OB422: Navigating IFR Frequency Land, Part 1

the community of controllers cannot control what comes out of that person's mouth when they key up. It's super frustrating and it happens on a daily basis where you're in the TRECON and somebody says something on frequency and everyone else goes, what did you just say? 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, January 28th, 2026, episode 422 on today's show. We'll jump right into the coffee bravo, clear up check-in confusion and answer more of your aviation questions. What's up, Beji? Hello, hello, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Yes. What's new in the neighborhood? We're still covered in ice in the neighborhood. I asked too. I made the colossal mistake of while the wintery mix that is gracing my driveway was capable of being shoveled. I did not. Me too. And it is now not capable of being shoveled. Only the sun will remove this. Is your house south facing? Is it blocked by the? The front of the house is sort of north. Right. The worst possible place for sun in the wintertime. And then there's trees, even though they're not full of leaves right now, they do shade it somewhat. Let's remind everybody what happened recently here. I'm sure there are other places in the country that are experiencing this. We were forecast or they thought we could get a lot of snow. We did not get. We thought we were going to get a lot more ice coming out of the sky. That also did not happen, which is great. Not as much as they thought could happen. Right. But we did get that wintery, icy mix that has since been walked on, driven on. And now it's packed into this wet, turns into ice overnight. And now it's just like solid sheet of ice on this tree. Yes. And it's not getting warm enough during the day to really do anything. Right. And if you want to make fun of us because we live in the south and they do treat roads here, that seems to have worked on the bigger roads. I did venture out. They put this pretreatment on there. It's like a saltwater mix of some sort. But they don't do secondary roads. So if you have to turn more than twice from a highway to get to your house, you have your own ice. You're on ice and you need the sun. That's just the way it is here. That's the way it is. And usually after these events, we have some warmer temperatures. I think it gets above freezing for like 10 minutes today. Right. Yesterday, the around freezing temperatures did help. The pavement warmed up and it made it worse for it this morning, but there's progress being made in the removal of an inch of ice, which I spent the better part of yesterday getting off my driveway. It's one inch ice blocks at a time. Just move them off the driveway. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you live way out in the boonies though, for me, my drive to work, 98% of it is on dry pavement. What's the runway situation? We have one. One out of the three surfaces. Yes. Black. You could see it. It looks normal. I have not been to the tower, but yes, I think it's dry. Yes. Okay. I have not viewed the runway. I'm guessing the other ones have ice and snow on them. Yeah, they're covered up. No way they're getting that. That's next spring's project. Cigarette is still closed. Really? Yes. Wait, wasn't that planned beforehand? Was that an organized repavement thing? No. Oh. Because 422 is also closed. Oh. So they're just not doing work? Not doing it. Coat factory is open. Okay. Sky specimen wouldn't have it. They wouldn't have it just not open. Okay. What other satellites are closed? Let me think about the ones that are open. Davidson County is open. Twin Lakes is open. I think Silor City opened yesterday. For days though, for a couple days, the only ones were Davidson and Coat Factory. Maybe Race Track North is open. Okay. I can't remember the whole list. We have it in the Traycon readily available. Sure. But not a lot of flying happening then. It has been the slowest Traycon days I have seen in a long, long time. Very slow. Oh, that's good to get a little bit of a break. Yeah. I made it through five days of reserve without being called. That's the first time that's happened to me in a long time. Wow. I did not pick up a trip. I stuck around to make sure I was prepared to help the family get through a no power situation. And it turned out my services were not needed. We kept our power. Yes, thankfully, yes, we did. And our water kept working, all the things. Right. Anyway, well, I'm glad we both survived this. Just in time for another storm this weekend. Yes, allegedly more snow. Well, if it's snow, it's okay. We'll take it. Just snow ice. Just snow on top of this layer of ice snow. Just think about how easy that snow will be to get off of this layer of ice. It'll just slide right off. Shall we begin? Yes. All right. Since OB421, we have some new members on the Penguin Iceberg, the Penguin Club, Supercast Mike Juliet, and Romeo Victor Victor. And we got a PayPal drop from Charle Lima. I think we have an announcement in there too. If you've been enjoying the show, you can take it to the next level by joining our premium feed on Supercast. Supporters get on time episodes with no delays. Our back catalog access to our live stream recording like right now. And bonus audio like AG's Chinook episode released a few days ago. You get a direct line through us through our supporter only email and you keep the show community supported and ad free ad free everybody. You can learn more at opposingbasis.supercast.com. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Review and announcements. Review and announcements. Dun dun dun. Do you want the review? The review five stars naturally titled self report. Submitting this five star review for immunity purposes. The show has caused repeated deviations from assigned household tasks, sending emails into the Bravo without prior clearance and an unhealthy obsession with understanding center operations, despite being a GA pilot who will never see flight level three five zero. That's 35,000 feet for the uninitiated. My iceberg is dangerously overcrowded with penguins. Send help for more episodes from border geek. I like it. Excellent. Five stars. Quick to the point. Some penguin references and making fun of centers indirectly. Yep. Love it. You hit a lot there in a small little review. All right. Let's see. We got some announcements. You get number three. I don't know where number two went in there. I'm sure I got moved to another show. Probably the second half of this double hitter. All right. Al Fawiski is a commercial pilot. Congrats. Congrats. They sent a note with this. We're going to read it. He snuck some feedback in here. We've been allowing some of that recently. First and foremost, congratulations on eight years of sacrifice and hard work from you both and especially the support of your families as a newly minted commercial pilot. I know the support of your family will make or break your dreams. Your insight and insight of all the contributors to the show have been instrumental in growing my iceberg and keeping the penguins fat and happy. A little over two years ago at the ripe old age. I love this line. This is why I kept this. You have a writing in your future, my friend. This is so well done. Let me read it. A little over two years ago at the ripe old age of Top Gun Goonies, Back to the Future, Manual Transmissions and Watching a School Teacher Become a Hero while Sending into Space. I put my money where my mouth is and took my first flight lesson. Well, congrats on that. Very good. What a ride. I was hooked. As an aviation nerd, I was somewhat question mark familiar with planes and airport operations. I knew I needed more than just the regulations. I needed someone with experience that could interpret this new language. So I turned to a podcast and found one that had a sunset and two planes for their logo and I figured why not. Here I found two guys speaking this new language. I learned the meaning of IMC, VMC, light shows, light shows and ever critical flight following. As a recovering truck driver, many miles have been laid down listening to this show. It's been valuable to be able to go back and listen to previous shows. For example, when I can't tell the difference in accept or exempt when getting my IFR clearance and my little bug smasher at Western Slope Delta, you guys keep me entertained and engaged when I can't get to the plane. Blue skies, Alphaliske. Excellent. Cool. Very cool. You're never too young to take an aviation discovery flight. See, I said that. Don't roll your eyes at me. Okay, no, I just am trying to. I'm sorry. I'm not going to call myself old. Okay. I refuse. Okay, fine. So you can go out and do it. If you want to know what's the first thing you can do besides take a tour of your local air traffic facility, if you want to go fly, go to the airport, ask where the FBO is, that's the thing, and then the flight school inside of it and say I want to do a discovery flight and someone will help you. Yes. Discovery flight. Okay. You get number three. Number three. It was the number two. Okay. Number three, also known as the real number two, Treli Lima is a CFI. Congrats. Congratulations. Congratulations. Yay. Bottom line up front. How did you know this? How did I know that? Yes. I have 21 years in the military to think. So I did not know that one. And I went to go look just now. So the bluff. Yes. Just give me the one sentence of this whole entire interaction. Yep. Go for it. All right. CFI Check Ride Pass, DPE Availability is a problem. You guys rock. Excellent. That's it. That sums up this whole announcement. But I will continue on. Just passed my CFI Check Ride at the Fat Point Delta in the Sunshine State after seeing the seventh month wait for a CFI Check Ride date anywhere near my home airport under the Hollywood Bravo, I decided just bite the bullet and go to find a DPE wherever possible. Wow. After a nine hour Check Ride, I finally passed. What helped was seeing that the DPE, well definitely on the grumpier side, was an aviation lover and fierce advocate for quality instructors and good airmanship. Thank you both for being the voice in my head for the last two and a half years on my journey to this point. I'm excited to continue learning and now finally be able to assign the show as homework to my students. Cool. Thank you. Congrats. Yes, congrats. Part 61, civilian non-part 141 instructor Check Rides are known to be or could be very long. Long oral examinations and very long flights. And it sounds like you went through a very long one. Mm-hmm. That's too long. That's too much. It is too much, but you're stronger for it. Right. You're going to be a great instructor. Congratulations and keep us posted on your assigning of homework. If your students rebel, just get rid of them. Get new students. New students. You're done. I'm done with you. All right. Moving on. Oops, wrong button. Yes, I hit the wrong button. Time to feedback. All right. I'll get number one. There's only one. There's only one from Supercaster Papa Delta. After I turned 80 last year, my insurance company sent me a supplement that would be added to my renewal on January 2nd. It required me to have an experienced Mooney pilot with me. All right, let's pause and digest that. Insurance is dictating that for you to continue to fly the airplane you own and have been flying, you must have someone with you. Another pilot with Mooney experience. Hmm. Since 90% of my 615 hours in the last eight years have been solo flying all over the country, I had to sell my airplane. The buyer is a 737 captain for a regional airline who was introduced to flying at three years old by his grandfather in this exact Mooney. What? He grew up, got his license and has actually flown this airplane. So there's a picture of it. If you can put that up, get that on the screen for them to see this fancy Mooney. And while you digest what we were just told, this person has flown this plane before. This is how old planes are. Right. Oh, here it comes. Hang on. There we go. Excellent. Love the graphics. That's probably part of your logbook all over the country. Great. It's a beautiful looking airplane. And you sold it back to somebody who has experience in that airplane. Amazing. Oh, his grandfather, the person who bought it, his grandfather was the one who flew it. That's, I just want to let that simmer for a second. Hold on. What? Did I mishear that? The buyer is a 737 captain who was introduced to flying at three years old by his grandfather. Oh, in that plane. Wow. Oh, sorry. I'm scrolling. So he was three in that plane with his grandfather. Wow. I think that's a great story. It is a great story. And it could be a movie about it. It would be very emotional. It would have, you know, deep heartfelt music. There would be a montage of flying. Everyone would love it. Do you have any comments about, I feel sad for this pilot having to sell his airplane at this age, having all this experience. What do you think about that? I feel that way too. I don't, I don't want to tread on toes here on the insurance, you know, industry, but man, sometimes it feels like they just kind of run the show. So what if you just dropped insurance and said, okay, have a nice day? I'm not going to have it anymore. You can't tell me what to do. I own this plane. I'm going to fly it. And I suppose that's one avenue. I'm not sure. You just don't have insurance. I don't know. Is that like having a car where everybody's supposed to have insurance, except for the people that you have to pay for with your uninsured motorist's face? It seems like you would be allowed to carry liability. But not whole insurance. Right. Without this caveat. You know, eventually at some point, all of us have to stop doing the flying, the driving, all the things. So it sounds like you took this notice as, all right, now's the time. I don't want to do this. I don't want to participate in the, you know, bring another pilot along. How logistically impossible would that be? Yeah, right. Especially with personal flying. Oh, I'm just going to grab the neighbor. He happens. That's not a thing. So the insurance kind of knew, we'll make this seem like it's possible, but we know it's not. So you walked away from it. The plane is in good hands. You're keeping it's a relic alive, an older, amazing airplane. And I'm sure the new owner will get a lot of good use out of it. This story is mirrored in my story of buying this 99 Land Cruiser. Uh-huh. And the previous owner didn't really want to let it go. But their wife, the insurance company, said, you have to let it go. And so you are, you are worried about who gets it and will they take care of it. And I think here you can rest assured that it will be taken care of and loved. Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing the picture and Godspeed to you, my friend. All right. Moving on. Fans of Jet Music. All right. This week's show topic is going to be two parts. I don't think we've ever done this. Correct me if you think I'm wrong here. We're going to have this double header is going to be two parts of this feedback. One on this episode and one on the next one. So some of the things that you might be thinking we'll probably cover on the next one. You can sneak peek ahead if you want while I'm reading. And we're going to have to split this one up. This, even this one part is pretty long. So. Okay. Okay. Here we go. From, why didn't I put their initials on this? It's on the other one. Papa November from Super Gas. They're a Papa November. All right. Here we go. Let me scroll back up. Greetings, our HNAG newly minted Emperor Captain here. Just upgraded from the flightless bird tier. Well, thank you and thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for all you do for this community. After getting my private in 2012, I ended up taking a long break from flying. A bit more than a year ago, I decided to get back in the air. I completed a flight review with a large flight school operating out of the world's largest building Delta under the northern shelf of the coffee Bravo. And then began working towards my instrument rating. That's a great way to get back into flying. Start a new rating. Yeah. A couple of months ago, I was introduced to your show by another pilot at my non aviation related workplace. I started listening through your archive in reverse order, then went back a year and work forward. And I just met in the middle at OB 389. It's weird that that's the middle, but right. I try I was trying to work that out as well. But you know, however you got there, your show has given me a much better understanding of what controllers are trying to accomplish and how controllers work with each other. My ability to anticipate what will likely happen next has gone way up, which makes it much easier to stay ahead of the plane and stay on top of the comms. Thank you. Now to the actual feedback and OB 389, there was discussion of VFR practice approaches and some recent changes to how controllers were handling them in a different episode. I recall a comment that not providing service for VFR practice approaches will likely cause more flight training, more training flights to file actual IFR flight plans. I believe you agreed with that assertion. I think so. Yes. Related to that and yet another episode, there was a discussion regarding how to best file IFR flight plans for training flights that involve multiple approaches at multiple airports. I thought I would share my experiences with this particular flight school and operating under the coffee bravo. All right, news flash. This is not slow airspace. This is busy, complex, busy airport, busy air airports underneath these shelves. And these controllers have their fill of VFR and IFR GA traffic in addition to airline. They do it all here. Is that fair? Yes. Assessment. All right. So far in my instrument trading, I have never requested a VFR practice approach. We always file IFR flight plans for our training flights, get our clearance that's CRAFT, our routing, our altitude, our frequency and our transponder code clearance from clearance delivery and fly real IFR. Sometimes we have to hold for a release at that runway, but I don't recall ever waiting more than a couple of minutes. Okay. Okay. Okay. The opposite of this would be going out on VFR practice flights and requesting a VFR practice approach on your way into a field and staying out of the IFR system per se until you want to do an approach. This is a clean IFR approach to all of this. Right. Okay. In terms of how we file IFR until recently, if we were staying in the Coffee Bravos approach area, we would file a round trip flight plan and list the airports where we intended to fly approaches as part of the route. This might look like departure from airport A, destination, same airport, airport A and the filed route, airport B and airport C. I have a picture of that on the next screen. If you want to get that going, you can see those airports. Okay. I'm on it. I tried to use made up airport names. We just did that with letters, but it turns out that K, Kilo, Alpha, Alpha, Alpha and Kilo Bravo, Bravo, Bravo are in fact real places. So I gave up, please anonymize these as you see fit. All right. The only people that can see these names are the ones in the chat. The airport A is in the upper right hand corner north of the busy Bravo Airport. And the intermediate airports that you want to go to approach to that are Southwest in the middle of basically halfway to airport B is airport C on the way back. Easy enough. Yep. Okay. All right. This was one of the valid methods I believe you mentioned on your show as long as the flight would remain within a single Treykons airspace. All right. I put some blue here for us to kind of stop and talk here. If you filed A to A with B and C attempts in between and you stayed in their airspace, this is totally a workable solution. Yes. I agree. The first tower, which is a towered airport, the airport A is a Delta. And if even if you were leaving from airport B or C, this would still work because the original approach controller would see you coming back to that. They would see it on a strip and they don't have to automate it to another facility. How do you find out if these airports are in the same local knowledge number one, but the approach facility listed on a non-towered airport should be the same if you want to try to match them up. I want to stay in the sandbox with this approach facility. That's how you can do that with the approach facilities that are listed on the on the plate. And the more you fly in that area, the more you realize, hey, if I go too far this way, I go into another facility and this kind of clogs up the automation mess. All right. So let's reiterate. If you don't have to flash it to a facility that touches us at Triad, that's Duke, Mountain, Metroplex or Vietnam, if you use as long as you don't have to flash it, you can keep them in house. This way, what do you mean by flash it? Automate. Handoff. Yeah. Flash is just making it blink on their scope so that they can take the handoff, which is a way we describe what automation actually is. Yeah. We're good so far? Yes. All right. On a recent flight, we received feedback from the approach controller that if we intend to do an approach at an airport, we should file that airport as the destination. All right. So up until this point, they've been filing a to a with B and C in the middle. Now this controller in the middle of a flight says file airport B as the destination. I'm gonna let you digest that for a second. Okay, can I I got a scroll up so I can see? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna dump this off. Okay. No, yeah, that was good for that. Being up there for a minute. Okay. We're at the paragraph with the flight supervisor. I'll read you'll catch up as you see it. Okay. All right, our flight supervisor who is basically the chief flight instructor at our at our site, the school has several sites in the region, happened to be in the air and on frequency when we receive this feedback from the controller, my instructor talked to that flight supervisor on the ramp after the flight, which prompted them to call the Treycon for guidance. We're gonna kind of get into some of the things that this advice, let's just talk about the advice. The approach controller said, Hey, if you want to do an approach at airport B, just put that as your destination. Okay, but okay. I'm sure I didn't mess something here. Okay, go ahead. All of these are contained inside of coffee approach. Correct. Not even a boundary airport. Doesn't sound like it. No. Okay. Yeah, I don't agree with that. Okay. What that's what this part of this episode is going to be. Okay. All right. I put a note in here, your mileage may vary on this. So use caution. It works, but it does require some additional conversation. Once you get on with the approach controller, we're going to talk about that. All right, they continue, I believe he spoke to a supervisor at the Treycon and the guidance they provided is to file the first airport where we intended an approach as the destination, no round trip, no second or third flight plan, presumably we would then communicate our intentions after the first approach to the controller while in the air. Which I would hope they knew beforehand. This is why I'm not in love with this, but this is what this approach facility wants you to do. We're going to talk about why today. You're rolling your eyes a little bit. Well, I just am trying to wrap my head around the reasons for this. Okay, let's just continue on. Okay. My first concern in this is are they issuing a new clearance? So you got your first clearance from a Delta airport, they cleared you to airport B. You're IFR, we're not doing very far practice approaches. So when you go tell this approach controller, hey, I want to come off of this airport and go do two more approaches, one at airport C and one back at A where I started, I would think they would be a little bit annoyed by that because they're going to have to re-clear you. You need a clearance. And if they're not, it's wrong. Correct. If they're not re-clearing you, it's not correct. Okay. On my most recent flight, in an effort to make my strip as informative as possible to the controllers who would see it, you just, this is where you could fill in the blues here as I read it. This is how this person filed to try to appease this advice they got mid-flight. Okay. Your departure airport is airport A, class Delta. They filed to their first airport B that they want to do an approach at. And then they filed an alternate, which was the second approach airport. Controller has no idea. Zero. No idea that they, that you've done that. The second alternate they filed was returning to the departure airport. So back at airport A. Not seen by the controller. Right. And the filed route they filed was the initial approach fix of the first approach we intended to do. So airport A to a five letter fix to airport B, do you think the controller can see that five letter fix? Not the one in the Delta, but the one downstairs who's working radar? Yes. Okay. Yes. When a proposal off of triad for a flight like this inside or outside of the airspace prints out, tower says clear for takeoff, scans it down. This flight plan comes out of the printer. It is all of the points in the route. Now that is from the departure printer. Out of the NAS printer, down in the radar room, and our rival strip will also print out to the, to the destination if in this case airport two or your first approach airport, it would print out a strip with that airport. As soon as the airplane tags up off of airport A. Yes. And there is going to be nothing else on it. It's just going to say the arrival airport. Yes. No alternate. No second alternate. No nothing. So now you put remarks. Now downstairs and radar. Now this is a little bit different because this isn't the same facility, but I try add now that controller is going to have an arrival strip that comes out right after you tag up for this other airport. Now we typically toss that. Right. It gets tossed. And then the departure strip, which is probably going to be the one they hold on to the whole time. Yeah. All right. I'm assuming they have some either, you know, stryplis electronic way of doing that. Yes. It's probably, it's probably like a rolling call. Like we have a cigarette, somebody calls the airport. Yeah. There's a row of strips sitting there from the proposals off of that airport. They reach over, grab it. It's going to have the filed. Okay. So request release November 1, 2, 3. He's filed to Wilmox. There's the fix they listed on here. All right. It would be on there. Yeah. Okay. All right. I wasn't sure of that. All right. In the remarks, they write IFR training and then the three airports in three letter identifiers with one space between. Do you like this? Yes. Okay. Will that all fit? Do we have a characterization count here? Do we know what will fit in remarks that don't cut off? Man, it's, it's weird because on some strips, it's depending on what this strip is for. Like what is the purpose of the strip? Isn't it a rival strip? Is it a departure strip? And some have more room than others because that arrival strip, the characters, some are taken up by the arrival airport. They're down there on that same line. Okay. I'm pretty sure. Is BK in the, if BK is in the chat, he'll tell me, he'll tell me one way or the other. I have a lampshade behind me with a bunch of strips. I was just trying to find an example real quick. Okay. But there is, there is, just know that there are formats of strips that cut off. So you're going to lose, but it's like 13 to 15 or 13 somewhere around there. Mm hmm. Characters. And they don't let you use commas. It's just spaces or is a period. There's, it's just words. You can't put punctuation. Yeah. As, as abbreviated as you can make it and it would still make sense. Perfect segue for you to go underneath the map and continue there. Okay. Under the map. Just as an example here in the remarks, if it did say IFR and spelled out the whole word training, I would, I would put that into TNG or something like that. Mm hmm. Just to try to shorten it up. All right. Here we are. Putting IFR training in the remarks seems to be accepted practice at my flight school. Yeah. Practice approaches, kind of like I said, PRAC, APPS. You could even drop one of those P's I think, then the airports should also work. That should work. We've talked about in that remarks section, if you have room, you can even do, well, see, this is, this is a little bit different because this method requires that those airports be in yeah, your flight plan. And then you just list the approaches to the runways. And it becomes super obvious what you're trying to do. They continue adding airports to the remarks was one of the suggestions I believe you made on the show when discussing how to file training flights, which is why I put those after the IFR training in the remarks. Yes. I think that's you're, you're at least conveying that this is not an A to B and we're, and it's done. Mm hmm. Because that is the part of this policy from approach control that I don't understand. Mm hmm. I don't like. Internet searches seem to imply that the alternate airports I put on my flight plan do not appear on the strip. The controller C is this correct? Yes. They have no visibility regarding alternates. That isn't entirely true. We can go in and there are fields that you can go and type in and access the rest of this information, but it is not nor, that is not normal. How many people would know how to do that? Of you? Yeah. And then even then, I have to, I usually do it so infrequently that I have to go look up what the command is. It's just so uncommon. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, we won't get into that about the, the, here's the, here's, here's what comes up with pilots when we say, yeah, we don't, we don't see the alternate and we don't see all of that. They're like, well, then what is the point? Why are we doing this? Which is a great question. It's not that it's invisible, it's just that. How have we said this before? There's a, there is a difference between what is a regulatory requirement for you to file. We're all, we're not going to get into the weeds on when you have to file an alternate. But if you're putting airports in those fields, use caution. Because if it came down to it where you were Nordo in IMC and we're wondering what your plan is, and we did have access to this information, we're relying on that to formulate a plan, even though it's loose and we're going to clear the airspace the best we can, we still have, if we did have the ability to get to that alternate airport on paper and see like, okay, here's their plan or covered up here, there's snow, the weather went crap, like instantly, I think they're going to go there. I would think that you would want something that was actually a real plan. So I would just caution the user here, if you're using alternate fields that are legal requirements for certain flights, I would be very careful about just throwing them out there as random, like this is where I want to go. If your intent is you think the controller can see it and they'll just know, oh, that means they want to go do an approach there. No, that is false. Even at this airport, I don't think they're looking this up. And you're going to have to have a conversation when you take off. Hey, our plan is to go to airport B, we want to come back here, we want to shoot a couple of approaches here and here. All right. And if it's the same controller the whole time, no big deal. But this can get somebody in the background, an attorney is saying, be very careful what you put in that alternate field, especially if it's actually required to be filed. Yeah. Yeah, great point. Yes, use caution. I think I think I could just pretty comfortably say a blanket statement of don't put intended approach intended practice approach airports in those fields. I agree with that. Just don't put them in there because nobody's seeing it. It's not accomplishing what you hope it would accomplish. And it could be super confusing if something did happen. Yes. So let's clarify. In the context of what we're talking about, you're going on an IFR flight to do practice approaches, those fields are being misused. I think that's a great point. Don't do that. Yeah. Especially since the controller can't see it, it doesn't help them paint this picture. No. Okay. We stopped enough on that one. We have more to talk about. Okay. Keep going. The internet is also not able to reliably answer how many characters can be included in the remarks and still be visible to the controller. Would the controllers have seen the airports I added to the remarks? Yes. I think so. They at least would have seen practice approaches or instrument training. However, it was, I don't remember now how it was listed in there. IFR training flights. IFR training flights. They would have seen something to at least if it cut off, they could go and request the whole thing. Yeah. Tell us the rest of the story. It got cut off by our printer. Right. Okay. Where, yeah. They might see the first, you know, the first one or the first couple and that's at least enough of a prompt to go and look up the whole thing if there is more. Yeah. It is such a disconnect in like, I want to convey this important information, which is why, and I don't know if all of it is getting conveyed through this remark. There's really no way of knowing except doing an actual test with an actual flight plan. You could do that file. Do the same flight plan and start typing a sentence. I want to see when this cuts off, when I call you for my clearance, tell me when this got cut off. Put that in your remarks. You know, hey, this isn't a real flight. Remove it. I just wanted to see, you know, for our own sake, what we can fit in here. Yeah. Put in the remarks. Yeah, exactly. Something like that. Test one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And just tell me where it, and just tell me where it cut off. Yeah. Be prepared. Now file something within like 30, 45 minutes and then call them right away so this doesn't get lost in the shuffle of, you could call the tower, the numbers available. Right. Or call them for the clearance and say, what does it say? Right. All right. There's a few more on this, on this flight, we'll receive no feedback from the controllers about how we filed. So presumably they were okay with it, regardless of what they were able to see on the strip. That's a giant assumption. Here's the big picture from this. If you had one controller who made advice, it's possible that that controller's advice was contrary to what every other controller in the building expects. It's just what they want. Exactly. That happens at Triad. Exactly. The community of controllers cannot control what comes out of that person's mouth when they key up. It's super frustrating. And it happens on a daily basis where you're in the tracon and somebody says something on frequency and everyone else goes, what? Did you just say? What are you talking about? Come on. That could very well have been this situation. Because for me, I don't understand what harm is it. Just please, someone explain from the Coffee Bravo approach or any other approach control, wherein these airports are contained within your airspace that you don't want them in the route of flight block. What is the reason you would not want that? I just don't understand what it could possibly be. We're going to catch a few of these points at the end here and this conversation continues. I haven't. I haven't. Look at that blue list down there and see if there's anything that jumps out that we didn't get it. So thanks again for all you're doing for the aviation community. Apologies if this feedback is longer than it should be, please feel free to extract whatever bits, if any, you think would be of interest to your listeners, pop in November. PS, I just ordered some DP armor, i.e. an OB quarter zip in preparation for a future instrument check ride in the event that I acquire enough skill to take one. All right. I think we touched on a lot of these. There might be a couple that jump out at you. Let's kind of zoom out in the context of what was said in this. This does go a little bit against what we suggested. We do like A to A airport with BC and D in the route of flight. That is helpful for us at Triad. It sounds like this controller and maybe there are a few, including a supervisor who said, hey, file A to B and then just tell us what you want to do. They have created a little bit of work for themselves from a legal perspective. You still need a clearance to B and C and back to A. So you need from B to C and C to A. You would need that. You would still have to rely on this information getting passed to the next controller, which that's not a short flight and they take a minute to do these approaches. The likelihood of you keeping the same controller the whole time is pretty low. Unless you're low and it's like a satellite sector that covers all of this. But even then, I could see it being divided into a north south and east west, some sort of... And by time too. They get up, new controller comes over. Yeah, exactly. Hey, who's this? Hey, airport, 12 o'clock, 10 miles reported inside. All right, are you guys going to cancel? Wait, what? Why are we canceling? We want to go back. You got to retell the story. So, being careful how to say this. I love that somebody spoke up and said, if this is what you want to do, we would prefer you do it this way. Even if everybody in the room was like, why are you talking? Shut up. At least they tried to give you something. All right. All right, my closing note. Is there anything in that list that we didn't cover? Why he never requests VFR? Oh. To some coaches. Is this because of the change that took place where maybe you're not really getting the full service? Or they had an instructor that sees the benefit of being on IFR the whole time. Let's do it. Let's be in the system and... In this airspace, in this geographic region. You would severely limit the days where you could go do this VFR. If your policy was, we're never going to do IMC approach because it's frequently IFR all the time, especially this time of year. Okay. Here, I'll ask you. You're the controller in this situation. You're one of the other camps in this facility. You heard this announcement made and you're like, this is terrible. What are your concerns when that guy comes off the airport and you see this? It's a training airplane that you guys work every day. It's a flight school. You know the airplane is just like the small list of airplanes you have at Triad that you know are training. What are your main concerns knowing that they only filed airport B? That this is not what they're really wanting to do. Now, in this case, I can discern from the remarks that there is some other thing going on, but now does your clearance from departure Delta match? No. Why would departure Delta clear you? They wouldn't. They're not. They're not. So how would you keep track of where you cleared them to? Once a Tuesday? Like, all right, I'm clearing you to airport B. When you come off from your low approach, we'll clear you to airport C or would you clear them all the way and just get it all done? See, that's then that's super weird because now you've departed. You're past your fix. You're past your clearance limit. Right. And I'm in this weird like flying without a clearance phase of flight. So then you're sort of forced to do it before you drop off to that first airport. Before I let you go to CTAF, I have to clear you to this second airport. It's just this weird like why when it could from the very beginning solve all the problems by having all of these airports in the route of flight saying cleared back to your departure airport as filed makes it super streamlined. Then everybody knows what you're doing. No automation is required. That's a key here. That is a key. Do not miss this. These airports need to be contained inside of this approach control because then automation doesn't matter. I can type any tag. I can put stupid tag and put it on the scope and hand it off to any sector inside the building. No nothing. No flight plan, nothing. That does not exist outside of the building. So I, you know, if you're going from A to B and B is outside approach controls airspace, yes, file one destination. That is when we advocate for filing multiple flight plans. Yes. You're stretching your legs out farther to get to that first place and you know a different facility is going to work that approach. Then file one and don't file back to the other because it becomes a huge pain. But inside of a facility, I do not understand the resistance to this. There's good news though. That's my little wrap up of this. There's good news. Oh yay. By what you've said and the advice given over frequency and the fact that someone was able to get a person on the phone to talk about it, it seems like they're training friendly. Oh yeah. It totally sounds that way. Yes. So this is what I'm tasking you with. Set up a school tour with that supervisor, the one that told you this as soon as possible, call them, get them on the phone. Hey, how many people can we bring from our flight school? Oftentimes the weather's crap here. We want to come like sit and watch and ask all of our questions and see how your airspace is divided. What happens to a data tag, an actual bleep on the screen when they do practice approaches. Just get all of that stuff out. Find the person who gave the advice over the frequency if you can and end all of the assumptions in one visit. Now everybody at your school, you know, disseminate to the ones who can't come. Everybody's on the same page. This is what they told us to do. This is why, which is the big important part of all this. Why do they want us to do this? AG and RH think this is weird, but they're going to explain to us why they like this here. What are the implications with I&F, our clearance? What's our clearance limit? What are we expecting to get? What happens if we stop? What happens if we do a low approach? All those things, just get it all out. And some of those questions we're going to answer on part two of this, but I encourage you to go sit and meet these people. They seem like they want to help you. Yes. Yes, I totally agree. I totally agree. You're going to get the answers to this. And why did this person tell us to do it this way? And why would we not do it the other way? They're going to shut the door and they're going to be like, look, okay. We got it. Okay. You got the guy. That guy. Okay. We're sorry. We love you. He's off the way. We love him too. We love him too, but there's some misaligned, you know. He did that on its last day. He knew it would create a ton of extra work for us. He retired. He wouldn't create, it would create an entire OB episode. Of confusion and chaos. Okay. We're going to cover more of this. Okay. But I think now that's a good place to end. All right. You good with that? I'm good. All right. Pop in November. Great feedback. We'll continue on the next part on the next show. Moving on. I hit the right button. Yay. Hey. Feedback time. Feedback. All right. This one's audio from Supercaster Charlie Papa. Happy New Year, gentlemen. I did a very long 30 hour cross country over the holidays and had two questions for the pod. Thank you for sending in audio. We're going to play it. And please don't call us a pod. I don't know why that word just bothers me. You don't like that. No, I don't. All right. All right. The show? The pod. The show. I'm trying to find the alternate. You didn't list it. This will be a part of every feedback from now until forever. Yeah. So I'm going to stop there. I'm ready to play on the audio when you are. I am ready. One, two, three. Hey, RHH and AG. Happy New Year. I have two questions for you over Christmas and New Year's. Did a cross country from the Penguin Bravo all the way over to around the Sun Devil Bravo and heard a lot of new things I don't hear in the Northeast that much or haven't picked up on or maybe just a lot of time on the radios. But one question was, I noticed a lot of commercial, but I guess what seemed like commercial pilots when they did check-ins, they'd mentioned the heading they were on. I don't know if that was just around instrument departures or is SOP for airlines. I was curious if that's something as GA pilots should be doing too and we're passed over a Ferrata heading instead of direct to a fix. So any thoughts or comments there would be interesting. The other question I had was sort of just if I did anything wrong. I was with Sun Devil approach into the Bravo and one approach controller handed me off to another and I was also seen to guard. And so I flipped over from approach one to approach two and was about trying to get a word in. Maybe five seconds went by and then over guard, a different approach controller told me to switch to, if I'm up, on guard to switch to a different approach. So I was called approach three. I was wondering, did I, you know, is that a, is that happened often? Is that that I should have just somehow butted in on the first one I was switched over to or was this maybe kind of a supervisor or, you know, they kind of just let things get a little loose with the the piston flying into their, into their big, big Bravo airport. So yeah, curious there and sort of, I didn't get, you know, no, no one was upset afterwards. No pilot deviation or take a number or anything. But I was just sort of, I was confused, you know, surprised to be kind of switched frequencies over guard in such a short period of time. So yeah, help. Yeah, would love any perspectives on another of those two questions. Thanks a lot. Excellent. Thank you for sending the audio and taking the time to hit record and do that. Go, you get first dibs. All right, the heading at check in. There could be a lot of things going on here. Probably, well, one could be weather. It's dynamic. There's a lot of vectoring happening around weather. And instead of having to coordinate every plane over and over and over, hey, this guy's on a 120, hey, now they're on a 110, hey, now this guy's back on a 120, you know, whatever it is, instead, because dynamic coordination, which is, I call the center and I say, hey, all of my south departures, you know, going out the caravan are going to be on a 180, climb at 12, your control. Okay, great. Well, that works until it doesn't. And now I got to have, you know, maybe I got to push farther to the west and now my heading needs to be a 210 or a 220. Well, now I got to call back and say, okay, now I need a 220 instead of doing that. Sometimes we call up and say, hey, they're just going to be on a heading. They're going to be on a heading climb to 12, your control. Fat part's important. Your control is super important. Yes. Give control, get control all the time. Yes. Okay, so that I assign you a heading, Flighting 220, contact Atlanta Center, check in with your heading so that they know what you're doing. And I didn't have to call them. You have to call them anyway. Saying in two extra words is not a huge deal, but it keeps me from getting in their ear. So that could be going on. It could be that is the SOP or the LOA that assigned heading and you tell them to check in. That could totally be the procedure. I don't know. If you're a VFR and they have no idea where you're going, it could be helpful for them, the next controller. You know, they don't have enough data on the screen to see what direction you're generally headed. It could be helpful for them. Yeah. And in VFRs that don't file, you know, you don't have to, you could file A to B, with 300 miles in between. Every controller doesn't know where every airport is. And if you're navigating over, you know, around weather, could have been the reason. Hey, we turn to a 90 heading to avoid some weather. All right, contact Duke on this frequency, let him know what heading you're on. Let's him know that now that controller hears you and they know you're not technically on course, you're just maneuvering for whatever. That's a great point because so now you check in with Triad or you check in with Duke, I'm sorry, and you're on a 90 and they don't know what the airport is, which is the most believable thing that we've said in this entire show. Like there are six airports east of Duke, okay? You could possibly be going to. Before you get to ocean. Right. Before you run out of land. And so telling Duke that, hey, we're not direct, I'm on a heading to do this thing is important. It is important. So yeah, but for airlines or whoever else this is to constantly check in with their heading is probably not super normal, but it. I could give a little bit of, yeah, European story on that. Oh, crying out loud. I think their L. O. A. is between countries allow them to ship on a heading and they'll say check in on your heading. Okay. Which okay. Now they may not have the ability to push the landline button and get in someone's speaker. I'm not, I'm not sure how they're set up. Right. So instead of me actually dialing a phone number and waiting for someone to pick up, which it may be that way, I'm telling you, you could help me a lot here when you check in because you're not direct to a fix on the flight plan. I don't want to coordinate or can't coordinate or whatever. Check in on your heading. That happens. Similar to the IFR thing that we talked about at the beginning of that, but yeah. Second question, getting told to change frequencies on guard. I could wrap this up real quickly, probably, and you stop me if you think it's too simplified. Somebody could have given you the wrong frequency and the controller doesn't have the ability to go dial that frequency and go get you per se. Oh no, I sent them over to, you know, 122.6. They can't dial that in. There's no mechanism to do that except for guard. And we've said it a thousand times on this show for GA pilots. And if you've never been taught this, I understand. Outside of getting weather or listening to the CTAB from the airport you're on your way to, you can have guard up on your second comm and listen only mode. And it can be the day that, it could be the day you get somebody reaches out and tries to talk to you on it. Because that is the only method the controller has if they sent you into La La Land. Huh. Now, it turns out you were on a frequency that you could hear other people. So no one ever lost you or put you somewhere where they couldn't find you. But it sounds like somebody was trying to get you. Why'd you say that? Go get them. On what? Exactly. They're already gone. I just think it's amazing that you were on guard. Yeah, good for you. Crowd noise. Yeah. That's excellent. For the GA world, that almost never happens. Almost never. It is very rare. So well done. I agree with RH. A trainee or someone made up the wrong frequency. And before the trainer could make it stop, they said, what? What frequency did you just say? You said, where? Uh, it sounds like you went to the, you know, nobody was upset because nobody knew anything bad happened. You were there. You never lost touch with anybody. If you're a pilot and you want, and you go check in on a new frequency and no one's there because the trainee gave you the wrong one. It's a frequency that's 400 miles away that nobody could hear you on. All right. Go back to the one you were on relatively quickly so they can still hear you. Hey, I think I got the wrong frequency. Where should I be? Very important point that I don't know that we've ever touched on. Okay. Keeping that previous frequency somewhere on a piece of paper, uh, in the secondary, or on the flip side of whatever standby is now, depending on your comfort. Yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah. On the standby, keep it there until you have established that you are in the right place. Don't go changing that. Yeah. Like, hey, I know there, I know this airspace. They're going to hand me off to this place next. I'm going to dial that in. Man, I'm so ahead of it. And then you realize you're alone. Yeah, and pretty soon you're just flying around in frequency land. And if that goes on long enough, this would be a great amusement park. If that situation goes on long enough, now going back to the standby isn't even going to help, you're too far away. Now you're really lost in frequency land. You better have guard. Yeah. And now you're calling random facility B. Hey, we're out here by ourselves. I have been that person. You're where? At 4,000? Oh no. All right. Very good. Thank you for sending the audio and supporting the show. Yes. Number two. Do you get this one or me? I think you should go. That's fine. From Supercast Alpha Sierra. Hey, fellas. Alpha Sierra here from the busy 100 year Delta nestled beneath the blue Sephir Bravo with some feedback regarding the permeation of opposing basis gear out in the aviation world. At my flight school, I try to be around at the start of all our students check rides to introduce myself and say hello to the DPs. Excellent. I love that. Recently, we sent an applicant to a DPE who had not who we had not used before. And on check ride day, I happened to be wearing my OB hat when I walked into the room to introduce myself to DPE was wearing the same hat. Your student is 100% passing. Okay. One, the same hat. There aren't but 10 of each hat. Correct. So the odds of this is just unbelievable. It's unbelievable. After we exchanged a quick head nod of mutual respect at the acknowledgement of our hats and a handshake, he said that I was the first chief he's seen wearing OB gear and hope to see more. He said he regularly promotes your show to applicants and flight instructors, especially instrument applicants and CF double eyes, the applicant passes commercial check right. Of course he does. Congrats. Of course he did. Can't do chandels or lazy aids. Doesn't matter. Uh, where was I? I recently applied for the designation of master CFI by the National Association of Flight Instructors and put opposing basis episode 384 contributor on my list of accomplishments on my resume and can report that I am officially an NAFI master CFI. This is three announcements and ones. Congrats. Amazing. Similarly to the feedback I gave on your career day episode, I created a presentation for the FAST team that is I don't know what it stands for. FAA safety team. Oh, okay. It's a FISDO organization. An arm of the FISDO. An arm of the FISDO. That does training. I have worked with them before on local pilot briefings and a couple of different things. So a presentation for the FAST team for flight instructors about maintaining professionalism and continued growth during industry slowdowns and was invited to appear at the NAFI podcast, More Right Rudder, to give the presentation. Cool. During the pre-show briefing, the host and I had a great chat about Obi as she was a listener as well. Seeing a theme here. At some point, I think Obi will become a prerequisite for check rides, awards, and flying jobs. They say aviation is a small community and connections make a difference. I think that your show is an example of a community that is growing and making a meaningful, measurable difference in the aviation community. Keep it up, Alphsira. Cool. That's great to hear. I mean, I guess really that's why we started doing this. And keep doing it. Hopefully we're giving back to the aviation community. There was a line in here I wanted to spend a couple seconds talking about the industry and they put it in quotes, the slowdowns and professionalism and continued growth. And I'm one of my, well, I won't say one of my favorite instructor. The most valuable in terms of where I'm at today is a full-time instructor and she loves to teach. She loves doing her job and having great students and holding them accountable for being great pilots. And that's something that I think is easy to lose in a time where maybe you didn't think you'd be spending this much time on the instructor building, time building phase of your career because the airlines have gone back into, I think, accelerated still growth, but certainly a slowdown considering the past five or six years. So I think it's great that you're emphasizing that. It sounds like you're a full-time instructor. This is your job. This is your thing. And you want it to be done right. And I think that's great. Don't lose sight of, yes, you're building your time, but you're also building pilots. AG said that much better than I can say a few episodes ago. Your job isn't just to build time in your logbook. It's you're creating the next generation of pilots and doing that job with a smile on your face and trying to get better every time, just meeting a DPE. That seems like something that would be obvious and maybe it was 20 years ago. That's not the case now. That's not happening, but it shows that you care, you're invested, and you want your students to carry this attitude and responsibility forward. So good for you. Yes. Yes. Well done. All right. Anything to add? All right. We do our best to respond to supporter feedback and let you know when you'll be on an upcoming show. Closing out episode 422 of opposing basis air traffic talk. Romeo Hotel and Alpha Golf. Goodbye, everyone. Drop opposing basis 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.