OB428: Ninja Pilot, PhD

If you do this and you fly from somewhere else, it could be 30 miles away. It doesn't matter. The controller has no idea. They weren't watching. The odds that they were just watching some random 1200 code fly and go, wait a minute. 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 11th, 2026, episode 428. On today's show, we'll share a story of ninja level IFR preparation, forgive the sins of a non-participating VFR pilot, and answer more of your aviation questions. What's up, BG? Hello, hello, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Wednesday. You're off day. Sort of. Hmm, did you ever imagine when you went to four-day work weeks, you'd be on six-day work weeks? Six-day, I wish. Seven. Well, seven touches, yeah, yeah. I, yeah. But technically, behind the scenes, the people that keep up with all that stuff, you work six days a week. Right. So, when you don't account for like sleep, you know, rest cycles. Yes, absolutely. Sure. I have a 27-hour break. Okay. How has your week been so far? That nowhere else in the world would consider a day off. No. No, they would not. No. I got into this years ago with them when we were making schedules before this, all the rule changes on rest and everything. And somehow it was acceptable back when mids were starting at 11 and went until seven in the morning. Man, that makes sense. Like seven of the hours. That made sense. The mids have slowly worked their way back and now we're on 10-hour mids in most cases. And they start at nine, calling that the next day shift. It's a little bit, it's a little bit weird. Yeah, a good chunk of the shift is contained in the previous day. 30% of said shifts. Right. Right. Where it used to be like 15%. Yeah. Right. How's the week been? Yesterday was busy. Hmm. I talked to you between sessions and you said it was busy. We ended up referring to it on frequency several times as National Survey Day. Hmm. The pictures? The photo takers. Is this where a bunch of aliens crashed? Why? I don't know what is happening. Why are we so... But they said we haven't had a good day in a long time. That's why everyone is out doing photos. What altitude are they doing these laps? These picture laps. I don't name an altitude. That one? Yeah. Yes. 11... Let's see. What was it yesterday? 11-7. No, it can't be 11-5. That's... No. 11-8. Nope. 11-6? No. 11-7. That's what we're needing. 6,200. Could you go at 6,500? No. Perfect. 5,700. Okay, great. That's a... I love that. Cool. I lost my downwind altitudes. Everything's gone. Just forget about it. One guy... And listen, I'm not... It's not their fault. It's not the pilot's fault. I get it. Okay. But he wants to do 17-5 IFR in the middle of the Metroplex arrival. So you talk to him at that altitude? Well, I talked to him for a long time in his very slow climb. Towards 12. Where Leon said, we don't do this. Yeah. And where he wants to go is definitely not happening in IFR. 17-5 near Chesley is like pushing a stroller across the highway. That's where the planes are. Yeah. It is where they are. Oh, you want to take pictures? We'll just shut off that gate. Perfect. Yeah, like the second busiest gate at that airport? Yes. Yeah, that's not going to work. No. I did four transcons this week. We were talking about that before we hit the start. Bumpy, nasty weather, pretty much the Great Lakes in about 500 miles on each side. There was no smooth air. That was fun. None. I have a center question for center controllers listening. What is the most annoying thing about CPDLC and why is it pilots not being able to check in without talking? They say goodbye to us with buttons. We don't have to say goodbye. Yeah. They give us a new frequency. We push this button that says I got the message. We say we accept. We change the frequency. There's no button to check in. We have to talk to them again. Right. Why? Yeah, that is. Is there some role that I don't know about? It is annoying. It is annoying. Yeah. All right. So for you center people listening out there, please let us know. Anything else before we begin? I did have a day off. You are correct. I did. I thought I worked. I honestly think they wrote it down wrong because they handed me that sheet of paper with my overtime assignments. Hmm. And when I walked out of the Traycon, I took that and immediately put those dates in my calendar. To the point where I went, I drove to work. Oh no. Sunday afternoon. They're like, since you're here. And I walked in the building and someone said, what are you doing here? And I said, nothing. And I turned around. And walked out. At least go get something out of your mailbox and make it look like you've shown up for a reason. Yeah. I had to get some paperwork. Yeah. I left my tax forms in the right. Well, I'm glad you got a day off with a small trip to work. Yes. Shall we begin? All right. All right. Since OB 427, we have some new members on the iceberg. Sierra Sierra Romeo Papa, Sierra Papa Delta Mike, Mike Papatango, Kilo, Charlie Whiskey and Delta Lima Lima. And we got a PayPal drop from Golf Mike. Thank you. If you've been enjoying the show, you can take it to the next level by joining our premium feed on Supercast. Supporters get every episode on time with no delays. Our back catalog, access to our live stream bonus audio, and a direct line to us through our supporter only email. You'll keep the show ad free and community supported. You can learn more at opposingbases.supercast.com. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Review and announcements. Good announcements. Would you like to review? Yes, I just was, I had perused down into the announcements, but yes, I'll do the review. Mm-hmm. Announcements are going to, we're going to have to tackle that together. Okay. This is the busy show. Five stars. Sorry, go ahead. No, what? Busy show. I said go ahead. Very busy. We have to go fast? No, we don't have to go fast, but. Just a lot to do. Lot to do. All right. This five-star review titled, Aspiring Pilots and Aviation Enthusiasts Must Listen. Romeo Hotel and Alpha Golf, the perfect duo swinging the mythical lasso with relentless precision. These two extraordinary legends will keep you locked into your headset eagerly awaiting your next dose of aviation and air traffic talk. In short order, you'll notice waddles of penguins assembling on your iceberg. It is almost euphoric at first, but before long, organization turns to chaos, groups of penguins demanding to turn base or threatening to cancel flight following in Squawk VFR. Guaranteed some will quickly go nordo. This aviary overload has been known to cause its own convective sigmat and the occasional helmet fire. Those of us with smaller icebergs are left to witness the constant symbiotic cacophony of non-flying winged specimens attempting to calculate a squeeze play faster than a dizzy center controller issuing deviations in a weather event. Clearance void, if not plugged in in 10 minutes. Well done. Well done. That was a long sentence with big words at the end there. I must have accidentally cut off the contributor to that. I apologize. That was well done, fair well done. And you did a great job reading it. A lot of big words in there. That was totally cold. You did great. You know, you said you perused. Oh, you were perusing the announcements. Yes. You did great. Big words, perfect emphasis on the right syllables. Very good. Oh, thank you. So I could take the announcements off? What? I'd just take a little break during the announcements. You could take off for a minute. Yeah, take a deep breath. All right, announcement number one, Bravo Sierra from the Midlife Pilot Podcast. Sent a note after 800 hours of VFR flying, I decided to actually know what I'm doing. While unsuccessful in the lofty metric, I did manage to knock out five FA knowledge tests in 32 days. I don't know all these initials. I don't either. Instrument ground instructor, fundamentals of instructing. The next one I don't know, Charlie Alpha X-ray. Advanced ground instructor is the last one. IRA and CAX? I don't know. Earning my instrument ground and advanced ground instructor certs and just passed my instrument check ride. Congrats. Congrats, very cool. Which felt like eating raw broccoli and pretending to enjoy it every day over and over. What if you put like some, I don't know, oil and vinegar dressing on it? Ranch. Ranch. Ranch. Oh, ranch on raw broccoli? Right, because it wasn't going to destroy your insides enough. I have all my commercial requirements done and should have that done soon too. I hope to get my CFI and teach tail wheel the eight track tape of aviation. Isn't it nice? Nice. I couldn't have done it without you guys making me feel smarter than I am, but it was a bummer. My DP had never heard of you. So yeah, that was awkward. Yeah. Choose caution when mentioning our show. Yeah, keep backfire. If they're not wearing an OB shirt, probably not safe to just mention it. They might wonder if you have lied on your medical about your mental state. Right. Actually, if they're not wearing any OB gear, I would just cancel. All right, he continues. Appreciate you guys from one weekly yapping podcaster to another. Thanks. Always welcome to come back and do another show with us sometime. Bravo Sierra from the Midlife Pilot Podcast. If you haven't heard that show, check it out. It's a lot of fun. They also do weekly and they are listeners and supporters of this show and do a really great job. Yes. Yes. Their audio is amazing just as a side note. It's inspired me to learn a new program, which I did yesterday and I'm going to try with. This will be the first episode using that program. Wish me luck. Very good. Good luck. Do you want number two? It's short one and then I'll do number three. Have you read that? That's fine. That'll be fine. For two. From Supercaster Kilo Romeo. Greetings, Penguin Overlords from the Wind Tunnel Delta under the tofu and inflatable frogs. Charlie, what? A.K.A. Inflatable frogs. A.K.A. the hipster, Charlie. Kilo Romeo here reporting in a CF-Double-I check ride pass. Congrats. Congrats. Very well done. No place on earth is better for teaching flying in the soup than the Pacific Northwest. Keep up the great show. Yeah, I would agree with that. Kilo Romeo. Congrats. Can you get these awesome pictures on while I read this last one? A note from a proud merch-wearing Supercaster. Echo Bravo. Hi guys, just catching up on episodes from late December and heard you guys wanted some sweatshirt pics. The hoodie from this winner. I bought two. One is a Christmas present from my dad who got me into flying and one for myself. I hand embroidered his Skyline RG on his sweatshirt. So it's extra special. Hand embroidered this? That would have taken forever. Wow. It looks great. It does look great. Hold on, we're zooming in here. This is... Okay, he mainly wears his flying and I wear mine everywhere since it's cold here in the middle finger state. Thanks for all the awesome infotainment and always looking forward to more shows. See you in the chat room. Echo Bravo. Excellent. Look, it's freezing. There's snow in these pictures and you're wearing the hoodie. Yeah. That is a... I didn't realize when I first read this you did that by hand. I need to know more about this. How you do that? Yes. Hand embroidered? Like... I like maybe not a machine. Surely there was a sewing machine used to push this needle in and out of this sweater. Hundreds of times. If not thousands. Thousands. This is unbelievable. Very good, Echo Bravo. Thanks for sharing the pictures and for supporting the show via merchandise. All right. Yes. Yes, thank you. Moving on. I like music. Okay. Time to give you feedback. I did that one so you get number one. No rest. No rest for the worry. Number one from Emperor Captain Delta Romeo Foxtrot. Gentlemen, as A.G. said he would do on his next flight, I poked my head into the cockpit today on the way and onto a penguin flight from the west coast to the east coast and asked the captain if Channel 9 was available. A very friendly guy. He lamented that it wasn't an option on that 737-900, but wished it was for his father's sake. Dad apparently follows his son's flights on FlightAware and wants better insight into delays, diversions, etc. Of course, I had to mention that I was a newly instrument rated pilot, of course. Of course. And he, oh, look at me, look at me. And he also of course had to say that he'd check in with me if they had any problems in flight, hugely entertaining. I love that. I do too. I mean, you just never know. Mid-flight, Captain Juliet Whiskey came back to my seat and gave me a printout of their paperwork for today's flight. Nice. Presumably guessing that I wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of it. He had carefully made annotations on the four-page printout to identify for me the key things I would want to know. As you can imagine, I was in serious nerd mode for the remainder of the flight, including writing this to you at 35,000 feet. I was already following the flight plan in four flights, so maybe I had actually elevated to super nerd or super dork mode at this point. At that point. Aside from everything you've done to make me a better pilot, thank you very much for causing me to interact with a penguin captain who went the extra mile for a fellow lesser aviator. What a community Delta Romeo Foxtrot. Excellent. Cool. That's cool. I should know the rule on this, but on our international flights, we have to have the paperwork printed out. There is a duration of flight that requires us to print out a release with all the nerdy stuff that you were looking at. They did that for this flight, or maybe this captain always does that. It's a good thing to have. It's the paperwork for it, but we have it electronically on our iPad. But this is cool. He brought it back to you too on a lap break or something. Great. So you could nerd up and read all the things. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It has the flight plan, all the weights, all the fuel information, diversion information, our alternates, the weather, the wind at altitude and all the temperatures, all the notams throughout the country. It was probably a pretty long packet of data. We don't usually print all that stuff out, but anyway, sorry I interrupted you. Did I say that I was going to do that? I said he would do it on his next flight. Poked my head into the cockpit today. Yeah, I think you mentioned it. You wanted that turned on. I did say I was going to do that. You have to now. I have to. Cool. I'm very happy you did this and I think it's great that you ran into a captain and other crew members that were cool to have you join along. Yeah, I do. I liked it. All right. I get number two from Emperor Captain Alpha Mike Mike. Oh, great penguin herders. It's Alpha Mike Mike from the Taltz Re Delta beneath the sourdough Bravo at the end of OB-426 in your mini trolley Alpha segment. You talked about Channel 9 when I was budding instrument pilot 40 some years ago. I remember sitting on a penguin's airline jet while at the gate listening to Channel 9 and practicing copying clearances, pen in hand and paper on the tray table. I quickly realized most were easy, cleared the big city airport as file, climb maintain 3000, expect level 3105 minutes after departure, departure frequency 120.9, squawk 875. You can't do that. Despite this, three things were very helpful. First, I learned the rhythm of a clearance. Excellent. Second, I learned how to read back a clearance. What was essential? What words I could skip cleared to big city as file 3000, 3105, 20.9, 8795. That put me in a much better steed. Did I say that right? Right. What? I don't know. As I started reading clearances myself. Third, there was an occasional something other than simple as as filed. And it was fascinating to hear the different pilots as they read back their unexpected clearance. If by fascinating you mean hilarious to watch them stumble. All right. Ask a controller how they know that, especially one that's bordered with two LOAs that don't really love GA. No, it's not. No, it's not meant for that. It's fascinating to hear them read back their unexpected clearance. This was never an airliner, always a turboprop twin, like a King Air, a Mitsubishi, a Cheyenne. Two of those planes you never see anymore. Or a Bizjet or on rare occasion, a piston twin. I agree that those old Go Sport tubes. Is that what they were? That was the brand or the type of tube that went into our ears? It was that we used to plug into the armrests were quite something. And yes, you definitely could hear the sound out of the ports in the armrest. Remember, if you didn't have the tube, you could put the armrests. Right. And you were young enough and flexible enough to actually put your body in that position. Right. And your parents were too cheap to buy the headset. It was probably like $45 though. It probably was. Oh, that's fine. Yeah, we'll just work for a week to buy your headset. So you can listen to Channel 9. That's fine. I'll just trade my life away for your headset. We won't eat on this vacation. A week of my life will just be devoted to your listening to ATC. All right. These are two Channel 9 stories. I brought these in intentionally. To try to get over the fact that there was a negative story about Channel 9. On the news lately, we got it sent to us a few times. Things, there's buttons that people forget they pressed. Oh yeah, I saw. And I told you there was a risk when you turn this on. Right. It's dependent on one of the comms. Whatever's on that station in our airplane, it's the jump-seater. Whatever's keyed up to listen to. Everyone on Channel 9 hears. Right. But don't let that scare you. Just go back and look at it. Make sure it's only monitoring comm 1. That's it. Everything else. Turn it down. Make sure the button isn't depressed. How did you monitor frequencies in the King Era of the Chinook? Was it a push button where you could see some sort of light indicating you were listening to it? Let me think. In the D model, it was individual little toggles. Okay. Each radio had its own toggle, so just a pin switch. That's exactly how the 767 is. In the F model, it was a button with a light. Just a little push button. Perhaps harder to see during the daytime that it was illuminated? Yes. Yes. That's what's happening, people. Right. Start with nothing monitored. Un-push all the buttons. Make sure they're not lit up. Cover it with your hand and look in there. Then, and only then, select the things that you want the passengers to hear. Comm 1. That's it. That's it. Not the announcements, not the talking back and forth with each other, which is what happened. See, our airplane doesn't have ICS. We cannot communicate with each other through a headset. It's not a thing. That's crazy. But on the one that leaked all this audio, that's what they all heard. Oh, they were using Intercom. I wonder what they heard. Right. So we obviously could only communicate via Intercom or passing notes back and forth like school children. So that we could communicate without the crew in the back knowing. But once we, in the F model, they came out with a private Intercom so that the cockpit crew could communicate independent of the guys in the back, which was sometimes helpful for stuff that they were doing, like on the ground loading and unloading cargo. Where I had like. You're distracting. I have other things I needed. Yeah, I'm trying to do the plan for the next leg or whatever. So. Yeah. All right. Lesson for everybody. Figure out how to use it. Don't be afraid of it. Learn it. Right. Passengers that still like it. So. All right. Moving on. Fancy jam music. All right. This week's show topic is from a Supercaster, Mike Tango Hotel. Sent a note. Like most pilots, I've had some awkward moments on the radio, but once I managed to surprise ATC by sounding unusually well prepared. I like this. Excellent. My non-towered home field up in the Northeast where it's freezing all the time, sits near airspace boundaries such that such that an IFR release needs coordinating among three air traffic facilities. I can say I'm out loud. Nobody did anything wrong here. Boston approach, Boston center and Bradley approach. The only decent instrument approach. The RNAV 3-2 can also require the Boston Traycon to call up the US Army range control and ask them to spend firing live mortar rounds on the final approach course. But that's a whole nother story. Well, could possibly go wrong. I mean, totally. All right. When conditions allow, it's best to depart VFR and pick up our IFR clearance airborne. We haven't talked about this in a while. Let's discuss briefly what that means. Why don't you fill in some gaps here? What does when conditions allow mean from a controller perspective on picking up IFR airborne after departing its non-towered airport? Yeah. Yeah. You can climb in VFR to the minimum altitude for IFR operations. The MVA, for example, you can climb without having to worry about terrain and obstruction clearance to the MVA. We're going to ask you if the weather is at all marginal and you call up off a satellite and say, I want my IFR and we give you the code and we say, write our contact. Can you maintain your own terrain and obstruction clearance to 2,500? If you say no, we are not issuing your clearance. You've walked us down a very uncomfortable and awkward path. My hands are tied. Yeah. I will say no. I cannot issue your clearance, say intentions, maintain VFR. And then you will say, we want our clearance and then we will do this whole thing again. Until you realize either yes, I can maintain my own terrain and obstruction clearance, which is not my job as a controller to determine if that is true or not. Or some, there has been discussion among pilots of yes, I know where the terrain, I know where the obstructions are. I can punch into an 8, let's say the MVA is 2,500 and at 1,800 I can punch into a cloud deck maintaining my own terrain and obstruction. Even if the controller says reaching 2,500 cleared as filed. That is a gray area that I'm not as a controller. There's, I am not getting into that at all. There's no way I'm approving that. Right. Besides the fact that if they haven't heard cleared to before they enter these clouds, that's illegal regardless of what they think they can maintain with their knowledge of the area. Right. But that is the line that some people are dancing around. Now, in the context that I heard this debate, it was among Medevac helicopter guys operating at off field locations with someone on board, a patient on board. It's happening, we're leaving. Yeah, this is happening. I just need to make it as okay as possible, I guess. But still anyway. All right. So that was way too much, way more than you want. Well, we haven't talked about that in a while. So if you're going to do that, just be aware that you shouldn't be limited by terrain and be relying on air traffic to vector you around that when you're below an altitude. For us, most of our airspace is 2,500 feet. And you also shouldn't be playing underneath a cloud deck that you're not sure that you can maintain VFR prior to hearing the magic words cleared to. That's all. Yeah. And as far as it, Mike Tango Hotel says, it's best to depart VFR and pick up your IFR clearance airborne is generally true almost everywhere. Controllers are definitely going to prefer that and they're probably going to prefer if you get a little bit away from the airport before you even call. The reason that's the case is that if you're on the ground and I give you your clearance, now we're locked into the one in, one out of the field. And if I have somebody else coming in, you have to wait. Plus, I'm either on the phone with you to do this clearance and release, which is sort of distracting. Or the supervisor is on the phone or I'm on a remote frequency. There's some other way that we're communicating that just adds to the complexity of that situation. I can almost guarantee with maybe just a few exceptions, controllers would prefer you to call airborne if that's something you're allowed to do. Sometimes your company doesn't. I get that. But if you could depart VFR because it's nice and the weather's good, that's what controllers are going to prefer. All right. For southbound departures, they continue, it's helpful to follow your IFR flight plan listing a different uncontrolled airport slightly to the southwest and in Bradley's airspace as your departure airport. Remember when we came back from Moshkosh, that's what we did. Now we went several hundred miles away, not several hundred. We went like what, a hundred miles from AirVenture maybe before we picked up IFR and we filed it from a random airport, a non-towered airport, so that when we called them over that airport to whoever owned that airspace, had our flight plan sitting in front of them. Do you want to give any color commentary on that? To me, this is ninja level stuff. You picked up on something somewhere in your IFR training. This is not something that I would expect a lot of people or pilots to understand you can do. You don't have to leave that airport to file from that airport. That's what we're saying. You got away from the airport, you know from your local knowledge that the airport that you filed from is where you want to be talking to somebody. That's the first controller you want to get IFR separation, all the clear twos from. So that's where you filed from. If you do this and you fly from somewhere else, it could be 30 miles away. It doesn't matter. The controller has no idea. None. They weren't watching. The odds that they were just watching some random 1200 code fly and go, wait a minute, I saw you fly. I didn't fly for 10 miles. But that doesn't even matter, really. So as long as you're close to the airport where you're, they're not going to know the difference. It doesn't make any difference to them. Let me rewind and say one more thing in case there's somebody that's confused because this is pretty, I think this is advanced. If you filed from the airport you originally left and waited that 30 miles to pick up your IFR, now you're talking to a controller that does not have that flight plan. It never got activated. You never got the score code. So that strip is nowhere near. They have no idea who you are. And the reason you're doing this is to gain some efficiencies in departing and you know the right people to call. Maybe the first time you did it, you realized, these people don't have my flight plan. How would I affect this change? File from this airport that I'm flying over because now they'll have it. Yes. The key here is that you are flying over or very near to this airport because if you're not, now your defined route in the system does not equal your actual route. And this can result in automation problems for these facilities, especially at boundary airport. So if this airport in question that now you're filing off of that's 20 miles from your actual departure airport is near a boundary and you are 10 or 15 miles from that when you call up for your clearance. So your course line is off of where that airport is and can result in problems. So right. The computer thinks you're going one way or actually going 50 degrees off the other way, different boundary, totally different automation, which means who else is going to be talking and get the strip on this aircraft and who can you flash it to as a radar controller? Right. All right. They explained a little bit that way the flight plan and proposal will go to Bradley. If you list it from my original airport, Fox, India, Tango, the flight plan would go to Boston Treycon and by the time you got them on the radio, you'd be leaving the airspace. So obviously this happened to you at one point and you realize this is not a good way to do this. Yeah, I'm going to file from down the road. So on this day in October, I was headed to Ocean City, Maryland in my Grumman Tiger. I prefer to minimize single engine overwater segments. A direct route would go about 15 miles offshore. New York approach usually sends north, south singles right over JFK at 6 or 7,000 feet with routing over Long Island that can vary with traffic and runways and use. I have flown GA over this area specifically on top of JFK, which is a very short Bravo. It's it only goes up to, I think, 7,000 feet and they will vector you right on top of it. To keep you from going over water. They're very good about that. They don't ask questions. Okay. At least for us, they didn't. We did file that way. We didn't file a direct route and then ask for something different that helps. So knowing that ATC would do some fine tuning, I filed just JFK as my route. A simple way to indicate I didn't want to go over the Atlantic. Good technique. I like it. And the system didn't spit out some PDR, some other routing they gave you. The system knows this is why they did that. They don't have a raft. They don't want to go swimming when they lose their only engine. Right. Yeah. No, thank you. All of that worked, but it wasn't remarkable. I disagree with you. I think this is very remarkable because a lot of pilots don't do this type of planning. So Yeah, this is flight plan hacking here at its best. That's why you're the show topic on a posing basis. Right, exactly. Yeah. All of that work. Most local IFR pilots know those tricks. You might be surprised how many of, I wrote this, you might be surprised how many actually don't know these things. Maybe the ones that you've talked to in your airport, you guys have shared the knowledge. Great. Keep spreading it around. But go outside the confines of your airport, another flight club, they might not know. So now they will. The next exchange is I maintain via far west of Woosta. I said that right. Nice. Well, it's the satisfying part. All right. You be Bradley, and I'll be me in this little exchange here. Okay. You're the approach. I'm the airplane. Okay. I like that. I can get in that mindset. November 9, Fortango, I have your full route clearance advice ready to copy. 9, Fortango expecting Yancey, Tango 224 JFK, T303 to tripod ready to copy. 9, Fortango clear to ocean city via direct Yancey. Then as you said, maintain 6000. Direct Yancey 6000. 9, Fortango. November 9, Fortango. Do you have time for a question? Go ahead. How did you know that routing? We just worked it out for you a few minutes ago. Four flight displayed it as an expected route. Do you think that's a realistic exchange? If somebody did that in Triads Airspace and read back what you're about to tell them, would you be confused and happy all at the same time? When you're in the tower and these guys are on the ground, no, because this happens, it's happening more frequently now. They'll say, yeah, I got this expected plus routing. Is that what I'm going to get? It just depends because a lot of the times aircraft going into Metroplex, Airspace that are landing at their airport will still get plus routing that we can disregard. The pilot is still getting notified, hey, expect this plus routing, but you're not going to get it unless you really want to go that way. But for preferred routing going to the center or somewhere, you're usually going to have to have that. And it's mostly GA, maybe some corporate, that are coming back and saying, yeah, I already got this expected routing. Airlines are not doing that. They've pretty much streamlined most of the time. They're filing the way that they would get anyway, but not always. Not always. Now, this is airborne, so I think this is pretty cool. The reason I quickly blurted out the expected clearance rather than just saying I was ready to copy was that I knew the controller would speak slowly, phonetically spelling the fixes, and taking a lot of airtime. Crowd noise. You did it for them. I'm telling you, if everyone behaved this way in GA, I cannot even tell you the burden it would reduce on controller workload. The quality of life increase, that sounds dramatic, but it's really not. Because when every, not every, but when the majority of these exchanges take place the way that this is preventing, it just becomes exhausting. And when you're tired and you're busy, and it's this over and over and over, it's just, it's very tiring. But to have somebody with this level of understanding that they took the time to figure out how the system works and be able to work it this way, with the idea that it's going to just free up time on the frequency, it's going to be easier on the controller, it's easier on me, it's just a huge relief. I'm telling you the controller, I know they were. That's why this question, if this dialogue is what happened, that's why this question was asked. How did you know this? And everyone else listening, follow what this guy did, it's great. Yes. All right, they finished up. The frequency wasn't particularly busy, so that would have been fine if they did have to phonetically spell everything. Still, this was way more efficient, and I thought it was neat to do the read back in advance. Thanks for sharing your iceberg every week. Your spirit of professionalism and curiosity is infectious. Mike Tango Hotel, CF-Double-I and Civil Air Patrol instructor pilot for over 30 years, but still learning. I put some notes in blue here to make sure we covered all the things that were running through my brain when I read this. I think we covered some of this, but for the pilots listening, and I don't know, any instrument pilot, GA, any, really any pilot that's flying in a non-commercial operation, because I agree, most of the time the dispatcher for a commercial operation is in tune with what is going to be given and what is expected for that day and that time and that routing, and they're going to file a flight plan that now you can get the CPDLC or PDC, and it is straight up as filed. Rerouts happen, but a lot of that now is happening through CPDLC and it's automated, so outside of that operation and that type of communication electronically, everybody else who doesn't have that listen up. It took some experience, some knowledge of the area, and not too difficult to actually implement this plan, but it has a tremendous effect on air traffic and the services that you're allowing other pilots to get because you're not taking up all the time, and if you know about it in advance, now this could be confusing if you were wrong and it was the routing was wrong, they'd be like, I don't know why you said that, but here's your real routing. Obviously that wasn't the case, so you had to do some homework to expect this or have done this route before. Those pilots, everybody take notes. I called it OB-PhD course level knowledge. Yes, absolutely. What else? The airborne pickup, we talked about that. So you said for IFR aircraft, which I do agree is this primarily applies to that, but there are applications of this to VFR flight following as well. Okay, you depart out from under a busy Bravo, there's no way they're going to answer you, or it's just too busy to try to get a word in. You can fly outside of the airspace and then call up over another airport. Don't say something like, I'm 25 miles from where I left, from wherever. I'm over this airport mm-hmm is super helpful to air traffic. It makes it easy to define the route, and it does define the route. I'm over this airport direct to this airport flight following 3500, whatever. But waiting to make that call until you're out of this busy airspace into another facility and over a very nice defined three letter fix helps that tracon type that in. It makes it so much easier. So there is application for flight following. I don't remember if you could do this or not. When you type in a flight following with the fun keyboard, you can't do a five letter fix. You can only do airports or nav aides, right? I don't think you can do five. You could do four letter. You now can do four letter airports, which you couldn't do before. It did not allow you to do NC 74. You had to pick something close to that that was a three letter. Now we can do four letters. I mean, just the technology is amazing. It's a cage changer. Really amazing. What is extra? Look how far we've come. I have a little note here. Two ways to make a controller happy. Bring them food or read back your long expected clearance. Read their mind before they even get it to you. I think this is a huge shout out for four flight who does not sponsor our show, but they deserve the win on this one. Yes, little reminder what's happening in the background. If you're on the ground, you file an RFR flight plan. It processes through some magical computer. Please four flight summarize this. If you want and send it to us, if the routing isn't good, it'll come back and say, Hey, you can expect this route and it emails the participant in the system. It emails the four flight user and says, This is it got accepted, but here's the route you can expect. That's why they know when they call you, it's on their iPad and that helps them cut down a ton of extra work. Once the engine started, the money machine has started to spin. It's the last place you want to be starting to dial in all this new expected routes. They can do all that stuff ahead of time and get as much of that done. And when you read those long clearances, especially the one I read, now I read it fast. That one is not easy. That clearance isn't super easy. And it's probably really frustrating for the controllers to read all these T routes, which have mixed reviews in the system. Not everybody can do T routes. We're talking to you Garmin 430s. I think you have to dial in every single fix on there for that to work. Right. Anyway, you've made these controllers happy. Yeah, I mean, we have these T routes that shortcut through Metroplex that are frequently avoided by us when it's busy because of the back and forth that frequently happens about assigning these. I don't know what the solution is for that. Just more awareness. Yeah, I don't know if the publications have caught up with all that and how easy it is. We've talked about this before on shows. It's very difficult for pilots, especially if it's the first time you've gone over this Bravo or around this Bravo west or east, I'm sorry, east of the Mississippi, you're not going over the Bravo, most likely GA. Below 10,000 feet, you're probably going around it, but they've initiated a bunch of these T routes. Some of them have replaced some of the Victor Airways that pilots born in the late 20th century have heard of. You guys don't know what those mean. Yeah. But I remember this and I didn't use them because of this. I got burned a couple times trying to raid these T routes. Yes. And it was a very low success rate on my part of getting them to actually do it. So I stopped. I said, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not. It takes up too much time. I'm getting burned. I'm wasting precious frequency time on a difficult conversation that I'm never having again. I stopped doing it. Are you required by LOA now to do some of these? No, you don't have to do them. It's getting better. Okay. It is getting better, but it's still occasionally a problem and it does tie up. You have to be very careful. You really have to know the frequency management to know when you can start into a conversation like this. You can't leave stuff to do. Last night, I was busy. Somebody called for their clearance on the ground at Racetrack North. I said, standby. I got like eight things to do and then I'll get back to you. Let me get my affairs in order here. And then we can have, you know, then we can do the clearance because it was a plus route clearance. So I didn't want to, that is how you get behind in a scenario. You did the wrong thing first. And now all those eight things that you needed to do have been ruined. People went through final, all kinds of mess happened. And now you're playing cleanup. So just know that in a controller's mind, that that's what's going on when they don't want to issue you these T routes. They don't want to issue you plus route. They don't want to go down the road of, I'm going to tie up the frequency for like four or five back and forth here. While people are flying every which way. Great point. I think trainees do the opposite. They use some of these things as an excuse to avoid those eight things because they're not really sure if the eight things they're thinking about doing are the right things. They're like, cool, I'll pick this other thing. It'll totally distract my trainer. I'll worry about that in minutes. It's going to take up a ton of time. It's pro level procrastination because you're trying to formulate the plan for the eight things while you're getting this read back. You've completely tubed yourself. Right. Busy is not always right. Okay. There's a wrong busy. Right. You can't blame, you did this. You chose this order of operations. So don't use that as the excuse on why two airplanes went through finals at two different airports. You got a guy that's not flashing the center, has been at 12,000 for 10 miles. Great job. And your rivals are stuck at 13 trying to get into your airspace. So yeah, what else with this ninja level pilot you want to talk about? If you're, I like this point you have at the last point. If you're new and all of this sounds like it's overwhelming or crazy, like it's just too much. I don't understand. I feel buried underneath this mountain of nuance here. It's okay. It's totally fine. Early on in your journey of, in your IFR journey, this level of understanding is not expected. But that's why you're here. That's why you're here. Just even to be exposed to ideas like this can be super helpful. Just be patient. You don't have to drink the whole cup at one time. Great way to end that one. I like it. Thank you Mike Tango Hotel for supporting the show and sending an awesome feedback. You were very humble and we chose to make this a show topic because of that and how awesome you are. So keep it up. Share the stories. Yes. All right, moving on. Feedback time. Feedback. There are three of these. You need to get the picture up on the screen while I read the number one. How about that? It's on the second page. Okay, see that. From Emperor Captain Golf Mike, 18RH. I thought you would both get a chuckle out of this or maybe hunt me down and throw me out the back of a Chinook. I was going through my old track logs. Isn't this nice in 2026? You could just review your old flight paths and this electronic device that didn't exist when A.G. and I learned how to fly. I found a flight from 2017 where I departed Taco Truck Airport, flew out to Pilot Mountain, and then back to Taco Truck. You'll note the mythical triad is directly in between so I dutifully remained outside the Charlie saw would be quote-unquote out of their way. Not talking to anybody. 3,500 to 4,500 feet. Correct for the direction of flight, of course. I'm such a good pilot. Timing was just a little before sunset on a weekday. I'm sure you don't get much traffic then. The picture attached is the track log. My God, how stupid was I? Please accept my humblest apologies. All right, explain the picture that the listeners on the audio only can see. Explain that to us. Okay, we're just looking at a Charlie. Imagine a pretty standard, you know, surface to 4,000 A.G.L. Charlie. Five mile ring, 10 mile ring. Under normal circumstances at this airport, the southwest is the departure side, where I'm sure Gulf Mike was at 4,500. Right here. And on the arrival side to the northeast was at 3,500. Both terrible. Now, their flight path to the north is much farther away. Well, not much farther, but it is farther away from the Charlie at 3,500. This, if I had to pick one of these poisons to drink, it would be this one to the northeast at 3,500. This one down here at 4,500. Here's the problem. Okay, if I'm the Traycon controller, and here comes this VFR trucking along at 45, not talking to anybody, and a departure comes off. Okay, they're climbing to five and they're on a 190 heading. And depending on where you are on this little blue line, the jet is going right for you. Yep. Now, it is not uncommon every day. It probably happens once a day. A jet, a departure gets lost in frequency land, tower is busy, they forget to switch them. And now they're just going at this plane. I'm not talking to either of them. I'm just watching it helpless, calling the tower, switch. I need to talk to them. Switch this jet please now. Make it happen. So that's why I don't like that, the departure side. The chance of it being happening like that is much greater than the arrival, because an arrival jet I'm already talking to, I'm totally controlling them. And I see this 3,500 skirting along out here outside the Charlie, and I can work around it. The departure, I don't, I might not have the potential to do that. If this were switched and we were on fives, and you were 4,500 feet with the five arrivals on that side, so we've just turned the airport around, same flight path. It could also create a challenge. That altitude is tough when we're mixing with cigarette airport on the finals and the fives. So we'll hear more of that in this feedback. But I like your departure argument. I would rather have it be on fives in this scenario, because then they're way below the departures and you can top them pretty easily going the other way. Yes. 45 through the final box right here is not my favorite place. It depends on the approach and use. Because the glide slope right here is 4,000. Right. You know, right at the edge of the Charlie, basically the glide slope is at 4,000, plus or minus a few hundred. But so you're like on glide slope out here at 4,500. All right, let me keep reading. It wouldn't be my favorite thing either, but they continue. I've certainly learned a lot since then, thanks in no small part to the two of you. No more flying right through the departure and arrival paths. I didn't even know what they were. Always on flight following now, even with Duke. Well, sometimes. Or IFR and my favorite game when being vector for the approach is guess the P-TAC. That's actually a surprisingly useful way to stay ahead of the airplane, something I plan to teach my students if I ever get my carp together and finish my commercial CFI and CF double I. All right, I love the guess the P-TAC game. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that. Guess the P-TAC is a great way to. So what heading are they going to give me? What altitude are they going to say? When are they going to say it? So the timing, the cadence, the order, the numbers. If your student can do that, IFR student, when you're on base, when you turn the base and their brain is starting to smoke. They say, just say, hey, what do you think is next? A right turn or a left turn? Now that, you'd be surprised. It's probably going to get you about a 50% failure rate. They don't know. Yeah. And that's just knowing that. Is it a right or a left turn is a huge advantage. It sounds silly, but I'm telling you, when your helmet is on fire, smoke coming out of your ears, that could be a hard question to answer in the beginning of instrument training. But it's a great indicator, one, of where the student is. And two, it's a great way to think about what is just going to happen next. And as an instructor, you could build that picture so that you know what's next. Maybe they haven't caught up and eventually they'll get there one day. But if you know what's next, this is going to put you in a better spot to instruct and watch them execute these instructions instead of you also being like, huh, I don't know why we're turning that way. That shouldn't be the case. Keep up the great work. You guys are literally saving lives, even if they never know it. This isn't really a feedback. And it doesn't really fit for review. But if you ever need an example of stupid pilot tricks that drive controllers insane, feel free to use this. If nothing else, take it as an example of the positive impact you're having blue skies and keep the dirty side down. Golf mic, excellent. Thank you for the great feedback and the subtle mention of Duke and all the things. You are forgiven these infractions. Go in pieces. You know, you did, you brought your pictures, you showed us the track log, you were very honest. You didn't know what arrival and departure paths were, the arrival side and departure side of the airport you knew you do now. And you've vowed never to repeat these mistakes. Yes. Okay, let's, let's cover something real quick. If you're new, and you haven't heard those phrases before those terms departure side and arrival side. The departure side is where the planes are departing, where the bullets are coming off the airport. Yes. And as the radar controller, I don't get to stop them. They're coming. They just go. I get a notice prior hopefully that they are chaching little printer. A strip prints out of a printer and says, Hey, this jet is rolling down the runway. Which means they'll be airborne very quickly. Yeah. Number two from Emperor Captain Charlie Mike. Hey guys, former ESCAC and current emperor, I think I kind of like my hell diver rank. Admiral, admirable Admiral. Is that from a movie? I don't know. Hopefully. Maybe. I'm also a gray hair. What's left airline guy currently flying the Airbus A320 series who may be just captain. Any who episode 426 you talked about a local controller who wanted every segment to come with its own flight plan despite the listeners visiting the tracon and being told by several controllers that the first leg is fine and just tell us before each approach what you'd like to do. Well, I have an excellent idea what to do in this situation. All right, let's review this a little bit or let's go back. So we were talking about practice approaches and having a flight plan that defines all of this or just telling the controller at each step what thing is coming next. This particular tracon said just tell us the next thing and keep your flight plan simple. So this is the idea for this situation. Tell Mr. Accommodating fine, we'll do that, request a full stop and we'll get to filing on the ground. Oh, right. So the one controller said no, I don't. I don't like this industry accepted method in my building and I'm going to do it my way. Right. So tell that guy, fine, we'll do it. Request a full stop and we'll file another flight plan on the ground. Then just shoot the approach and whoops, go missed. When Mr. Grumpy Pants asks why you went missed, just say it wasn't stabilized or a wildlife on the runway or be in the cockpit or whatever, request to divert to your next airport. Rinse and repeat all the way along. You intended. If he gets super mad and wants to give you a number to call, great. Now we can all have a nice conversation and discuss on a recorded line why you'd like to deny services to a pilot flying single pilot IMC. Think I'd like to even get the ATMs input on that situation. Make it a party. Just a thought. Love this. Oh, Charlie Mike. Hey, I mean, your results may vary on that approach. You may get some serious resistance, but I agree with the outcome here of, yeah, let's have a conversation. Absolutely. I think I'm having that conversation anyway, regardless of whether I get a number to call or not. Yeah, make the phone call yourself on your own. Call. Hey, I've come to the airspace every week, twice a week with students and they've had us do it this way. I visited the Treycon. You told me to do it this way. I get Mr. Grumpy pants and they don't like that way. That's not good. It's not a good solution. Figure it out. Right. I do agree with your results may vary on this. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, yeah, you can kind of see how this is a a sort of work around. I know pilots have done this to us before where we've, they wanted to come do pattern work. Well, we need a touch and go or whatever. And we say, Oh, we're, we're down to a single runway or this or that for whatever reason we're not doing that. Okay. We'll do a full stop. And then towards the end that it looks like something kind of crazy is happening with the plane. Like, Oh, what are they doing? And then they say, Oh, we're going around. We got, we got, it got bumpy or we got a gust. Right. Yeah. So, you know, okay. I do like the idea of having this conversation though, for sure. It's weird not being able to see you while we're rating these, but Yeah, I'm sorry. I am sorry. We're doing fine. I'm just saying it's a little bit weird. If I keep looking over there waiting for you to come back, it's just a black screen. So, all right, cool. Thanks, Charlie. Mike, number three from Emperor Captain Delta Zulu. What's up? I'm a little behind on episodes, but I'm listening to 423 right now. And I wanted to throw in some data points, both N90 and Y90. So New York, Traycon and Bradley approach. One's a level 12. Bradley's a level eight. Have letters to airmen supporting practice approaches at their satellites. New York Traycons was just reissued a few weeks ago on February 3rd and Bradley's expires in May, but I imagine they'll reissue when the time comes. I also have to say that during my instrument training, New York never turned me down for approaches and 99% of the time they were nice too. I hear this every time I go in there. I don't know if the nice part's always the case. They're a little bit rough around the edges sometimes. If you're from there though, if you're from there, yeah, it might just seem nice. Yeah. They do. They do practice approaches. They do the VFR tag ups for tours over the city. They accommodate aircraft that don't want to fly over the water. Like I hear them doing all those things. So they're not the big bad Bravo that you're expecting when you hear all the stories or see the dramatic videos online. They're really good. I think they do a great job. Delta Zulu continues. If someone hasn't mentioned it in four flight, you'll find the letter to Elmer. We have, we talked about this where you can find them in the airport tab and the procedures. I searched a few other airports and found that Philly, Newark, Atlanta and Boston all have, all offer letters to Elmer to their satellites for the practice approaches as well. Bottom line, if the big dogs do it, what excuse could any facility have not to? Cheers. Delta Zulu. Amen. I can't see you smiling, but I feel like you're feeling a little bit vindicated. Yes. Right now, cigarette tower is closed. Oh yeah, you told us you would update us on how that procedure is going. How are you handling this? Is it just like prison airport now? Or do you have to listen to this frequency all day? No, we do not listen to the CTF. Oh, thank God. That would be such a nightmare. There were like three in the pattern, you know. Now, sometimes the, the soup will have it keyed up quietly back at the soup desk, but it gets to be too much. And you can't be reading a frequency. You can't be reading a clearance on a CTF frequency. No. So why would we, why would you still be monitoring it? What is the does the ATIS say what to do when you want your clearance? Does it give a number to call? How are, what are they doing? There's no ATIS. That doesn't work. So for aircraft airborne, they get the ATIS at triad. Okay. But if you're on the ground, you're not getting the ATIS at triad, unless you have digital. But most of the customers don't. So they're calling on the phone or they're just departing. Because it's echo now. Go ahead. Yeah. The problem is the proximity to the Charlie, depending on which way they go. Anyway, it's been kind of a mess. But if I go out of there today and I pull up for a flight, is it going to say like, hey, it's a, tower's closed. It's class echo. If you're going south, you know, to part the airport and turn west before calling a triad approach. Is it saying anything like that to stay out of the five final box? Because that could be a really terrible place to be. It could be. But no, it doesn't, to my knowledge, it doesn't say anything like that. Okay. How has it been? Has it been a total pain? How like, you have a whole strip bay of IFR departures, they're just coming off or are they usually getting releases? The jets most, the jets usually get releases, but not always. Everybody else pretty much, if the weather's good enough, they've just taken off and gotten it in the air. But normally we were clearing aircraft for practice approaches into there. And I did that yesterday, not really, I just sort of out of habit, you know, and realized, well, there's a jet inbound at the same time an IFR jet. So I just, I went back and told that person, your approach clearance is canceled. You can fly the practice approach, maintain VFR, squawk VFR unchanged advisory approved. Like, so we've had, we have had to kind of, you know, change it up a little bit where before when the tower was open, we, we would have been totally fine doing that. But now, not so much. So stay tuned. Delta Zulu, there may be changes coming on the horizon for the airports that haven't gotten around to renewing their letters yet. The airport that hasn't gotten around, the one facility that hasn't gone around to renewing their letter, the shame of the NAS really. I want to just play devil's advocate for a minute. Up until very recently, and due to feedback given to this show, I didn't realize that triad wasn't unique. I thought that our letters to airmen, the one that expired was an anomaly. I didn't think it was normal. Yeah, I didn't know that every one. It even existed, let alone that it expired. And it, you know, now we've, no, no, no, everybody has one and they, they keep renewing them. Oh, why? Why would they do that? Everybody be patient. I think things will slowly come around. This happens, the timing of this is coincident with the 7110 and the rules changing for practice approaches. And I think that impacted some facilities readiness and willingness to update the LTA. And maybe there's a positive change coming in those places. I hope so. Did I say that politically correct? Yeah. Okay. We just left out the part where it's required. Right. Yes, it does say in the management order that the LTA is required. Just land. It does say that. It doesn't say that you have to list every airport. Nope. I guess you technically could have a letter that said, we're not doing any airports. And that would be very hard to explain because it would be super hard to explain considering places like Seattle and in 90 and all of these busy places are doing it and saying cleared approach. And your list is zero. A facility that whose bread and butter is training general aviation. And training controllers. You're going to do that until you retire. That's what you will be doing. Right. Now you could say that at a lot of facilities now, but that is all part of that. Yeah. We won't beat that horse again today, but thank you for sending the feedback. Delta Zulu, stay tuned. Yes. All right. We do our best to respond to support feedback and let you know when you will be on an upcoming show. Aging anything before the chat? I do not. Closing out episode 428 of opposing bases air traffic talk from your hotel and alpha golf. Goodbye, everyone. 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.