Often when there are low clouds, I fly multiple instrument approaches to maintain my currency. On one of these flights, ATC vectored my wife and me to the localizer, then turned us loose with the standard clearance of a heading and altitude to maintain until established on the localizer inbound. But my navigation instrument displayed a red flag. My #2 navigation instrument wasn’t responding, either. I turned up the audio to listen for the Morse code identifier—again, no dice. Something was wrong with my equipment.
Hand-flying in the soup, there was little troubleshooting that I could do. The nearest VFR was quite some distance away, but reachable on our available fuel. I pondered our options, but not for long as we were supposed to intercept the localizer. We were at 3000 feet agl and somewhere southeast of the airport. I thought if we could only get the plane on the ground, we could thoroughly troubleshoot our navigation instruments.
