It already had been a long day, flogging my Piper Arrow across what felt like half the U.S. I was aiming for a sizable regional airport to spend some vacation time with an old friend, which was turning into a two-leg, seven-hour slog into headwinds. The weather mostly had been clear, but an undercast crept in below me for the last 200 or so miles. As a result, my destination was advertising 800 feet overcast with good visibility underneath and little wind. It had plenty of approaches, and I had been here before.
Although I received what I considered a late descent clearance, I didn’t anticipate any problems. The airplane was fine and I was instrument-current. The only potential squawk I had was a directional gyro that needed resetting every 15 minutes or so, thanks to precession. The rest of my panel’s steam-gauge instruments and the vacuum system itself were nominal.
