OB432: The Happiest TRACON on Earth

I don't have to wonder. I don't have to ask. It isn't a conversation. It is me not asking 20 questions. Ready. Welcome to Opposing Bases Air Traffic Talk, an aviation podcast by two air traffic controllers and rated pilots who love to talk about flying, controlling, and everything in between. The show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for your instructor, your supervisor, the FAA, the NTSB, or your CAT. The show will give you a better understanding of how things work in the national airspace system and maybe even make you laugh along the way. Please welcome retired Army pilot Alpha Golf and course officer at Penguin Airlines, Romeo Hotel. It's Wednesday, April 1, 2026, episode 432 on today's show. We'll add more fuel to the practice approach fire, defend our position that track up, saves lives, and answer more of your aviation questions. What's up, NG? I forgot to wrote that. Hello everyone. We have an inbox full of fiery, passionate feedback that we'll get to eventually. We're going to have to take it in little parts. How you been? Good. What's new? I'm the owner of a a new to me piano. I would like to thank you publicly for dropping your just stopping your life in a five minute time span. Because, and this isn't going to be a surprise to anyone, but a supervisor at work who said that he would help me do said piano moving, failed. Last minute. Last minute. Said I'm done. Nope, can't do it. Can't do it. That was fun. I'm also the new owner of one of those back stretchers. Like you put your feet in and you hang upside down so I can really realign my back after moving that piano. Oh. I thought you were being serious. No, but it did hurt. That thing was heavy. It was heavy. That was good. It was fun day. We had lunch and you have a new piano. How's work been? It needs tuned. Work is fine. It's fine. It's picking up. It's getting busy again. Weather's been conducive to flying. Temperatures good. People are coming out of their winter hibernation mode for flying. There's a couple of flight schools. One in particular right now that is doing this ridiculous round robin routine. I think the point of it is to try to get into as many different facilities as possible on one flight strip. Where are they going? They're going everywhere. They go from east of Duke to Taco Truck to Antana. Antana. Sorry. Geez, you guys. You had made so much progress. I think you had done it 10 times in a row. Judgmental. And then to Metroplex and then to the center and then like it's all over the place. And yesterday two of these planes, IFR, had the identical flight plan miles apart. Mm-hmm. Three miles apart separated by 2000 feet. Did it automate on the return eastbound? No, of course not. That's why it's a night. Zero chance. Zero chance that that happens. Were you able to receive a handoff without a manual coordination with Duke or Vietnam? Initially because we're the first. Oh, okay. Right. We're the first facility. So it's always going to work. But then like 16 hours later when this plane is coming back, like the system is like, who is this? There's no way they still have gas. This is. Yeah, that plane can't be flying. No way. Cool. I'm back from a short trip. I did a two-day domestic out and back to the west coast. Nothing really remarkable with that that I can think of. Oh, no, that's not true. Mm-hmm. Remember I sent you a screen grab from the traffic there? Oh, yes. And I jokingly said, I'm afraid for my life. Oh, right. Yes. It's non-standard. It was part of our briefing. I said out loud, I said, look, we need to be on high alert. This is not normal for these controllers. We are in a very unusual situation with runways. They are more prone to make mistakes. Pay attention. Yeah. Be aware of that. Crossers in front of us are a huge risk. So usually at this airport, same friend, they have two parallel, they have sets of parallel runways. Not just perpendicular, right? No. Oh, yeah. Yeah, perpendicular, exactly. So two eight right and left and one left and right. And they cross about halfway down each runway. And they usually depart on ones and land on two eights. So the tower controller who works all four surfaces always, that's always been the case when I've been there. That is crazy. So when they launch you off of ones, they tell you about the traffic that's on final for two eights. And if you don't get your power going quick, you're going to mess up this gap. Usually you're in position and it works out fine. It's safe and they're not even close to the threshold by the time you cross that runway. But those two runways, the north runways are closed. So now everybody's going over to the west runways. Hmm. I think we're a number, we did a gate hold, which is metering. They wouldn't let us push back until there was room on that taxiway for more departures. That's how many people are over there. In Castle. What do they have the runways closed for? Resurfacing for at least a month. What? Yes. Wow. Yeah. It must be pretty bad. Anyway, they finally decided, it seemed like they were using both runways for arrivals, which means the departures were waiting. Like we're back in triad mode at an airport with 25 departures waiting to go. Yeah. So this is going to take forever. Somebody must have called the Traycon and said, please make it stop. Just put all the arrivals on the right. And we're going to use the left runway for departures. Because by the time we got out there, that's what they were doing. And we didn't wait long. It was pretty much just launching one after another, six in airborne, and not waiting for the arrival. But when they land, they have to cross to get to the terminal. That's where your high-risk situation happens. Yeah. Yeah. We made it out of there. And I didn't find any mistakes. They did a great job. Good job, San Frantower. And if you're going to save up any sick time, this is the month to use it. It's an awful scenario. You're not going to like it. Yeah. Just go and leave. Just use your leave. On that note, shall we begin? All right. All right. Since OB431, we have some new members on the Iceberg Sierra Golf, Romeo Tango and Kilo Sierra, our new on Supercast. If you've been enjoying the show, you can take it to the next level by joining our premium feed on Supercast. Supporters get on time episodes with no delays. Our entire back catalog, depending on your tier, access to our live stream, where you can see us, bonus audio, and direct line to us through our supporter-only email. You'll keep the show ad-free and 100% community supported. You can find out more at opposingbases.supercast.com. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Review and announcements. Review and announcements. I apparently put two number ones here. Nope, that's not. There's just one number one, and they did two parts in their announcement. Ah, yes. Sorry. You got confused. You want the review? This one's a little bit longer. I'm sorry. Okay, longer review. Wonderful Aviation Podcast is the title, Five Stars. I'm not a pilot or a controller, but a huge fan of opposing bases in particular and aviation in general. I recently signed on to the iceberg community and now consider myself a Penguin Groupie. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome. Yes, thank you. If you think the public OB content is amazing, you should join via Supercast and enjoy the bonus audio. Thank you for that plug, which is also spectacular and perhaps even more relevant to the flying public. Recent bonus audio includes all of our HHS training at Penguin Airlines, his SimTime and even how to combat jet lag, which he failed initially. Very interesting and also inspiring for those of us who are professionals, but at professions unrelated to aviation, about how to prepare for training and testing and accepting that we are professional but not perfect. AG Steward of the Shinnok Helicopter, again, very informative and worth knowing whenever the military gets involved in moving around heavy material. Finally, our HHS story on Smoke and the Cockpit and the decision tree to deal with the potential emergency was insightful and reassuring and since I'm originally from Ireland, it was great to hear Shannon Airport mentioned as a place to put down if smoke reappeared over the Atlantic and a 90 minute window to land was triggered. I have been associated with aviation my entire life. My first transatlantic was into Gander from Shannon since the supercony needed to refuel. Since then, lots of flights as a passenger, but also a huge aviation fan, which OB is feeding and nourishing every week. Highly recommend it, especially for the bonus audio and the quarter zip shirt. Delta Foxtrot. Cool. Thank you for that review and for mentioning the bonus audio. Yes, thank you. There have been some additions to that bonus audio repertoire since this review was written. Part two of your cliffhanger. Yeah, that part one wasn't even mentioned here. Yeah, this one has been in there for a little bit before that came out. Yeah. Cool. Thank you again for taking the time to do that, Fedfan18. Very good. Announcements. We have one today from Supercaster Charlie Delta Hotel. Hi, guys. A couple quick announcements. One, I passed my commercial airplane single engine land last weekend. Congrats. All right. My landings were off the mark when I flew to the check right location, but then nailed them on the ride. Glad that one is done. Isn't that a relief? Number two, part two of his announcement. I took a local tower controller up for their first ride in a small airplane. They loved it, learned a lot, and said this will help them quite a bit. Thank you for making this suggestion a while back on the show. Appreciate you guys and all you do. Bonus Audio has been awesome along with the amazing show content, the best, best, comma, Charlie Delta Hotel. How many people at work do you think would take advantage of this? They pull up today and I don't know. I don't want to offend anybody. Pick the safest airplane you can think of and they're all ready to go. They'll take everybody. Whoever wants to come out for a ride. Who goes? I think quite a few would. I would hope that they all would. I would go. I don't know. It's hard to say. Maybe 80%. Okay. Yeah. What's one thing you wish they would learn on this flight or absorb, soak in? The controllers? Yeah, that there's stuff going on. The pilots have things to do that require brain power and they're not just sitting there waiting for you to tell them. Yeah. It's not like there's nothing happening until you give an instruction. There's stuff happening, especially takeoff landing, those time periods, checklists are happening and to just have this expectation that I'm the only one providing input into this plane. It's just sort of ridiculous. Cool. Thanks for doing that. Charlie Delta Hotel. Hopefully you have more stories where other controllers took advantage of that. Share them with us. All right. Moving on. Bye, music. Time. Day feedback. All right. The first one is audio from Emperor Captain Juliet Mike. We have some audio. I'm ready to hit play when you are. I'm ready. One, two, three. Hi. This is Juliet Mike from the Western Slope Delta sending in some feedback about 430 on Aspen approaches. Someone that has gone out of there. I have no idea how many times, maybe 50 times, 30 times a lot in the last few years. It doesn't seem as scary as it sounds, honestly. It's a typical day, VMC day or high cloud deck. It's like, just like the letter says, you know, line up and wait and then you're sitting there and then they say, you know, so and so, clear for takeoff traffic five mile final and boom off you go. And we never pull our power back in that departure. I never pull it back until I'm above 15,000 feet. But it's a takeoff powered whole time. Fly a phenom 300. So it's not super overpowered, but it's got good, good performance. And you just fly the lens departure and you will, you'll be climbing through. You'll be climbing above the traffic before it is off to your left and like you'll pass. Oh, it's at least a thousand feet below you. Probably like 1500 when you turn left and cross the departure path or the arrival path and resume the departure. So yeah, it's different, of course, but they have it onto a science is perfect works every time. I mean, they can, I mean, they, those guys know all the approach speeds of all the different airplanes and and it works like a charm. I have not taken off out of there with low ceilings very often. When that happens, everyone's spaced a lot further apart. And I'm sure I do turn in front of a arrival like your first procedure was mentioning, but that's like something that we don't even think about or know really has pilots. And we're so high or ready that it's, it's not a problem. I'm also from Piston in and out of there a few times and they've never launched that I'm aware, at least not for me at a arrival, a piston. So we can take off and land on either runways because the pattern is small enough. So you're always taking off for landing into the wind, which your arrival and departures may or may not be into the wind. So anyways, just a little real world experience. I know it sounds scary on paper, but in reality, they haven't worked out to a science. All the pilots are very well aware. I should look up the JEP charts, but I know our company charts talk about arrivals and departures. And so everyone is aware of what's going to happen and what is happening. So anyways, thanks for that fun little episode. Some place where I play a decent amount in. Thank you, Julia. Mike. Excellent audio. Cool. Some of you that weren't in the chat, so we talked about that on the first show last week. We did JEP 430. Yeah. And in between shows, we had a controller from Aspen in the chat room. And she sort of explained it. And I talked to her later about the cutoffs because they used to just, it was at controller discretion, where are these cutoff points like this guy must be, must begin his takeoff role when the arrival is at this point with like types, basically. Okay. And that was the left to controller discretion to sort of determine, okay. Yeah, these are two jets, but I know this jet performs well. The phenom is one where I would, their climb rate is excellent. It's going to be great. They might not be as fast over the ground, but they're going to climb very quickly. So, I can factor that in. She's saying, what she is saying now though, is that they sort of removed that discretion and made it much more documented and prescribed in terms of what are the cutoffs. It's just sort of a blanket across the board, you know, for props or for jets, I think. This is the cutoff instead of leaving it up to the controller, which she didn't like very much. It didn't sound like. We appreciate her coming on. That was fun. We did a little bonus audio. We compiled the show topic, her interview and a little bit of follow up afterwards for supporters. They can check that out. It's called the Aspen Wrap. Yep, all of it together. Cool. You want number two? That's Charlie Bravo, not Charlie Delta. I made a mistake there. Okay. Okay. Number two from Improgramming Charlie Bravo. Morning gents have to say, I agree with you both 100% of the time. Kind of weird when you think about it. I don't even agree with myself that much. Excuse me. On episode 429, I learned I need help and should be seeking professional counseling. The NAV equipment, GPS, MFD, EFB for us is always track up to show when correction, deviation from course, distance from airspace, isn't 21st Tech wonderful. But did I hear that right? You're holding the map. Track up? Does this mean you also hold your approach plates track up? Not sure if this is a Chevy 4 Dodge or Toyota Hondon Nissan for AG argument, but there is utility in Northup for us initial attack firefighters. Map orientation is important because we're often given coordinates in route. New starts, all the surprise navigation you can't imagine trying to plot upside down. In the case, in the case we're southbound, simply relying on coordinates might put you 180 degrees off 180 degrees off and miles away from the fire, not that anyone has given wrong that long in history of ever. Right. I like to hear where else I'm living in such archaic disarray. Keep up the good work. I'll keep rethinking my life choices. Fellow Chinook pilot, Charlie Bravo. Yeah, doing firefighting. Okay. I don't think that we were so hardline as to not consider that there might be exceptions. We did make those exceptions. Okay, so there are times when, yeah, I'm not going to hold the map upside down while I'm trying to plot a grid or something like that. But that being said, it's sparing. It's very used sparingly. The approach plate how? No, no, I guess not. No, I do. The approach plate was strapped to my leg most of the time in the helicopter. Paper. Yeah. Yeah. Paper strapped to my leg. It's in that orientation. I need to read the words during the approach brief and we weren't using it for navigation typically. It wasn't a, I don't know, when you made the transition off the map onto the approach plate, I don't know. I guess that was just different. But no, we did not turn it. But I would think about it in terms of where are we coming from on this thing, which is super easy to do. Just look at your compass. Look at the fix you're going to. Look at your compass. Read it the bottom side of it. You're speaking in 20th century. And now you just go that. You're coming from that direction. The GPS is a huge help to that. And then in the King Air, it put the ground track for that approach onto the, it got displayed on the map. Now granted, it's a black screen. Sure, but you could see the fixes in the order that you're going to hit them. Yeah. And it would help you orient your brain to that. Yes. And they were definitely track up. Like many AFBs are at Penguin. We can show our position that shows our blue dot on our approach plate, which is oriented. I talked about this in a few shows ago. What's on our side window, it's mounted on a sucker cup. So it's not in front of me. And no, that one doesn't get turned north up. I'm sorry, it doesn't get turned track up. But you can just see your, you know, your dot in relation to an approach plate. There are functions on AFBs now, and I don't have a lot of practice using this, but I think it will be particularly helpful for general aviation if it's mounted on your yoke. I'm positive both big EFBs do this, four flight and Garmin, where they sequence the approach fixes from top to bottom. You can see what's happening in the order it's happening or maybe bottom to top in the direction that you're going. You can have the plate up, but it's also showing you altitudes, which is track up. It's a track up thought process. Right. Yeah. North up has uses. You're not crazy, Charlie Bravo. It's okay. You don't need counseling. No, I'm not going to go that far. I feel like this is just an open door to, you know, to allowing north up orientation during times where it's not needed. Just guard yourself. CB. All right. Thank you, Charlie Bravo. And moving on, fancy jet music. All right. This week's show topic is from Supercaster Delta Oscar. We're going to talk about some more flight training, friendly Trey Kahn's. We talked about the Northwest and Coffee Bravo extensively recently. And I know I've talked about it on shows. I did the majority of my post private pilot training in Mickey Mouse Bravo. And that's what this feedback is about. And I included a letter from an email service we're going to talk about. All right. Here's the feedback. Long time listener, first time actually stepping in to share. I guess I'm a quiet penguin. We're glad you took the time to send a question and it's became a show topic. See what happens? The wonderful people at Mickey Mouse Trey Kahn get together and have made a monthly briefing. A monthly briefing that is sent out via email. These briefings have been a full of good info, but this one stood out being about practice approaches and filing for them. I have copied and pasted the email below for anybody that wants to join their email group. Just email. I'll put that in the show notes. Mickey Mouse Briefs at gmail.com. I won't put the, I won't say that on the show. How about that? Okay. It'll be in the notes. Not sure if you want to share any of this, but it is super helpful around the Mickey Mouse Bravo. We have a lot of flight schools that make their airspace like a war zone, not counting regular airline and traffic. Delta Oscar from underneath them, Mickey Mouse Bravo. All right. This is part of the email. Do you want to read the email? Sure. All right. First of all, let me say, oh, sorry. Go ahead. I just highlighted some of the points that definitely don't want to forget to talk about. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Let me just say I love this idea and I am going to try to implement some similar thing. Okay. At Trey, this is fantastic. I think it's very, do you remember me talking about this? This is how I did flight training. This was on our briefing wall at one of these airports. We were at airport F in this little chart here that you're going to look at. Yeah. And we would file, we had to, back then, you had to call a briefer to file. There was no EFB fancy push a button file. You had to talk to a human. Right. And we would say these letters. So, this is like a trip town memory lane for me. And they're still doing it. I love this. Go ahead. Okay. This is from the email. Good morning. First, a huge thank you to all of you who have been forwarding and sharing this email. Because of your support, we've officially reached 125 subscribers, which for one trick on for training, you know, I guess that's the sort of the theme of this thing is really pretty awesome. That's a great milestone for a grassroots effort started by just a few controllers. Please continue spreading the word so we can keep growing this community. We're already close to breaking traffic records. In February, we had several days with over 3000 operations. We truly appreciate everyone listening carefully and being ready to go on frequency that preparation makes a noticeable difference. Just to give you an idea, I think a 3000 our average probably for a spring, you know, training day, like a nice weather day might be like a 100. Yeah, that might be on the higher end. Yeah. For a busier. Yeah. Yeah. Not our average day. Sure. Sure. But for a day like this, where there's a bunch of training happening and there might be days where it's a 1000 on a really busy day. That would be super busy. They're doing 3000. It's a lot of planes. Back in the early 2000s, when I did my training there, I know that flight school was there for a long time. There's still a footprint of that school there. We had 100 airplanes. Wow. Going out every two hours. Yeah. And there was an army full of airplanes. And yeah, that's half of them were doing approaches. That's just crazy. God. As things continue to ramp up, especially to our flight instructors, if your student is struggling on the radio, please be ready to step in. Clean, timely radio calls help everyone and keep the operation moving safely and efficiently. Yes, wherever you heard that before. What does that mean? Can I give my two cents on what that means? Yeah. Yeah. You have to let your student try to say all these things and follow instructions and push the button when it's their turn to talk. This is their polite way of saying if they're unable to do that, and as an instructor, you should understand that timing, the rhythm, the cadence, the beat. If they're not on that sheet of music with you, you have to key up. Worry about it later. Talk about that with them later. But while they're having their little helmet fire, which is going to be extinguished every 10 minutes, then another one's going to start, you may have to step in and do some of that. And I love how they asked this clean, timely radio calls help everyone. That is a very nice way to say, don't let this get out of control. Key up. Anytime somebody comes in and asks in the tracon, let's say a tour has come through or pilots and controllers are together somewhere, and pilots ask, what is something that is on your list right now of things that are annoying, of something you wish pilots would do different. This is almost always the first thing. Radio calls. You cannot let just dead air be happening. You have to step in. No one to step in because when it's busy, the controller is losing their mind, waiting for your response before they can go on to the next thing. And you might get left. You don't respond? Okay, I'm moving on. I have to move on. I can't wait any longer to make this next call. And here's what's happening. So when I start thinking about priorities and where and when I'm going to speak to certain planes, what happens is if you're developing a reputation acutely now on in this current problem for not responding, I am going to stop calling you. I'm going to start ignoring you because I can't afford during this busy period to have dead air. So I'm just going to leave you alone for a little bit until I get all of these other things worked out. I like that description dead air. They're in a busy training environment like this. The controller is counting on you to keep that rhythm. And if, I don't know, two seconds, three seconds goes by and your student hasn't said anything, that's too long. It's way too long. Just say it. Just do it. They'll get that. That takes time, but they'll get that. There's a lot of stuff that controllers are having to time. And when you think about it, jet, just always think about it this way. A jet is on a base leg. There is a finite amount of space and time wherein that plane can be given a turn to intercept final and not go through final, which is very important for us on parallel runways. I have somebody over on the other runway. I cannot be taking this aircraft through final. So that timing is super important. And I am just going to leave you behind to make sure that those things get done instead of, hey, I had a second to go call you if I was confident in your response time. We get it. Students need to learn. They have to learn, but there's a time and a place. And we've always said this, read the room. Understand when it is a good time to let them flounder around because that's going to happen. But when is not a good time? A busy radar session is not a good time. Yes. Clean, timely calls. I love that wording. That's fantastic. Okay. Moving on. Do you want to move on? Sure. Okay. South flow and practice approach at the towered airport that's underneath final for their south runway. Okay. This is an airport that is about seven, I'm guessing. I don't have the map up. It's about, it's seven to 10 miles north of the main runway. It's near the final approach fix for Mickey Mouse Bravo. That's an important spatial relationship that must be understood. That's why I'm explaining it. This time of years when Mickey Mouse Bravo will predominantly be landing south. When that happens, if you're IFR and looking for practice approaches into this airport, executive Mickey Mouse, you will more than likely only receive one approach to a full stop. However, you do not need to be IFR to do practice approaches. In fact, requesting approaches via FAR takes a significant amount of stress off of the system. If conditions allow and you're able to do so, requesting your approaches via FAR would certainly help us and may increase your flexibility. Let's discuss. Yeah. So I could just fit more VFR planes into the space. Separation is less. People are going to think that that's not safe. But specifically on this, let's see, you have a perpendicular final crossing overhead, say, airbus going overhead at about 1,000 feet above that final approach fix altitude when they pass you. That extra 500 feet that you've relieved the controller of, because that is one huge benefit of being via FAR under practice approaches. They're giving you IFR separation laterally, saying all the things, but they can take that 1,000 foot of IFR vertical separation and shrink it to 500. And in that airport, it will make a significant difference. Right. Okay. Good. All right. Go ahead. Where were we? The bold IFR. Yeah. IFR, help us help you use the remarks section. Requesting your approaches via FAR. Oh, I, okay. Yeah. Use the remarks for what you want to do. Yeah. This is the other thing. This is, this email is like, the more we do this and the more we hear from other facilities, the more I realize that this is a universal language that is just, yes, there are little nuances locally for places, but this general idea is, it is so universal across the board because they, they're doing this in order that controllers here say this exact same things. You got to respond to radio calls and tell us what you want to do next. Us having to constantly extract the information. Okay. You check in. Hey, we're at 4,000. We have, you know, the weather. Okay. What do you want to do? We want to do an instrument approach. Okay. Which one would you like to do? Just one of them to runway 21. Okay. This is what I'm talking about. When I say what do you want to do, tell me the exact approach and then what you're doing after that at a minimum, at a minimum. We want the R and F 21 publish mist followed by XYZ. Perfect segue into their remark section comment in the email. Use the remark section. Put in there what it is that your plan is. Yeah. That's what got me thinking of that. Like, just tell us. Don't make us pull teeth. Yeah. Okay. You want to read it or you want me to? If you're filing IFR for approaches, please consider putting what you'd like to do in the remark section of your flight plan. This saves time and reduces the need for us to pull multiple requests out of you after departure. Here are simple codes you can use. This is genius. Six airports that each have a letter. Genius. HG is having a moment. Why are we not doing this? I know I've said we did this on shows before. Now you're seeing it. We've done this? I've discussed how I used to do this. This is how I got brought up in the system. Back in a million years ago when I learned how to do all the things. It went right over my head before. This is unbelievably... All right. Let me explain what we're looking at here. It's just six random airports pulled from their airspace that are very common for practice approaches in the Mickey Mouse Bravo. And they each have a single letter associated with them. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory, although the S and the T don't make any sense. But it's just imagine a single letter representing the start of syntax in these remarks. And the first letter is the... We'll just say ABCDEF. It's matching a specific airport. And the controller would have this chart in front of them. They probably haven't memorized. All the students in the area will see it in their flight planning area. It was on the wall where we called Flight Service. All these codes. So you knew, okay, this is the lesson I got to do. I got to do an ILS, a VOR, an NDB. I know. Go look it up. Go find it in Cyclopedia and look that up. It's an NDB approach. It's pretty amazing. We would have a letter for each airport. And so you have your start letter, B, T, L, F, S, and K, or what they use down there. And if you'd like an ILS at the airport that starts with... What is this one is that here? K. You would file Kilo as your first character, followed by an I for the ILS in the remarks. No space. No space. So Kilo, India. Okay. If you want to do several approaches like... Let's see that one. MLB, you got a GPS approach. So Kilo, India. I want to do an ILS at this airport. And then my next approach request is a Bravo Golf. Bravo coordinates with this airport. And the G is for GPS. This is so good. Yeah. It's not super confusing. Once you have the airport codes, the approaches make sense. So yeah, yeah. And the example they use in the email is Bravo Golf, space, Kilo, India, space, Lima for a third airport, GPS approach with a C. They want a circle. It seems pretty logical. Oh man. All right. So the ticket comes out, you're down in departure, they come off of Triad. What do you see downstairs on this strip? Since they use that in their remarks, they filed these little two letter codes. What does that do for you downstairs in the radar room? It won. I don't have to wonder. I don't have to ask. It isn't a conversation. It isn't... Not only is it not that, it is me not asking 20 questions for the inevitable follow-ups. Well, what's next? Well, what's next? This is what's next. It's right here. It's here. Now, stuff might come up where, hey, for whatever reason, this isn't going to work right now. What if we reordered it? Like you would always ask people to go in some sort of counter clockwise or clockwise fashion, like some sort of reasonable order. But at least now we have this framework to go off of. This is just... I cannot tell you how badly I want this to happen. Why don't you finish the remarks there, starting with the remarks part. Finish that email. We'll see. We'll see those remarks on departure and can verify them with you early instead of having to ask for each approach individually. Gosh. The more information we have up front, the better we can build a plan and help you accomplish your training goals. Thank you again for the support, the professionalism, and the continued effort to keep things running smoothly during our busiest time of year. Fly safe. Mickey Mouse approach. Pilot outreach. Genius. Okay, so we attempted to kind of do a thing similar to this as a Facebook group Oh. Years ago. Okay. But I don't know. It never... It got a little bit of traction, but this sort of just amazing information was not being distributed in that. This is fantastic. And you just would go to the flight schools and have them get on this email list. And they could either... The students are constantly coming and going and so are the instructors. So I think, you know, having just keeping it simple and distributing information down. So you send it to the flight school, they do with it what they want to do. But this is just so good. And it also shows you how on board and involved... Here's two facilities now that are just deep into making training happen. Not just tolerating it. They are a part, an integral part of streamlining it, making it easier. Making it easier on everyone. I think we should say the email. So if anybody's listening down there, are you good with that? Why not? I'm sure they would love to have more people. Yeah. Whoever started this and is keeping this going, good for you. Keep it going, please. Yes. OrlandoRadarBriefs at gmail.com. OrlandoRadarBriefs at gmail.com. And we're going to start one of these. I'm going to go make the email after we're done here. Please do it. Triad Radar Briefs. Okay. What... What airports would you put on there? Let's say you could pick four. Which ones would you pick? Only four? I don't know. Pick four, five, six. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, cigarette, coat factory, prison. That's a really common one. Southwest racetrack. Yes. A barbecue. Barbecue Southwest, yep. And maybe fly fishing land. I can't remember what we called that. That's another one. That's a good approach up there. Yeah, Andy Griffiths. Yeah, Andy Griffiths, yep. And I would do... I would even add antenna. Oh, that's a good one. Yep. That's super common now. Yeah. And they could all have their own letter and their own... We do a lot of GPS approaches, but a few of those airports have ILSs. The I would be relevant. There's a VOR approach at least one of those airports. One of the only VOR approaches left, apparently, east of the Mississippi. I did one yesterday to try out a VOR approach. Really? Yeah. That is rare. C-130. Wow. OrlandoRadarBriefs at gmail.com. Thank you for doing this. Thank you, Delta Oscar, for sending this awesome email and sharing this with us and enlightening our audience on what can happen in airspace where... I mean, like you said, I'm going to just repeat it in my own words. If the controllers... It seems like they formed a group on their own. Maybe they didn't have the endorsement of all those that needed to. They skipped all the red tape. Hey, we're doing this. This is the language that we speak. The people in the office... Okay, fine. We're using these. There's nothing wrong with us using these remarks. It helps us. We're going to make the system better. We're going to do it ourselves. Good on you. Yeah. I mean, maybe somebody from, I don't know, the Safety Council or... I don't know what entity you get involved to help standardize this and make an agreement on what are these codes going to be, what airports do we want to have coded, you know, because why not just have people involved and make some sort of agreement so that then I can place this thing at each position or I can put it out in a briefing so that people will know what the codes are. My guess, maybe, when I saw this initially was that, you know, how we have single letter identifiers for typing in airports within the airspace? That's what it was. That that's what they are. We just could use those. Yeah. Even though I'd never use those. I don't even remember. I don't either. I don't remember any of them. I might remember a Coat Factory. It might have been a B, but that's... I think when I was there, this was 20 years ago, this was in a letter of agreement with the flight school and the FISDO was involved. This was formalized by the FAA. This was a known thing. That flight school, I don't believe is there anymore. There might not be the same similar type of volume as there was then, but there are probably controllers that said, hey, remember when we used to do it this way? Yeah. This really worked. Why don't we do that again? And here we are. Yeah. Anything else? No. Just so good. Fantastic. Well done. Well done. You guys. I just love it. All right. Moving on. I forgot what button to push. There we go. Feedback time. Feedback. I'll get number one, if you don't mind. Okay. From Emperor Captain Delta Echo, A.G. and R.H. in episode 428, you referenced Tango routes and how you hesitate to assign them because of pilot unfamiliarity. Big word. I'm proud. Yeah. Nice job. Really good. Thank you. Interestingly, I have had the opposite problem. One of the organizations I fly for is Headquartered in Rectangular Bravo, Gritz Bravo. We may hear that soon too. So I do a lot of flying in that direction from my home base at Southwest Racetrack. Understanding that route north of Metroplex takes me straight through either arrivals or departures. Good knowledge. We've discussed that. Great. Great. We're doing good so far. I have tried to figure out how to file to avoid conflict, even better. T206, which is in an L.A. with Metroplex, and say 3000 appears to be perfectly lovely solution to do just that, but the first time I filed it through, they were going to have to shut the place down for all the confusion it caused the controller. Seriously, it seemed like he had never heard of it before. I'd later have a similar experience trying to file T202 going around the south. In both cases, the controller said they'd rather just provide vectors. And in both cases, those vectors took me along almost the exact same path as the T routes would have. We're going to get to it. I know what you want to say. I could hear it already being said. There is a departure procedure for the Pistons to the Knights III that would ostensibly be a solution as well, but I've never once had it assigned. I have, however, been vectored directly over Metroplex before being released on course, which is more or less what the Knights III departure does. I did ask a controller on the phone once, exactly what they want me to file, and he just said direct and expect vectors. All right, this is unique. If somebody on the phone told you that, then by all means do it. They continue. Seems lazy, and I'd really prefer to know what's coming before I take off, but here we are. Arrivals back here are a similar story. I've tried to file routing and just end up with vectors. Any idea why the controllers would prefer to vector over having an assigned route, it seems like it would be more efficient to just let me have my route. As always, thanks for the show and everything you do for the community. Emperor, Captain, Delta Echo. I'm in the moony over Metroplex, on radar vectors, no doubt. Let me get my two stands, and you please chime in. Okay. When they make these T routes, let's just say the controllers are not exactly involved, and it's also possible, allegedly, perhaps, that when they were trained on these magical T routes that do exactly what their vectors do, that they were completely out of the room. They weren't paying attention. Whatever. What do I have to sign? They never, I refuse to learn this. This has not been here for 15 years. I'm not learning these routes. You didn't consult me. I wasn't asked where to put these lines. Great idea. Don't care. I don't even know which direction they go. In fact, if I hear the word T, I'm automatically assigning a westbound vector. That's it. I have water on to boil. Yes. Their vectors are very similar because it's reliant on dynamic traffic, and those routes run through the arrival or the departure corridor, and they're in a vacuum. If they have no idea what traffic is going to be out there at the time, that's why the controllers would prefer in this area, this may not be everywhere to use vectors. They have more control, and they might be able to shave off a mile or two of these T routes, which do a roundabout around the airspace. They weren't consulted, and the people that make these routes don't ask anybody on the ground, hey, when you guys are working traffic, does this work? They don't do that. They just draw them, and they say, do them. That's it. That's my rant. Go ahead. Now, that's pretty much it. I mean, this has become much more feasible now, and we're having much better luck years later. It's been years that these have been here. It's been a decade, I think. And there was a lot of resistance on both sides of the microphone to this. For, as we've explained before, controllers not wanting to go through the process of the back and forth. Okay, how is that spelled? What is this? I don't even know what a Tango route is. What are you even talking about? To now, it's become more common, but I think that sort of culture and mindset has permeated through training, although it is now becoming much more common for us. Now, I don't know about Metroplex currently, but for us to assign these routes, I think part of what's happening here too is that because it's their airport, it's a satellite, a Metroplex satellite, you are, I'm not going to say you're giving a pass on routing and LOAs, but you kind of are because we send all of our satellites direct. Are they all the way? Yep. Yeah, they could just go direct at four or six, basically. Where you will inevitably be vectored probably in a similar path to these T routes that go east to west on the north or the south side of the airport. Yeah. Yeah. In a perfect world where everybody started at this facility with T routes, it would be normalized and you would never get vectored. They would just put you on it and that would be it. Fly this route, they would know where you were going, they might have it on their map as an overlay. That's not the case though. Right. Because certainly there are facilities where routes like this exist and you are going to be assigned that. It just happens all the time. Yeah, you mentioned it, it's cultural. Yeah. Yeah, it just depends. Your results may vary in other bravos around the NAS, but I think the thing I said about the ones who make these and design these do not ask, they don't ever get words from the people who work that airspace because they don't care what they think. It makes sense to them and that's all that matters. Right. Right. There's a company that we work every day that goes northeast to southwest. They have a fleet of twins, mostly piston twins. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know what they're flying, hauling, but they have need and reason to go through Metroplex. Now, if it's IFR, they go IFR and they get routed around. But if it's not any opportunity they have, they go VFR and they go and Metroplex takes them and goes, I'm not going to say they go through the bravo every time, but if they skim under it or what they're doing with them, but they basically go straight through there. So, I think there's one, I think there's a misconception about what you're going to get or not get going through a busy airspace. If you're willing to talk to them and if you're willing to do what they say. And I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting the culture part. I just don't understand the necessarily the resistance. I mean, I get it when it started, but now it does seem easier to me. But there is also a part of me as a controller that I, putting somebody on a vector is super easy. I like it. I like doing it. I do it all the time. So, I mean, I don't know. There's, well, just imagine if there was a T-Route that went through your final box on two threes. Yeah. I mean, how comfortable would you feel just having this airplane? Yeah. Right. The other thing that might be happening is that this is affecting automation. Okay. So, if you're direct and you're on a vector, I like where that is automating you and how it's automating you. But on the T-Route, it's doing something different or weird. And that might be a factor too, that they're not wanting to mess with. Now, I don't have to mess with that. I just vector you into the place I need you to go. And so be it. It's easier. Excellent. Thank you, Delta Echo, for awesome feedback and letting us talk about Metroplex. The best Bravo on the east coast. Hey, they're my favorite of all the places that border us. Okay. They're my favorite. I like that. That's fair. Yep. I'm just joking. They're great. Go ahead. You get number two. Number two from Emperor Captain Golf Hotel, A G N R H, in today's episode, 429, you put up the bat signal for your friendly neighborhood fly by wire engineer who just happens to have given a detailed presentation on inertial nav systems at work last week. Cool. That's why I love this audience. We talk about something. Someone is doing it, has done it, knows about it. And I'm talking the piano discussion earlier. We're going to get, oh yeah, I tune pianos and this and this and that. We're going to get links to how to do it yourself at home and. Right. Yeah. Okay. You were right that the current best non GPS, R nav solution common in civil aviation today is an inertial nav system and or inertial reference system. We were right. There it is. And the feedback. Pretty much, pretty much any long range aircraft today will have an inertial reference system capable of meeting part 121 appendix G performance requirements for use as a navigation system for extended over water flight. That's all we have. Okay. These systems use a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure the direction and magnitude of motion of the airplane accurately enough to essentially compute the position of the aircraft via dead reckoning from an initial location fix. That is unbelievable. Yeah. That is unbelievable. It is just, that is just crazy. Part 121 appendix G requires that measurement to be accurate enough that its position estimate drifts no more than two miles every hour for at least 10 hours of flying time. My assumption has always been that this performance metric is meant to be accurate enough that you could point yourself at a VOR 10 hours away and you should be able to get close enough to get it to get a good signal and switch to land based navades on the other side of the ocean. That sounds like a good litmus test. The other thing, if you're within 20 miles, you know, two miles an hour over 10 miles. So if you're 20 miles off, but you're at 36 or 37, you know, 40,000 feet, that's not that far off because you could just look down and it's pretty easy to see where you are on a map. You're seeing huge like land features and getting yourself on the map is way easier than at 100 feet or a thousand feet, you know. But maybe you can't see. We've got to always assume you're in the clouds. Mm-hmm. Anyway, a shocking percentage of jets built since the late 1980s from many manufacturers have very similar system units from the a certain company. I can say it. I can say it. The Honeywell Laser Ref series. These units use laser ring gyroscopes that are so precise that they don't need magnet tometers to determine which direction is north when you power up the unit. Hold on a minute. They actually measure the rotation of the earth underneath the airplane on the ramp and can tell where the nose is pointed based on which direction the earth is rotating with respect to the airplane. When it says it's aligning, this is why it takes so long. Time out. The first thing we do when we get in the plane, we're getting ready to go fly. We turn the battery on, make the airplane have all the electronics turned on. The first switches we turn on are the IRSs to align into nav mode. It probably takes, I'm just going to throw out a number, it's about 10 minutes I would say for them to align because the previous crew turned them off and now they're turning back on. So what he's saying makes sense. Go ahead. Yeah. I'm pretty sure the F model had these laser, INS, IRS. These units are unsurprisingly kind of spendy. Solid prices aren't easy to find on the internet, but something in the range of $200 to $300,000 per unit. Can I go out on a limb and say this is not a plausible general aviation solution? No. I don't think folks are installing these in their single engine bug smasher any time soon. No. AG, I don't know much about IRS performance on helicopters, but it doesn't surprise me that the drift rate would be worse and require more frequent updates due to the vibration environment. If you think dead reckoning for 10 hours with your eyes closed on RHS Atari Ferrari sounds hard enough, just imagine dead reckoning with your eyes closed inside an egg beater. I am told that the new ones, the new F model inertial nav systems are unbelievably good. Okay. Like standalone, I don't need anything else good. No spoofing, no outside contaminants. They're untouchable. Okay, that's good. This is the way of the future. Yes. For airplanes that cannot afford, maybe that wasn't the best word, to be spoofed. Yes. Okay. Yeah, you can't. The only way to defeat this system is to knock it out of the sky. Right. Right. Looking forward, the new thing on the horizon that people seem interested in is magnetic navigation, where the nav system is measuring local variations in the earth's magnetic field and comparing these to a database. This is what? This is what you meant to say before? Yes. To a database to determine the position of the aircraft. I'm not sure whether any of these systems are generally available yet, but there definitely seems to be a lot of interest in them, especially for folks who might want to fly in areas of the world where GPS jamming and spoofing are becoming quite common. My assumption would be that these systems would be even more unaffordable than the... Boy, we got a deal for you. Than an IRS. Okay, nothing is more unaffordable than the IRS. So, I'm guessing. And I don't mean inertial reference system. So, no offense to you IRS employees out there. So, I'm guessing that Piston GA isn't going to have non-GPS RNAV anytime soon. The most likely means, or well, I hope this means that the MON will be with us for at least another couple decades back to the Batcave Emperor Captain Golf Hotel. That's kind of what we said, right? On this episode was that this is why the MON has to stay. Yeah, but we didn't say something on that when we talked about MON. If you look at a map of the ORs that are remaining in this network of very important places, somehow they've ignored mostly everywhere west of the Mississippi. There's not a lot left. Hmm. There are definitely some. Okay. But I think we have different definitions of what a minimum operating network actually does. And in GA world, we're going to find in a future feedback that it's not as useful as they may advertise. They're missing. There's big gaps in the NAS where there's no way to navigate. Okay. This is just me. We're going to run. What are we? We have an audio and that's it. Okay. So in some sort of doomsday, I don't know, war, world war, global conflicts, GPS is down. We're actually using the MON. I think about GA in responses that it's done for disasters in this country. Unbelievable responses. Hmm. If during some event like that where you don't have a NERSHAL nav, now you don't have GPS. Okay. But there is a need to have GA do something. I don't know what that would be. I have no idea. I don't even know. I think even the likelihood of a scenario like this is so Sure. unlikely. But you are going to need a paper map. And know how to use it. And know how to navigate using that map. Yes. Yes. Look, it's still being taught. It's just not, it's sort of forgotten once you get past the non private pilot, non IFR days. But you're right. I agree with you. Yeah. Think about that everybody. And apocalypse, you may need to know how to navigate without all this stuff. This is all the apocalypse. Do your part for America and go navigate around on your paper. Thank you golf hotel for awesome feedback and answering the call and return to your batcave as approved. All right. The last one is audio from Supercaster echo papa. We pushed this audio from a few episodes ago. I put the transcript up if there's anything you want to catch in there to talk about. Okay. Thank you. I'm ready. I'm ready to go when you are. I'm ready. One, two, three. Hello alpha golf and Romeo hotel. This is echo papa. I believe I'm your only a three 80 skipper listening to the podcast, but you know, I stand to be corrected at some point. I'm sure with regard to episode four zero four. Yeah, I know it's some time ago, but I've been pretty busy with flying since then. The subject I'm referring to is the transponder limitations in terms of the numbers of the eight number limitation with you got controls trying to issue the 4096 code and Bravo Mike also weighing in. Interesting enough back over from the other side of the pond where you can guess I'm from. They are actually working on it. The Euro control has essentially implemented a procedure where pilots are issued with a squawk 1000 code. I've had it several times. It's generally not really commonplace just yet. It's kind of been issued kind of over the last eight years, I believe. I mostly get it from the Germans when I'm either departing out of Frankfurt or landing to Munich. The other guys who thrown it at me is Sophia, the Italians. I think even the French have done that at some point. I've done that at some point. Then as for the Brits, I think they generally believe it's too much voodoo for their liking. So nothing's been issued from that side of the air traffic system in Europe. The rest of the world haven't seen it there yet. But the idea behind this is with an aircraft squawking 1000, the air traffic control unit will then go ahead and interrogate the ADSB unit and get the hex code, which is an alphanumeric from the aircraft. And it's unique to that aircraft. And then they'll take that hex code and then match it to a flight plan, generally an item 18. And it tends to be written as code forward slash and then that hex code for the SB is mentioned there. So that's how they match up the flight plan details and then supply that to the controller. So he has all that information. It's a great idea. I think it works very well. I don't know behind the scenes how well it does work. As I've mentioned, it's been running for about eight years now and it hasn't been on wide release. So I imagine like all things IT, there are some bugs kicking around the system and it doesn't quite work. But eventually that, I think, is a brilliant solution to the whole transponder limitation, which maybe you guys over the US might want to jump on at some point. But one of the reasons why I do listen to the podcast is, yanks, you all do it just a bit differently to the rest of the world. And by listening to your podcast, that's certainly of my eyes as to what seems a bit of an idiosyncrasy when I'm flying into the US. Actually does kind of make sense from time to time. But I also see there's a lot of legacy items in there and understanding things like LOAs as well and how generally the integration between different centers, Trey Cones and Tower, even Class of Airspace does boggle the mind a bit and put some knowledge behind that, which I then pass on the colleagues and gives us our moments. And it certainly makes it for us to be able to operate safely through your airspace and get the most out of it. So I really appreciate all the podcasts you do. I am avid listener and that's about all from Echo Papa. Thank you very much, Jensen, all the best. Excellent audio. Thank you for recording that. Sorry about the delay. We pushed it back a couple episodes. First thoughts? Yeah, I like that a lot. I mean, that would eliminate this whole thing. I can't tell you just yesterday how many times I had to change beacon code because they're crossing the center boundary. And I can't do anything with the tag. It's sitting there flashing the code. This is the code you need. This is the code you need. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Give them this code. You can't do a point out. You can't do a handoff. You can't do anything with the tag until you've changed that code. Well, depending on whose airspace they're coming from, you might not have control to change the code yet. So then you either have to call them, which would be stupid. Pay control for a beacon code change. They're like, why are you calling us? We would just do that and we wouldn't ask you for permission. Exactly. Or you just wait. You just have to wait. And then delay the things that you're trying to do. But anyway. Go ahead. You can have everybody on this 1000. It takes away the squawk code and almost makes secondary to the other code. It actually secondary to this ADSB identification. It looks for the flight plan for that aircraft hex code. And voila, you're presented with the information that a controller sees when you tag up. The reason you tag up and your data is presented to a controller is because secondary radar matches your transponder code to the NAS, to the FDIO, to the computer. And says, who's squawking this? Who has issued this code? Oh, it was this person. And it populates that tag. And it's just doing it a different way. It's the same idea, different path. Right. And they're not restricted to the 4096 combinations of a transponder that's limited to 0 through 8. No, 0 through 7. Did I say that right? 0 through 7. There is no 8. Is there any? No 8. No 8s or 9s. Right. I have an entire folder of explanations of a 4096 transponder. Yeah. Thank you. Please make it stop. What do you think about the comment about Yang's doing a little bit different over here? I take pride in that. I do too. I love it. That is, that's what makes us what we are. But just a little bit different than everybody else. But if you're understanding more because of us, then we're doing our job. Right. If you're having your aha moments. Thanks for the compliment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's how we got here, right? We said, we don't like how, we don't like how you're doing it. We want to do it a different way. We're going to go over there and do it that way. The way we want to do it. It's kind of just stuck around a little bit. Although, I don't know where it, I'll never mind. That's a great way, funny way to end the show today. Okay. All right. We'll do our best to respond to support or feedback and let you know when you'll be on an upcoming show. Anything before the chat and the intermission. Well, closing out episode 432 of opposing bases air traffic talk Romeo hotel and Alpha Golf. Goodbye everyone. Drop opposing bases is a listener supported ad free weekly podcast. The views expressed on the show do not reflect the opinions or official positions of the FAA or Penguin Airlines. The episodes are for entertainment purposes only and are not intended to replace flight instruction. To get on time access, bonus content and full archive access, join the crew at opposingbases.supercast.com. Yeah, drop.