OB427: The Dreaded Kilo

that is a huge part of your management of the frequency is understanding that you can't leave something else to do that's time critical like a turn to final or something and start this conversation because once you open that door, you don't know how many suitcases are coming in out of the car, okay? 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 first officer at Penguin Airlines Romeo Hotel. It's Wednesday, March 4, 2026, episode 427 on today's show. We'll tackle a mountain of feedback, brag about how awesome our supporter only bonus audio is and admit there are some cool center controllers out there. What's up, baby? Well, everyone. Let's be clear, you wrote that last sentence and it says that we will admit there are some cool center controllers. I did not agree to that. I just want that to be made clear. We're going to talk about some cool center stuff. All right. Okay. How was your week been? Two weeks. We recorded two weeks ago. Two weeks. It's been two weeks. A double episode, yes. Just name a day of the week in a time and I'll answer the question where I was. Thursday. Okay. I was at work. My word. How's that going? I'm tired. I'm tired. This morning I got up. Normally, I get up. I get my coffee. I sit in my chair. I read. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired. I was going to read for a little bit. I fell asleep which has not happened. It's catching up with you. Very tired. Well your halfway through it. You're going to get a couple days off soon right? Sure. Sure eventually. I'm back from a five day back to back trip. So I did a two day domestic out to the West Coast. Saw my parents, flew back to base, got a nap, flew to London, got two naps, flew back. Wow. Mm-hmm. I don't remember ever doing a setup like that. I was tired when I got home, but my commute was amazing this week. It was very quick, efficient. As soon as we landed, I got on a shuttle over to LaGuardia, came home that way, caught the flight that I didn't think I would make very early. It all just worked out. It worked out perfectly. If every week was like that, I would have very little commuter drama. Mm-hmm. But that's the key, I gotta land really early. We're on the ground at 11, 20. That's not normal. That's the only way to make it work. Well, because it's a 12 o'clock shuttle, and it's a 130 flight. So you're talking, you're leaving one side of the river, going over to the busy side of the river, and an hour and a half to catch a flight. That's kind of a miracle. Yeah, that is. So, yeah, the timing has to work out perfect, but I leave again this week for another domestic trip. So I get to be a real pilot. I flew last week, I touched the controls. I had somebody from the Chief Pilot's Office to sit there and observe, and make sure I can actually do things. Right, right. Sort of like a check ride. They were real nice to me, but... My landing was acceptable. Good. Acceptable. Acceptable. You didn't break the airplane. No, I didn't break the airplane. So in the 7-5, the nose wheel, it's a second landing. You have to put it down nice. Not probably, not unlike any Boeing. You don't just, the mains aren't, you're not done. Okay. When I jump seat on Purple Box, I'm always in a 7-5, almost always. And despite their best efforts, maybe it's just the weight of the plane, the nose comes down and it's an aggressive touchdown. It's, I wouldn't call it hard, but it's right there. The nose is right there where I'm at. Yeah. And it's loud. And in my head, I was like, I'm not gonna smash the nose wheel. I'm not gonna smash the nose wheel. I smashed the nose wheel. I smashed the nose wheel. But I promise I tried not to. I'll get another stab at it this week. I just saw your note in here under the chit chat. Uh-huh. Tonight. Tonight. Tonight. I have been at work for 40 days straight in recognition of Lent. That is not true entirely, but it feels like that. It's starting to feel like that. Yeah. I'll tell you what, the 10 hour shifts really haven't bothered me until now. And yesterday, I decided the 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift is the worst. The 12 to 10, for some reason, feels okay. All right. It's 8 to 6. It just feels like you're there forever. I thought you were doing a 10 to 8, but maybe I made that up in my head. 8 to 6 is your day two. Yes. 8 to 6, and I trained five hours yesterday. Two different people. It's, everyone's gonna say, oh, that's only half of your shift. Okay. Yeah, you're right. Hold on, hold on. You have to debrief. You have to write up training reports. You don't just sit there and watch. Yeah. It is only, to be on scope for half of your shift is at a higher end for everybody, even 8 hour shifts. Mm-hmm. People don't really get that. We've kind of defended that before, but it's just the way the day works out with leaving and when you come in and the overlap. If you do four hours on position for the other controllers that are wondering, I wonder if that's true. Go look. Go look at yesterday and see how many days you worked or see how many hours on position you worked. If it's over four hours, I would be surprised. Yeah, and we as a facility average way over that. Per day. The eight hour people are doing like five and some average. Hmm. And I did five of just plugged in training people. Were there other non-training shifts or training sessions you did? One briefly. Okay. We'll see you at a busy day. No, there were two. Hmm. There were two. So you worked like nine and a half hours then. Physically, yeah. Shall we begin? All right. All right. Since OB 426, we have some new members on the Penguin Iceberg Golf Kilo, Charlie Kilo Tango Hotel, Sierra Golf, Julio Lima, Romeo Delta, Bravo Bravo, and Juliet Romeo. Welcome. We got a PayPal drop from Sierra Hotel, a memorial drop in honor of my fellow brothers from the Big Book of Maps airline. They flew west six years ago while on approach into Texas. Thanks for all you do. Well, thank you for the note and for the memorial drop. If you've been enjoying the show, you can take it to the next level by joining our premium feed on Supercast, Supercast supporters. Get all the episodes on time, no delays, our entire back catalog, access to our live stream, and our critically acclaimed bonus audio. A direct line to us through our supporter only email, and you'll keep the show supporter and community supported. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. If you want to learn more, go to opposingbasis.supercast.com. Hey, friends, I'm trusting in the heavens in the air. You ready? You ready? You ready? Oh, review one announcements. Review and announcements. Oh, you get the review. The review, five stars, naturally titled Consistency. The hosts have released a quality episode. Well, we released an episode. Every week for eight years. I'm just gonna let that sink in. Every week. Every week. As an adult. This is year number nine. This is, we're into the ninth year. As an adult with a job and a family, I know that isn't easy. Thanks for the dedication and some sneaky feedback. Would it be harder or easier to be this consistent if you had jobs with typical nine to five working hours? That is a great question. It is, what do you think? I think harder. I do too. Because think about when we record. It's always, it would be during these hours and it's on a weekday. So then we would have to come up with, another time that I think would be really tough, at least right now. Maybe there were times when we were both controlling and we were on very similar schedules that we could have made it work, but it would be. Right, we have had, one of us is usually working on the day we record. Lately with Wednesdays, that's not the case, but that's kind of an anomaly. Most of the time, one of us or both of us were working that same day. And it takes a few hours, so it would be harder. It would be harder to do this before a nine to five job, for sure, and after a nine to five, let's admit it. We're all useless after that. To do consistent. Yeah, coming home, you get home, pick up the kids, take the kids somewhere, get home, make dinner, and then at, I don't know, seven, eight o'clock, we're gonna record a show. Right. No. At least with kids, that would be very hard. It would be very hard. Well, Cole, thanks for the review. Yes. Announcements, Penguin Out Mike Kilo Kilo is IFR Current and got their IPC done after a 24 year break. Congrats. Wow. We're gonna read your feedback below. Number two, Penguin Out and Pilot, Echo Mike started training at Penguin Airlines last week, congratulations. Awesome. You want number three? Sure, number three, not all center controllers are created equal. Some of them. Ha ha ha. Some of them are smart, funny, and highly entertaining. If you haven't found, oh, I love this. Did you put this in here? I put this in there. Okay. Now, hold on, let's rewind about, hold on, a few minutes ago, you seemed upset that we were gonna talk positively about. Well, I didn't know it was this. Well, now you do. Now I do. Ha ha ha. If you haven't found prop hat cat, on Instagram or YouTube or maybe other places, all right, Facebook, I guess, I don't know. He's all over the place. Yeah, all over. You gotta look him up. And he's answering listener questions about ATC in short, you know, they're shorts, short videos. They're digestible and they're funny. It's awesome, I love them. I, it is, I don't know, I felt like it was something that would have been fun to do. You know, this show is more long form. You gotta be in it for the long haul. But these are great, they answer just a question, it does it quick, it has visuals. I don't know how he's doing some of those, but they're really good. And I enjoy the humor, it's fantastic. Mm-hmm. Yeah, go check him out. You have to read this. Okay, if the FAA is listening, give this guy a thumbs up. He is not presuming to speak for the FAA or NACA or the 2992 Club or the AFGeek Society or the Foundation for Curious Aviation Professionals. I am not familiar with that one. The F-CAP. His opinions are gently blended with facts, accurate interpretations of the regulations and a healthy dose of research. Check him out. I do, I just randomly found his stuff somewhere in there. There's a reference to a cat, obviously in his name, but in a video, he says that he's not a replacement for your cat and references the show. So, instant friends, yeah. Very cool. Yeah, I also enjoy his stuff and I thought it would be well worth our time to mention his awesome reels, check them out. Yes. All right, moving on. All right. Time to feedback. Time. Whoops. You want number one? Okay, number one. From Emperor Captain Mike Delta, thanks for reading my feedback on OB-425. I thought I'd follow up on your comments about the accelerated program I used. I agree 100% with your comments about training in my airplane and yes, I did fly it to Charleston so I could do my training and take my check ride in it. On top of that, they had Redbird simulators with CIRA setups and the instructor I had was a CSIP. So, he was very familiar and knowledgeable in the CIRAs. I know accelerated programs aren't for everybody. You do need a solid foundation before you go. Overall, it was a great experience for me. Mike Delta. As a reminder, I said, I hope you got that accelerated program done in the new CIRAs that you bought because training in a Skyhawk, for example, and then moving over to something that's all glass and far more advanced would be a challenge. And it sounds like they did the way I was expecting. Yeah. In their own airplane, so. Cool. Very good. Number two from Supercaster Sarah Whiskey. Howdy, Sarah Whiskey here from Four Flight. You know, before 23, you asked to find the LTAs in Four Flight. We talked about this a little bit on the airport tab, search for the airport, such as my home airport, Kilo Echo Delta Charlie, then tap the procedures tab. From there, you'll see airport procedures from various, is that air navigation service providers? I don't know, like the FAA. I think that's the, yeah, the blanket turn. Okay. Okay. My airport, you will see LTA, AUS-27, and for VFR departure conflicts as an example. Okay. We also surface other publications in the airport section we think are important, such as the pilot handbooks and arrival alert notices. Lehman, November, Kilo is an example where you can find both of these. Additionally, other important excerpts from the chart supplements are available, such as various VFR routes at, is that a Hawaiian airport or Papa Alphalema Hotel? Yeah. Hawaiian or Alaskan? Alaskan, I don't know. I've mentioned this before, but it's worth reiterating. Four Flight decided to publish LTAs was an action taken directly based on your feedback in earlier episodes. Thank you for your commitment to making the NAS a safer place. They're listening. Huh. Cool. What else can we get them to tell. Hahaha. PS, if you want to see list of all the letters to Airmen, go to the FA Notems website. Select predefined queries from the dropdown. Tap Letters to Airmen and the options that appear and click search. I'll add a note on here. Charlie Hotel, Supercast Supporter, also added a, I don't know if it was every one of them but a lot of the LTA is all in one place. We provided that link to supporters on Supercast. Check it out. You can see all the LTAs find your airport and read it on there and compare them to other ones. Yeah. In the NAS. Yeah, you can't just don't try to compare it to ours because it won't be there. Man, this is a heated topic at work. Oh, you stir in the pot? Oh yeah. Good. Man, people don't, they don't like it. They don't like that they're the only ones left that don't have one. Oh no, there are a few of those. But most everyone has gotten so used to just not doing it or saying they can't do it or oh, we don't have that so we can't do it. No, can't do it anymore. At the suggestion of well, maybe we should do it again and provide a service. Oh, I can, you know, they just, they're resistant. It's very disappointing. Keep us posted on that. Yeah. Okay. All right, this week's show topic, fancy jet music is gonna be all feedback. We're gonna keep moving through these. All of them are very good. Some of them a little bit longer and we're gonna spend some time on each of these. So how about that? Okay. All right. You want number one? Number one from Emperor Captain Alpha Mike Mike. Denizens of the Airways. It's Alpha Mike Mike from the Tall Tree Delta beneath the sourdough of Bravo. Once again, with a question about squawking Mayday. This arose during discussions at a recent FAA safety seminar. Assume you're getting flight following, your sole engine fails. The one. And you declare an emergency. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Cloudhopper 246, India Oscar, I have an engine failure. You ask for vectors to an appropriate airport you've chosen. The friendly and helpful Traycon Control advises you'll have priority at the airport when you arrive and gives you a heading and an altitude. Right. Let's explain how airplanes work. The wings keep you airborne. Right. But. Right. The engine is a very important way to get to that altitude. And on your way down, you could theoretically hold an altitude temporarily before you couldn't. That would stop pretty quickly. So the response, unable, altitude assignment. My engine has failed, you reply. A few minutes later, the same friendly and helpful Traycon Controller gives you a revised heading. And an altitude. Is this a real story? Or this is just a theoretical. Okay, we'll just pretend it's a theoretical story. Surely this never happened. That's what I want to believe. Okay. You start to get the feeling that this friendly and helpful Traycon Controller isn't really understanding the nature of your situation, even though you chanted the magic Mayday incantation three times. Even though you'd said you have an engine failure twice, perhaps it's that you didn't click your heels together three times because there's no place like home. Would you recommend Squawking 7700 at this point to help it sink in that you've got an emergency on your hands, maybe to get the attention of other controllers in the room? In general, would you recommend Squawking 7700 if you're already in contact with ATC? Or would it be generally better to keep your current Squawk? This is assuming that the Squawk 7700 Penguin hasn't jumped off your iceberg at the first sign of trouble, Alpha Mike Mike. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Would you recommend, okay, you're on flight following. Yeah, this is kind of weird. If the controller understood what was happening or the implications of that, I think that's the problem here. We're not, it's not sinking in that, no, I can't hold an altitude. I'm a glider and I'm not a very good one compared to planes that are gliders. I kind of suck at it. We are descending, that is going to happen continually until we land somewhere. So if that is, if they're having a hard time grasping that, yeah, maybe you do go to 7700. All right, let's talk about that. What happens to the data block if November 3, 4, 5 changes to a new Squawk 7700? What do you see? Now we see a red EM at the top of their data block. It doesn't change their call sign. We know that, cause I couldn't remember. Yes. Okay. Yep, it doesn't change their call sign. All right. And it sets off an alarm in the tracon. More at the scope, more at every scope. So if you have more than one, it's like this echoing alarm going off. No one's going to miss it. Right. It's going to get, if the soup isn't paying attention in the area, this is going to get their attention. Yeah. All right, let's say they didn't and the controller initiated that EM slew, then what happens? Does it look the same as it would if they did it? Yes, it looks the same. It puts the red echo mic on top of the data block. But I am not. I don't think it does the alarm. I don't think it sets off the alarm. No, but a controller doing that would be saying something in the room. Yeah, it's probably going to get, somebody else is going to see it. Yeah. I mean, when you're in the tower and there's an alarm that goes off in radar, it gets your attention and you go to the scope and you scroll out and try to see what's going on because it could be somebody coming inbound to the airport and you want to be ready. So yeah, it does. It gets everybody's attention. All right. I think just in general, as a general rule, if you are already on flight following and you call Mayday, Mayday, Mayday and say you have an emergency, I would skip the step where you go to 7700 unless you're in this kind of weird, I don't even know, like why is this happening? If this is a true story, that person needs to be taken aside and explain. I'm going to give them a benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they thought you were a twin and you had another engine. Yeah, that's all I could think of. Perhaps. Right. Even then, assigning an altitude, I mean, you called Mayday. Right. I'm going to the nearest airport, like send me there now and I'm not leveling off somewhere. I can't. Right. So this is easier said than done. If you're in this situation and you do have the wherewithal to use plain English, you got all the things out, you went through your checklist, you're aimed in the right direction, now you can do a little more of the communicating part. Smack them over the head. Okay, I only have one engine, it's not working. We are in a constant descent. Right. Oh, maybe that's what they needed. Maybe. That's way easier said than done. If you actually have an engine failure below 10,000 feet and you're wondering how this day is going to work out, that might be the last thing you're thinking. You did all the things, you said Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. You tried your best to get the engine going again, tried to remember if you put gas in the plane. And you lived to tell about it. I just was reminded of that time we were putting gas in a certain bonanza. I think they're in the chat. The directions were not clear. No, they were not, very vague. Terrible, terrible directions. He is actively pursuing his keyboard as we speak and I'm not gonna go look. Yeah. Alpha Mike, Mike, thanks for the question. Yeah, I really do hope that's a theoretical situation. And the funny note at the end, never let two air traffic controllers who claim to be pilots be responsible for fuel input on your airplane. Number two from SuperCastor Delta Foxtrot, five-star review. I'm not a pilot or controller, but a huge fan of OB in particular and an aviation in general. I recently signed on to the iceberg community and now consider myself a penguin groupie. If you think the public OB content is amazing, you should join via SuperCastor, enjoy the bonus audio, which is also spectacular and perhaps even more relevant to the flying public. Recent bonus audio includes all of our itches 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 as professionals unrelated to aviation, about how to prepare for training and testing and accepting that we are professional, but not perfect. A.G.'s tour of the Chinook helicopter, again very informative and worth knowing whenever the military gets involved in moving around heavy material. Finally, our itch the story of smoke in the cockpit and the decision tree to deal with a 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. All those things are discussed, enjoy. I've been associated with aviation my entire life. My first transatlantic was in Tegander from Shannon since the Super Connie needed to refuel. Since then, lots of flights as a passenger, but also a huge fan, which OB is feeding and nourishing every week. Highly recommend, especially for the bonus audio and the quarter-sip shirt, Delta Foxtra. All right, they continue. Below is not part of the review. Let's talk about the review real quick. We have two feeds on your podcast player now. We have a public feed, which is where you can leave a review. The private feed that's for supporters that they get when they sign up. That review option is not on there. And Delta Foxtra and I went back and forth a little bit trying to figure out what was going on. And that was why. You can't leave the review on the Supercast feed. Okay. Okay. So if you want to leave a review, you need to be in the public feed. That's the one with the sunset picture and the logo. You'll know which one it is. All right, below is not part of the review. To HGNRH, hi to you both, and thanks for the wonderful content on OB. I'm a cancer researcher at the National Cancer Institute, designing new therapies for patients with cancer. I have learned so much from you both about SOPs and how to run the equivalent of the pilot's checklist in my lab. Big thanks. Other fun facts. I'm originally from Ireland and my father worked for Aerolangus for 40 years. And we flew transatlantic since we were infants. Biggest thrill was the day he bought back. He brought home the check to quote unquote, buy the first Aerolangus 747 from Boeing. My two favorite airplanes are the 747 and the Twin Otter for very different reasons. Usually we fly out of Dulles. So unlikely to see RH on his way to London, but since a penguin is our usual airline, there's always a chance we'll meet if he picks up another route and home base. Best Delta Vox drop. Cool. Excellent. Yeah. Very good. You wanna talk about your bonus audio? Bragg about it for a minute? I said we're gonna brag. Do I have two out there now? Yeah. Yes, you have two out there now. Yeah. About to be three. Mm-hmm. The first one is kind of a run through about the Chinook and why it's still relevant and why it will continue to be relevant for a long time. Mm-hmm. Unless there's some really futuristic technology that gets developed. Mm-hmm. The second one is a story, I guess. Kind of. It runs through a day in the life of a deployed army combat helicopter pilot. What you might experience just on any day. It is not a specific story, it's sort of a conglomerate of experiences put into a 15 minute audio. It's fantastic. I've listened to it six times. I catch something new every time, I love it. You did a very good job with it. I look forward to the next installment, whatever that is. Yeah, the next installment is a story. A linear kind of start to finish. Okay. Yeah. Cool. There will not be as many sound effects in the second, in this new one that's coming out. Okay. I'm sorry. That was very good. The big problem. The normal show format has been for years. We take listener questions and the bonus audio sort of diverts from that and they're always a little bit different than the normal show format. So for supporters, that's for you. Thank you. Yeah. Do I get number or do you get number three? Number three. From Supercaster Juliet November, you guys make me feel like a wizard when I request flight following with all the information in the correct order. Especially when I listen to the next person's struggle with a three to four question back and forth and inclusion of the dreaded kilo. Oh my gosh. Somebody did that the other day. I'm telling you. I didn't say this. Another controller said it. They said it's like hitting the reset button on my brain. I just, it throws everything off, stops. And the more I hear people say that, the more I realize how many people are not listening to the show. And we have to make that stop. It has to stop. They have to start listening. Just at least for that. At least for flight following call-ups. It would make so many controllers lives easier. I'm telling you. Just go, please go tell your friends to listen. All the Alaska pilots are like, what are they talking about? The dreaded kilo. Anyway, if I am requesting a practice approach and have not yet been tagged up, when is the best time to include the desired approach and starting fix? Do I include this with the destination airport? As an example, frigid approach, Cessna 123, 10 miles northwest of Halloween capital, Delta. VFR practice approach into fragile Delta, Arnav 14, starting at, oh, a nap, oh, a nap. Cessna 153,000. Ssss, ah, man, that's a lot. That's a lot. Or a slightly less natural, but possibly easier to enter. Frigid approach, November 123, 10 northwest of this Delta. Cessna 153,000, practice Arnav 14, at, oh, a nap, oh, a nap. You mentioned two airports in that one. You skipped over it like it was one, but they said where they were and where they were going as fragile Delta. Oh. Yeah. This is gonna be one, to me, this might be a read the room question. If it's not busy and there's been a, there are long periods of silence on the frequency. Plural. You might get away with this. Yeah, plural periods of. Yeah, not just one, because one might be a landline call or something. We, we hate to put, we hate to give blanket rules for something because this industry is so heavily nuanced. There's so many, it depends, you know, sort of scenarios. But I would say in general, call up for regular flight following, going from A to B, just like that. Like you do, like you mentioned in the beginning, you know, go through it, do it that order because your request for practice approach is not going to change what is entered into the keyboard. So we need to get that out of the way first. And you already have an opportunity in this exchange to respond again, because the controller's gonna say squawk and you can read that back. They're gonna say radar contact, blah, blah, blah, blah, altimeter. Now, they're expecting a response to that. And this is your opportunity to then sneak in. Oh yeah, by the way, we want an approach going to Oynap. Boom, okay. The next thing I say is clear direct Oynap, maintain whatever. And so I think rather than trying to pile all of this information into the initial request, I would save it for later in the relationship, as our H likes to say. Now we have a relationship. Now some of my baggage can be unloaded off of the car, out of the trunk of the car. Whoa, hey, whoa, there's a lot of, there's a lot more going on in this back and forth. But I think including all of that initially could be a little bit overwhelming. Yeah, I wanna add to that. I think there's a perception in some general aviation aircraft that maybe started listening, started realizing that flight following wasn't, was okay, weren't afraid of air traffic, that's great. Hopefully we've sent that message. But don't feel like we do endorse brevity. Don't key up and start thinking. It's not a think button, it's a talk button. Right. Don't confuse that with having to be so brief that you make it more confusing for the controller. You don't have to tell us your life story in three seconds. Give us three seconds of information in three seconds and start a conversation. If they have dedicated time to speak to you, give you a code, give an altimeter setting, app rate or identify you, you are in a conversation with that controller and there's time to speak. Don't feel like you are never allowed to open your mouth again. I got it out, they gave me the code. I'm gonna stay quiet. You can, you can talk again. It's okay. Right. The fact that they have started a conversation with you is indicative of them having time to go through these steps. That's part of the decision making process. Do I talk to this airplane? Do I have time to build this relationship? And if I don't, that's why I'm not answering you or I tell you to stand by. I don't have time to do this back and forth. But once I start and once I ask you, you know, your request or whatever it is, yes, now we're in this back and forth and I have a lot of time for that to take place. For the controller's listening, especially maybe a trainee, that is a huge part of your management of the frequency is understanding that you can't leave something else to do that's time critical, like a turn to final or something and start this conversation. Because once you open that door, you don't know how many suitcases are coming in out of the car, okay? This could be like a whole team of people out there waiting to just move in, oh, the bed's coming in. Oh, you know, like all of this stuff. Meanwhile, Delta's going through final and United is, you know, you're not handing United off and there's all this other stuff going on. So managing your time and the frequency is really important and just be cautious that once you start this conversation, once you open the door to this stranger, that it is going to take some of your time. Let me expand on your analogy with the knocking on the door. A cold call where you call up and say your call sign only and wait for a response is the equivalent of you knocking on the door. And when they're ready to speak to you, they can open it and you can give them all of your baggage. So, but the first set of bags is this is where I'm at. This is where I'm going. I'm in a Skyhawk or 150, 3,500 unkey. That's how the way they're typing it in. Where are you? Where are you going? Aircraft type, altitude. Did I miss that? Did I miss that out? That's the way we type it into our non-center, non-quart keyboard. And that's what that controller are hoping. You say it in that order because that's the way they type it in. Right, okay. Yeah, starting with the last information. And you say the first thing that I type in, if it's the last thing that you say, everything after that, I've already forgotten. It's gone. Now, this is when you are hearing this aircraft on frequency like you referenced, having this back and forth three to four question because I was just waiting for the destination airport while you were telling me all of this other stuff. An example of what a controller can do with that initial knock knock is they heard you, they might write down your call sign and get back to you in a minute, turn a couple of airplanes on to final, say goodbye to a couple of airplanes, say hello to a couple of airplanes that they've been flashing at for a few minutes and then call you back. So don't think they didn't hear you unless it's been an appreciable amount of time. Give them, especially if it's a busy air control and you hear them knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, maybe they'll talk to me. Yeah, they'll come back to you. Some of them won't and it's okay to key up again. Just say your call sign. Don't take that as a green light. All right, they must not have heard that call sign. So I'll give them 50 things at once, don't do that. Right. Sometimes I will say, I will not say the call sign, but I'll say, I heard you, I'll get back to you. Give me a second. That's good. Yeah, I like that. Great question, July, November, anything else? No. All right, number four from Supercaster Alpha Foxtrot at 49th State Airline, we are not permitted to depart via FAR. This is an airline, a part 121 carrier. I've talked about this before. I've never been allowed to depart or cancel IFR in the air. I can always had to be IFR. Q Penguin rolling its eyes, text bubble saying, please not this again before jumping off the iceberg. However, we can request a VFR climb restriction on an IFR clearance. This is useful at non-towered airports where airspace is tied up due to an inbound IFR aircraft, for example. And this has happened to me. If a skyline is 20 miles out and will not be on the ground and clear of the runway for like 15 or 20 minutes, this policy lets us depart without significant delay. Typically the clearance would go something like this, clear to the XYZ airport, maintain VFR conditions until 5,000 feet. This approach allows us to get our clearance and squat code while ensuring ATC is aware of our plans. What are your thoughts? Is this a technique that could be used for a GA pilot? And just before we answer that, we went back and forth a little bit on email. There was some clarification on the procedure. And I asked, I think what the controller meant was, maintain VFR in terms of cloud clearances, terrain obstruction, and traffic avoidance, scene avoid, and they clarified. When requesting this, we are required to maintain VFR, cloud clearances, terrain clearances, and traffic separation while in this climb. This is outlined in an opspec, I won't say the number, which requires FA approval. So it may be something that we are approved to do, specifically by the FA. I agree with this, this would be a lot to take on in a jet, departing to do that. Yeah, it has to be clear. The weather has to be good. Yeah, very good weather and a very good assurance that the target's around you. And maybe a quick call before you leave with air traffic. Besides this one inbound airplane that's 15 miles away, do you see any other targets out there? Because it's very difficult to see traffic when you know where it is. Yeah. When you're climbing like crazy in chat. Yeah. They're not really looking for traffic, that's not a thing. That would be very hard. Yeah, they would have to be like pretty high above you. Cause what, you could be 15, 20 degrees, nose up, maybe more. That's pretty steep, but like at least 10, and we're climbing at 4,000 feet a minute. 10? 10 to 12, yeah. I've seen some of this airline, these guys here empty, come out of. Now empty, yeah, you could be pushing 20 for sure. They're easily 20. Okay. They're midfield and I can't see them from the tower anymore. Like, it's just like a rocket ship. Like. Right, well that's empty, but yeah. They're approaching the 30 degree aerobatic. Limitation. This is a great rule that they've carved out for you guys. This Opspec is like a permission slip to do something unique that normally, without this Opspec and this authorization from the FAA, you would be stuck on the ground as soon as that controller shipped that skyline in your example to CTAP. And maybe there's no radio coverage up there, so they have no choice but to say goodbye when they can. They're going through some terrain. We can't talk to that airplane anyway. Call us on the ground when you cancel. That's far away. That means you're stuck until they get there. Now with this, it allows you, now you could probably speak to this airplane on CTAP. Where are you? Well, we're 15 miles south. Okay, we're heading north first. We're not gonna hit you. There's some reasonable assurance that that traffic really is no factor for that airplane. Right. That seems unique. If there's other airlines out there that do that, great. It sounds like it's working. I think it's safe. Yeah, I don't want anyone to confuse this with a visual climb over the field and being able to get a release. Because as far as I'm aware, that is not allowed to- No, no, no, no, no. To solve this problem. No, the- The inefficiency of a non-towered airport. You don't get to overcome it by just circling over the field via FAR. You can if you wanted to part via FAR. If you wanted to part via FAR. Now this airline obviously, that is not allowed to do that. So they have this procedure where they're IFR, but they're just maintaining via FAR. Isn't that odd to you? I mean, that's the whole reason why it can't be via FAR so that you don't have to do all this stuff. But they're like, no, no, no, be IFR, but we want you to do all the things that, if you're a via FAR, we wouldn't want you to do. It's sort of- It's IFR name only. Correct. Yeah, you heard cleared too. That's about where the similarities to IFR stopped. Right. I like it though. I like this kind of thinking and this kind of desire for efficiency. You could see how at non-towered airports where they're doing these virtual airports, I think especially in Europe, it's much more prevalent. So that a controller can at least see when this arrival is landing or when this departure is taking off and sort of alleviate this waiting one in one out problem. I could see where a company at a satellite that has a fleet of planes that has an interest and not waiting all the time might be on board with helping fund something like that, where the cost savings eventually would- Yeah, you're stepping gas or you have somebody who has a better display of what's happening. Yeah. Right. Interesting. If there's any confusion on the controller side, this is not normal. This seems ideal for this airline and this operation. If you put, what's me today, even with general aviation experience, if I was tasked with doing this, depart VFR, forget about the object, just departing VFR and doing all the things, worrying about airspace and traffic and terrain, it would be a lot. It would be a lot of added work and it would require us to slow down significantly to make sure it was done right. Yeah. You're not going full blast, 4,000 feet a minute. Yeah. Right. Anything else on that one? I am not, based on my limited experience with this airline, I'm not surprised by this, that they sought something like this out because, I don't know how to say this. I admire an airline's desire and you can see it as a controller, which ones care what companies promote efficiency, more than other, maybe more than other stuff. And I appreciate that. I appreciate it. And I'm willing to help be a part of that desire for a company. It is obvious to controllers, where how that culture comes through the microphone. Yeah, that's all. Cool. All right. Last one. All right. Oh. What is the last one? We'll have to be long winded here. And we don't have to go to a certain time like. That's true. That is true. All right. Number five from Supercaster Mike Keele. Keele Jents, big news from the president airport under the Metroplex Bravo, after being instrument noncurrent, since right after my instrument check write, in June of 2001, the month I graduated, some form of school, I finally completed my IPC and am instrument current again. Congrats. Congrats. It was our announcement from above. We promised to feedback. Here it is. I can't wait to put all the stuff I've learned from your show to good use as a good user of the NAS. 24 years is a long time. You know, I was thinking about this as an aside when we read this initially, that 20 year old AG would have thought, 24 years was an eternity. But 40 something year old AG feels like, yeah, that is a chunk, but it doesn't feel quite as, as much as it did when I was 20. It's only half of your life on earth, as opposed to all of it. Right. Right. It is a long time, but my last flight before the big break was one that I would have been happy with, even if I never got to fly again. There's something in there. There's a philosophical point in there. Maybe it is to make every flight that you go on that flight. You never know what it's gonna be your last one for a while. Right. If not ever. Right. After I got my endorsement signed at the old Panama City Airport, I had to return to the plane to the Tyndall Air Force Base Arrow Club, just a short 10 minute flight away. I was headed overseas the very next week for my next Air Force assignment. So I figured I would get a flight worthy of a fireside story before I left. I called Tyndall Tower and asked for the overhead and was surprised to actually get it. He told me to report a three mile initial and called my break midfield after, after what I know seemed like an eternity to the four ship of F-15s holding short, I finally landed. Parked and hung up my headset for 21 years before I got a BFR. Yeah, they used to call that in the GA World Biennial Flight Review. Now it's more commonly just referred to as a flight review. Okay. And got back in the plane in 2022. Thanks for a great show. Cheers from just down the road, Mike Kilo-Kilo. P.S., I'm the Mike Kilo-Kilo that was the subject of the attention to orders message, AG Red, after I relinquish civil air patrol squadron command this past December. Thanks for doing that. I'm happy to contribute to a segment on civil air patrol, as you mentioned in that episode, if you'd like. Yeah, we should do a segment on. That'll be cool. Yeah, on cap flights. This. You started laughing. What's the break? What does that mean? So instead of just going straight into the runway, you sort of overfly the runway, maybe at pattern altitude. And then either at midfield or the controller will call your break, or at the approach end, it's usually a some defined point. What you might typically see, and this is usually done by faster moving aircraft than what was this, a 182. Maybe we didn't say what it was. I don't think we did. Maybe it was an F-15, they were returning. I think it might've been. To the Aero Club. Anyway, you do a hard turn, let's say it's left. You make a left turn, you'll see fighters go like 90 degrees. Yeah, they're on their side for sure. Yeah, and make a really high G maneuver to the downwind. And usually this is used for a flight of aircraft to break up and split apart and give them some space to land. And they practice it individually. It's just not typically something you assign to single engine piston airplanes. And holding up for F-15s short of the runway is the icing on top of this cake. I think this was an F-15, because it was returning to an Air Force base. No, so there used to be, and maybe they still exist, but they had flying clubs on base, where they kept small, you know, before cost of fortune to do that. Okay. They kept, yeah, they had a club on base. Yeah, there was one, I believe, at, when I was in Virginia at Langley Air Force Base. Excellent. Yeah, anyway, very cool. Thanks to Mike Keele-Keele. Do you ever see yourself getting into drill aviation? You're a couple years from now. Yeah, I don't know. I've thought about it, I've thought about getting my instructor rating and just going and doing some teaching on the side. That would be fun, but I don't know. It seems like a lot of time. It seems like a lot of time and money to get to that, to get to that place. With enough work, I'm sure I can make my money back. I think you would enjoy it. I think so too. And put you back in the pilot side of the conversation again in a while. Just for the pure fun of it. It has been a while. All right, that's all I have. We're kind of shifted gears on this episode. We're going to do some feedback. We were a little bit heavy on technicalities of letters to Airman and practice approaches. So I thought this would be a fun break from all that. We do our best to respond to supportive feedback and let you know when you'll be on an upcoming show. AG, anything to add before the chat? I do not. Closing out, episode 427 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. 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.