“Watch the runway!” Pete warned as I continued on the base leg. I looked up and realized we were well past the point where I should have begun the turn to final. From where my lax attention had put us, a steeply banked turn would be required to line up on the final leg. Conscious of the potential for a cross-controlled stall on the turn from base back to final, I made sure my turn was coordinated. I was embarrassed. I had been distracted during a critical phase of an approach. Not good!
Pete and I had been practicing LNAV/ VNAV approaches with the Garmin GNS 480 and broke the last one off to enter the pattern on the 45-degree angle for the downwind leg to Runway 3. While turning base I got distracted trying to enter the GPS approach for Runway 3 into the 480 to see whether, if we intercepted the inbound course inside the final approach fix, we’d be able to get the “advisory” glideslope on the 480 and the HSI.
