World Tour Leg 2 - Madrid to Almería

As soon as I landed in Madrid, I checked the jobs available towards the south. Three passengers to Granada... 170 kg of fresh products to Almería... Why not both? First a short stop in Almería, then Granada. Maybe just a touch-and-go in Almería, throwing the goods through the window... we'll see.

I refueled my Baron 58, checked the systems and started the engines again. The aircraft it's on its limit of weight. Wind of 9 kt from 130º, so the decision is clear. Take off from runway 10, full flaps. Rotation is quite easy at 80 kt and I perform a left traffic pattern to avoid entering Getafe air space.

I headed to the southeast, towards La Guardia. I don't know this part of Spain so well. So, even though I fly on VFR, I quickly decide to use VOR navigation for the whole leg. Again, 3500 to 5500 ft.

Flat fields all around. Small villages scattered along hundreds of kilometers in all directions. The land of Don Quijote, the mills at Campo de Criptana (I check they were not actually giants...). Ciudad Real on our left side and, finally, Despeñaperros, an important area in Sierra Morena that allowed, in the old times, the communication between Castilla la Mancha and Andalucía. This Sierra was the former border of Castille with Al-Andalus. From the sky, it's obvious why.

Next VOR was in Bailén, place of a historical battle against the French napoleonic army. Nearby, Linares, famous for its lead mines and a former international chess tournament.

The trip was going great. I headed to the southeast, towards Úbeda, checking my maps to identify the mountains, mainly Sierra Nevada and its surroundings. Almería was right after some of these mountains. So, instead of flying high, I decided to orient myself with the terrain, keeping 5500 ft.

However, dense clouds showed up in the horizon. A quick check on the satellite weather and LEAM METAR allowed me to understand that the VFR has ended.

I set LEAM VOR and also one of its NDBs, just in case. I checked the charts and there was no approach by VOR, so my best option was an ILS landing on runway 26. Easy, right?

Well, I hadn't practiced an ILS landing in years, not even with the Baron 58. I struggled to find the ILS path, since the VOR is a bit shifted. The best guide was a NDB right on the glide path. At that point I was at 7500 ft and started the descent into the clouds.

The layer was really thick. I was able to stablish myself on the horizontal localizer, but I was flying really high. The first option was to abort the landing and check the procedures to hold on. But I'm quite unexperienced on this. Plus the terrain around was not friendly at all. So I basically cut the power to the point we desceded at 2000 ft/min.

This is far from ideal, and the winds didn't help. At some point I was able to align the aircraft perfectly fine with the localizer, but a sudden strong wind pushed me towards the ground. For a moment the indicator showed -4000 ft/min. The fact that I was running low on power didn't help.

Suddenly, I saw the ground right in front of me. Less than 1000 ft AGL. I just had few seconds to pull the yoke and increase the power. If the clouds would have been 200 ft lower, we would have crashed...

But I recovered the control of the plane, set the landing configuration and, after fighting with strong crosswinds, I managed to do a smooth landing.

After unloading the cargo in the terminal and checking the state of the Baron, we'll continue to Granada... if my passengers still want to fly.

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Technical details:

LEVS/LECU - LEAM

S LA-GUARDIA VILLAFRANCA-DE-LOS-CABALLEROS BAILEN W-1

Distance: 250 nm
Average GS: 180 kt
Average alt.: 5500 ft.

METAR:
LEVS 130000Z AUTO 13009KT 100V160 CAVOK 13/06 Q1011
LEAM 130200Z AUTO 06004KT 2700 -RA BR OVC005 15/14 Q1010