civilians. As I recall, that kind of approach was only rarely asked for by the military pilots, so the controllers appreciated the practice. I think they’d have civilians break off the approach at a couple of hundred feet rather than continue to a landing. Security reasons, I presume.
I flew with my dad a couple times at the flying club at Fort Lewis (now Joint Base Lewis-McChord), and we did this kind of approach once. Broke out of the clouds at a couple hundred feet, maybe fifty yards off the runway centerline.
So it was an Air Force pilot, flying a civilian aircraft, authorized to land at an Army Air Field. Not sure if that answers the question or not.
It’s a type of precision approach. An ILS is also a precision approach. Non-precision approaches include NDB, VOR, and some RNAV approaches. Basically anything with lateral guidance but no vertical guidance is a non-precision approach while something that has vertical guidance like the glideslope on an ILS is a precision approach.
There is also a so-called non-precision version of the GCA. It’s called an ASR or Airport Surveillance Radar approach.
It is effectively the equivalent to a VOR or NDB appraoch. The controller gives lateral guidance , and announces the Final Approach Fix FAF and Missed Approach Point MAP. It’s up to the pilot to manage his/her descent to the Minimum Descent Altitude MDA.
As the name impliis, ASRs are commonly given using the same radar system used for area control around the airport. Which is slow to update & not real precise. My general experience with ASRs is they’re about as accurate as an NDB approach.
PARs, as descibed by others above, use a dedicated radar system aligned to a particular runway. If the PAR’s vertical radar component is inop, they can still deliver an ASR-style appraoch but using the much more precise PAR radar system. The result is like a very tight VOR approach or even a modern RNAV approach.
All of this stuff is pretty much history now. ASR/PAR was the common military instrument conditions landing method used back in the 1950s. We still did them for occasional practice when I was flying for USAF in the 80s.
I’d bet they’re real rare today. The PAR radar units are museum pieces, and the ASR procedures require constant practice by both controllers & pilots to execute well. If done routinely they’d also require additional staffing since the final controller can’t be dealing with more than one aircraft at a time.