Twin Otter : Carepa to Medellín

Sorry I have not published my last trips here. Today I we will do the flight from the Roldan Betancourt airport (ICAO: SKLC) in Carepa, Colombia to the Olaya Herrera (ICAO: SKMD, IATA: MDE) airport right in the city of Medellín. Don’t confuse it with the Jose María Cordova international airport in Rio Negro which also serves Medellin.

The flight will be performed in FSX with custom scenery (by me) for both airports. This will be an IFR flight for the most part, then switching to VFR at Medellin. We would fly at 13,000 ft and our route will be “LCE B689 REMUK B689 PEQUE”

Departure

At the moment I was requesting my clearance to Bogotá Center it decided to go offline. The metar at SKLC indicated winds of 6 knots at 30 degrees meaning we would have to depart from runway 33 and use a normalized departure according to the charts. There was another fellow from IVAO “flying” a Dash 8 Q200 in the colors of AIRES (another Colombian airline). Mine was the trusted Twin Otter in the colors of ADA (Aerolíneas de Antioquía) because this is a route they cover.

Jhon the other fellow from IVAO was not ready to depart so I taxied first, he indicated he was going to use runway 15 (tail winds!) for a direct departure. I went through the pre-departure checklist run up the engines and took off. I used the normalized SID which meant flying to the LCE (112.60) terminal VOR then turning left and then downwind with the airport on our left. Then I intercepted R-145 of Rio Negro VOR (RNG 115.10) towards REMUK. On the downwind leg I saw the other fellow take off from SKLC and climb fast. Take-off at 17:21 (UTC) or 12:21 local time (UTC-5), about 21 minutes late due to waiting for ATC.

En Route
After the initial climb to 4,000 feet I set the autopilot to our cruise altitude (FL130) with a vertical speed of 1,200 ft/min. This would be a straight flight along radial 145 of the Rio Negro VOR. We had to gain sufficient altitude because our first waypoint (REMUK) is on the mountains but not too high. After REMUK the mountains keep getting higher. PEQUE intersection was among high mountains and it signalled we were near Medellin. Top of Climb (TOC) reached at 17:35 UTC.

Approach
At some point having passed PEQUE intersection we would see the beautiful Cauca river on our right as it winds down the mountains into the valleys below.

Time to prepare for descent, I was having some lengthy conversations about the approach with the other fellow that was flying some 15nm ahead of me.The Olaya Herrera airport is only operational during the day and in VFR, something you can understand if you have been to Medellín. Top of Descent at 17:54 UTC.

For our initial approach we will set the heading bug to our present course (145) towards RNG VOR. We could tune the Marinilla VOR (MRN 116.90) and use its R-296 as reference (see chart on your right). So, having switched to VFR there was no ATC covering Olaya Herrera (IVAO).

So when we see we are about to intercept MAR R-296 and are some 21nm inbound Marinilla we can enter the Medellin circuit. We are just past the mountains with Bello on our left so we can descend to 9500 ft. and turn slightly left.

You can see on our map (see just above) that we head first towards the mountains on the other side of Medellin. When we have crossed the Medellin river (opposite to the airport) and before we crash into the mountains we turn right into the downwind leg. The picture on the right shows we have Olaya Herrera on our right (the river should too!).

Then we head towards Envigado overflying the beautiful city of Medellin (and the apartment of my ex-girlfriend). You can use the Rio Negro inner marker if you wish to draw an imaginary line of the edge of the no-flight area near Sabaneta. Then before we run into the hills ahead we turn right again to the base leg.

Arrival

This is a visual approach (no IFR in Medellin) so we keep the airport in sight and making sure we don’t run aground.

We initiate the final turn in time to align to runway 02, overfly the El Rodeo golf club on finals and as we land we would have one of Medellin’s stadiums on our left along the runway.

We landed safely and with good weather. During finals the descent rate was around 1000 ft/min with flaps set, as we got close to the touch down I nosed up a little to start reducing vertical speed. We landed with a V/S of –162 ft./min (pleasant). We used up 83 gallons of fuel on this 117 nm trip in 01:25 hours. Gross revenue according to the virtual airline was $1,200 (US Dollars).