Living In Aviator's Paradise Does Have Down Sides

One of them is practice traffic. There is a LOT of it. Yesterday alone, I burned 2 hours dual without fully executing a single approach.

The Stanfield VOR (TFD) is in the Southwest Practice Area. Stanfield is the initial approach fix for the GPS and ILS approaches into Casa Grande (KCGZ). Everyone on God's Green Earth goes here because it is the only uncontrolled ILS approach within a reasonable distance of Phoenix.

The altitude for the procedure hold at TFD is 3,500, with 500 foot increments for vertical spacing. Practice holds are at 6,000 feet and above. Well yesterday, when we were 10 miles out, we called for top of stack and the reply was Seminole N***** is currently top of stack at 6,500. Crap! That means there are already 7 aircraft in the hold. In 10 minutes, we would probably enter at 6,000. At roughly 4 minutes per hold, we're talking about 25 minutes, just to get to the bottom of the stack and go inbound, which is still 5 1/2 minutes from the runway at 90kts!

Since we only have 2 hours total for this flight, we decide to blow off Casa Grande and do the 4R GPS into Chandler (KCHD). After briefing the approach, I try calling Phoenix approach. 30 seconds...no reply. I heard her talking to other traffic. I know we're on frequency. Let's try again..."Phoenix Approach, Cherokee N113ND with request"...let's give them 45 seconds. Again NOTHING. We're coming up on the IAF and bravo airspace, so we circle. Meanwhile, there are NO other aircraft calling on 123.7. We give it a few more minutes and call again. Finally a man comes on and acknowledges us. Must have been a shift change. Anyway, he gives us vectors to an approach fix that is 12 miles from the one we're right next to. We politely ask for vectors to DECTU, which is the fix that puts you on the final approach course. Negative, proceed as vectored. Why? There's no other traffic, nothing going on. OK. Finally we get to DEKTU and approach hands us off to Chandler, who promptly tells us they can't handle any practice approaches. Not even a missed above TPA? NOPE. They vector us out of their airspace and instruct us to squawk VFR. We're going to continue with approaches elsewhere, can we retain current squawk? Negative, squawk VFR. CRAP! Strike two.

OK, let's try the VOR 30C approach for Gateway. Phoenix approach is vectoring us to Gateway. I'm doing partial panel with no DME and things are going great. Just as we're about to enter KIWA airspace, Phoenix tells us that KIWA isn't accepting practice approaches at this time. CRAP X2. At this point, we might as well give up and land. We call up approach and request full stop. To make a long story short, they had two Harriers in the pattern. That's the reason they weren't accepting our practice approach request. Three 10,000' runways and they can't let us do the approach because of two Harriers? To add insult to injury, right after we were acknowledged by Gateway tower, they approved the guy less than 2 minutes behind us for the 30C VOR approach. CRAP X3.

1.8 on the Hobbs, almost $300 and nothing to show for it but frustration. Dang. Oh well, I'm ready for the stage 2 check ride no matter what.