OB426: LTA Variant, Airborne Transmission

I feel vindicated because I have argued for this service to be provided and plenty of controllers. The majority, the culture at our facility has shifted away from this to not providing it. Uh-uh. This is what other places are doing. Look at it. 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, February 18th, 2026, episode two of our doubleheader number four, 26. On today's show, we'll share our thoughts on advocating for VFR practice approach services. Find out why every facility has one special controller and answer more of your aviation questions. So what's up, baby? Hello, hello, everyone. Happy episode two. Episode two of, no, to some people, it won't seem like that. We just finished recording 425 minutes ago. And some of you, it'll be a week. Uh-huh. Yeah. And for the 40 odd people in the chat room, they're getting it all in real time. This episode will be released on March 11th. March 11th. To the public. To the public. Supporters get it today. Oh, yay. And the ones that are live are getting it right now. Right now. So why are we doing this? I have a very challenging schedule next week and it does not allow me to be home to record on Wednesday. And AG will be about five days into his 65-day work streak. Yes. Yeah. Right. Several days into a long streak. Of being in the facility every single day. Yeah. I don't think people understand the mental burden that that is. And yeah, okay. I got a 27-hour break that went from six o'clock Tuesday night to nine o'clock Wednesday night. Is that 27? Yeah. Uh-huh. Your math was good. I did it in real time. Public math is hard. But okay, yes, I did have that time off. Some of that was sleeping, which I feel like should sort of be a thing that is built into the schedule, right? That shouldn't really count. But in this case, it does. And that's considered a day off. But I've touched the building Tuesday and I touched the building Wednesday. And that happens for 18 days in a row. I don't like it. I don't know how to prove. It doesn't feel good. But when that fatigue sets in, you'll be sure to tell them, okay? I will let them know. Okay. Today's an exciting day for me. I'm going to find out what happens to this toothpick bridge that I took a very large roll in constructing in my home over the snowpocalypse a couple of weeks ago. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. So here are the parameters. It has to be only, you can only use plain round toothpicks. You know, not the, they're round. There's no edge to it. And Elmer's school glue. The kind that just the white not. It's a kenta wood glue though. It's not unlike wood. No, it does. It did a pretty good job. Yeah. You can use 250 only, 250 toothpicks. It has to be at least two inches wide, no more than four inches wide, and at least 12 inches long and no longer than 14 inches. Okay. And then they're going to find a way to span some distance, probably a foot or so, maybe a little bit less. And then they're going to put weights on it. And see how much weight it can support. Are you going to witness this live? No, I don't get to. Oh, it's happened. That's terrible. That, it happened already. I have to wait until I pick up child. You don't know the outcome though. I don't. I want to know the outcome. I want it. They're great depends on how much weight it can hold. That is stupid. That is kind of stupid. Very explicitly told, you cannot use any other form of glue or it's totally, it's an F. This is a grade. Fail. Now, it's possible, allegedly, maybe. My son had a very small role in the construction of said bridge. Yes. Because you had to do it in stages. You can't just put, go ahead and try it. Go glue together two toothpicks. A three dimensional. Right. No, you can't. So I did what you suggested. Start with this. Start with trusses. And then I had to come up with a way to hold this thing up and let it dry. So this is like six or seven, 12 hours spans. Yeah. Where I waited for a phase to dry before I go do another phase. Right. When I, so I started, never finished some wooden airplane models that were meant to be flyable, but it became very, very tedious. You actually used tiny pins to pin down wooden components. All right. And glue them together and hold them in place with pins. And you would do tiny little sections and then you would have to wait like you said. This glue has to completely dry and then do another section. It has to be something you're on board with for a long time. Months. It's months. And as a teenage boy. Nope. Uh, no, I didn't make it. Nope. It isn't going to work. So anyway, I'll find out what happens today, hopefully. I can't wait to find out. I know. I want to be able to say it held up, you know, 50 or 100 pounds. I feel like it was dense. I made it as narrow as I could. Yeah. So all my toothpicks are concentrated in a very small area. Into the, right? Yeah. We use, it has to be, it's a triangle theme. It has to be a triangle themed. Yeah. Trust. Which I did. You got bonus points for anything over 17 triangles. His had 35. 35 triangles, everyone. Okay. 30. We're talking. Maximum bonus points. 35 triangles. I'm thinking it's at least two pounds per triangle. This is, okay. This is, I hope, a 70 pound. This is a 70 pound bridge. I will be sure to share the results with anybody who cares about this project. And if I meet this teacher, I'm going to tell her, I think her roles are kind of silly. It's a little bit extreme. It's a little bit crazy what she told us we had to do. And I don't like the threat of them failing if we broke the rules. I don't like that. I want it. It's supposed to be fun. Yeah, right. Not so stressful. Anyway, that's my story. Cool. Shall we begin? All right. All right. Since OB425, we have some new members on those Supercast Iceberg, Juliette Hotel, Romeo Mike, and November Whiskey. And we got an altimeter check right drop from Juliette Zulu. Thank you. If you're enjoying the show and you want to go to the next level, join us on Supercast. You get all of our episodes on time, no delays, our back catalog, depending on what tier you're in, access to our live stream bonus audio, and a direct line to us through a supporter only email, which by the way, makes the entirety of the show. You'll keep the show ad free and community supported. Check it out at opposingbases.supercast.com. Thank you, everybody. Yes, thank you. Review and announcements. Someone took our little hint and made it. Go for it. Just do it. This review titled feedback in a review. I do remember recently mentioning that, I think, somewhere. Five stars, an amazing show that has increased my knowledge of the NAS and makes me even more eager to continue my training for instrument commercial CFI and maybe even all the way to ATP. I have begun working my way through the backlog on the fruit player while spending 36 hours a week driving. I recently listened to 36 hours a week. I hope that's your job. Not the way to get to and from said job. That sounds brutal. Although I am looking to put miles on my car. You won't loan it to them. Yeah, you could just drive my car around. You'll be part of an elite test for Toyota. Yes. How many miles will this landcruiser go? The bad news is you have to pay for those miles by filling it up. It is a little bit inefficient by today's standard. That is the cost of longevity, I believe. All right. Yeah. A very low demand on the engine. Anyway, sorry. I get excited about my car. I have begun. I recently listened to OB391 and it reminded me of when in my private training on a night cross country coming back from doing my tower solos at the Delta under the former mob boss Bravo. Now as Senator Bravo to the Thunderbird Echo. Not only is this sort of feedback in a review, we snuck in an extremely long airport name. Really well done. My instructor had me under the hood since I already had very little reference to the horizon being night with no moon and in the middle of the desert at 9500 feet. He reaches over and pulls the power on the flying Hershey bar and flies and tells me to stay under the hood and navigate to the nearest field. Wow. This is a lot going on here. Once we were around three to 4,000 AGL, he tells me we have broken out of the clouds. I took off the foggles and keyed up the lights, found the airport, got set up on final ish. Once we were certain we would make it to the field, we powered up and continued on to the Thunderbird Echo. Go back, Papa. That's great training. Very creative, safe. Yeah. And you know, preparing you for, I mean, well, you know, luckily you broke out this. I was just talking about this at breakfast this morning with a pilot friend. All right. About flying at night over terrain. And when we flew the Kingers out in Arizona, and really, it was my first experience flying in, there's tall mountains out there. And it's, you can't see them. And like you could see city lights. And then there's kind of this blackness going into the lights. And you're like, is that a mountain or just where people aren't? You know, I can't tell what I'm looking at. You're really trusting air traffic to have you at an altitude that isn't going to slam you into the side of this mountain, because you cannot see and losing all power, losing your engine in that operating environment. What do you think about having to have your instrument rating to fly at night? I don't think it's a terrible idea. I think it should be something people consider. Or at least part of, you know, at least a basic understanding if you're going to go flying via far at night. I've said this before, but as someone that flew around at night with goggles all the time, and I could see mostly going transitioning back to flying at night without them, it left me feeling all the time like this is not my favorite thing. Well, you were also flying like 17 inches off the ground. So you're in a little bit of an extreme case. Right. But when even in the King Air, like that in Arizona at night, I don't like this. If I was via far, I'm like, no, no, no, don't like this. I want to be, I want to be IFR away from things. Telling a private applicant that they're navigating with under the foggles, under the view limiting devices with a screen and aiming towards an airport. That's that scenario could happen. You lost your engine here above a cloud deck. You're perfectly legal. And you know, here's 3000 feet of time for you to figure out how to get to this airport. I think it's a really good idea. So that's a safe and constructive way to show somebody the implications of being above clouds anytime, let alone at night. Right. And how are you going to figure this out in the event of some sort of failure? So, cool. Yes, good. All right, announcements. Supercaster, Juliet Papa. Congratulations. Got his commercial written and I hit the wrong button. I apologize for that. Got his commercial written done and got into a flying club after a two year wait list. Congrats. Your patience paid off. I think you should get number two because you skipped the reading part on the last one. Wait, what? I'll get to you get three. Penguin out, Juliet Zulu got their CFI. Congrats. Another CFI in the wintertime. RH&H, two things happened over the weekend. I finished the last of the back catalog episodes in my OB feed and I passed my CFI initial check ride. Congrats. Cool. This cannot be a coincidence. It must mean my iceberg reached a critical mass of penguins at the exact moment I needed to impress my DPE with maximum knowledge and skill. My waddle, which is a group of penguins held together without going into nuclear meltdown, just long enough to get me through the check ride, which I should note would have been the third consecutive check ride I've tended with an FA observer riding along. Wow. Wow. Except that a weather delay prevented the observer from attending on the actual day. Thanks for all you do. Please accept my altimeter drop. And if you have tips to fill the sudden void of my life with no intensive training and no OB back catalog all the same time, I welcome your inputs. Sincerely, Penguin out, Juliet Zulu. Yeah, really bad news. So the funding that we were providing for therapy, for having gotten to the end is run out. We've exhausted it. Too many people have exercised that privilege. So you're just on your own out there. You've done this to yourself. Yeah. It's you need to pace. You need to pace yourself a slow diet. If you only do a week or one episode per week, you'll never catch up. Now always be something there. Yeah. Use caution. Yeah. All right. Congratulations on the check ride. We don't want to make one check ride sound more important than another, but CFI is a very big milestone. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Those are hard check rides. So congrats. You get number three. Number three, Supercaster Bravo, Juliet Sara sent a note over the weekend I completed my flight instructor renewal. Congrats. Very good. In doing so, I realized I have been a CFI for 25 years this year. How time flies. Bravo, Juliet Sara from the Ford Tri-Motor Airport, south of the Windy City Bravo. Cool. Congrats. That's a long time. You've had yours for a long time. I think I got my in 2003. Yeah. So almost 25 years. Yeah. Wow. And this is an even year. So I have to renew in the summertime. Yeah. Ew. The method I've chosen to do that every other year for all of this time is through the 16 hours on a computer. Someone came up with that number. Please do not introduce yourself by telling me that you're the one who was in charge of that. Our friendship will be over before it started. Unless it was to reduce it from 32. Look, it is kind of crazy. We can be CFIs. There's nothing legally preventing me from taking a club airplane. Wow, besides the fact that I'm not supposed to instruct in a club airplane. Let's just say that wasn't a rule. Okay. And taking you up and giving you flight instruction. And I haven't been an instructor for a very long time. Actively in a plane. Actively in a plane. But that's the only rating that you have outside of a flight review and your required landings. If you want to take passengers, you could be a private pilot and go years without doing anything. Besides your every 24 months supposed to do a flight review. But if you don't do that, you're still a private pilot. If I don't do this to your training, I'd lose my CFI. It's gone. And then what would you have to do to get back another check, right? You can do it that way. There's some grace period with time and RLH will know better. You just don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. You're setting yourself up. I don't want to. Now, maybe if it was with him and he had, all right, I'm okay with giving you your certificate back, but not everybody has that. Right. You know, and I'm sure he would hold me to a standard. And it would be very difficult for me to do commercial maneuvers. And a general aviation airplane improved that I was able to teach somebody. Now, if I ever do go back to instructing, I plan on doing that, but it's on my time. Yeah, right. Without having a certificate. So, right. Right. Yeah. Cool. Keep sending your announcements in. We'll keep sharing them on the show. Moving on. Time. Leave me back. Feedback. You know what? I will do number two. How about that? Oh, all right. Number one from Supercast. We're at Golf Juliet. No helmet fired today. I'm the guy from OB416. Different plane today, but still bonanza. And your, we love ATC in the remarks. Got a nice response from the folks at Boston Approach. Here is the clip. We're going to play that in a second. As a side note, the controller whose wife was in the plane with me on, remember this story? Yeah. On OB416, walked into the break room at Boston Approach to hear two other controllers talking about that episode. Hey, they listen. That's cool. That's nice. They were wondering who the controller was and voila, he appeared. Cool to see your show spreading like a virus. Thanks. Yes. Across the mass, Golf Juliet. All right. You want to play the audio? I'm ready. One, two, three. November 5, Michael. Thank you for the kind remarks. We also love bonanzos who love ATC. Contact Boston Center. One, two, three, point seven, five. Have a good flight. One, two, three, seven, five. And thanks. That frequency seems familiar to me. That is cigarette tower. Also the seat have in question. From earlier, yes. Right. That was not this episode or the last one. I can't remember. It was today. Thank you for sharing the audio and again, shout out to the controllers up at 890 for an awesome job with that. Yes. Helmet fire emergency carrying a controller's spouse on board while they were working live traffic from another scope in the same room. That is crazy. You know what? And we're honored that you're listening. That's cool. All right. You can get number two. Number two from Supercaster Charlie Bravo. On OB 422, you discussed practice for our approaches in the coffee trach on airspace. We also did that in 423. Five. Five. What's that? 422, 23, and 25. Okay. Yeah. I found the discussion interesting and at some points, infuriating. Last summer, I was lucky enough to tour the coffee trach on. I was there for two hours, one on one with a controller. It was incredibly informative and interesting. I would recommend that everyone attempt to tour their local trach on. That is cool. That is not normal. I don't want everyone to have that same expectation that you're just going to get to sit there with a one person. Listening for two hours. That's not everywhere is going to be able to do that. But anyway, when I toured the trach on, I was told the same thing as the person who wrote the feedback. Just filed to the first airport and then before commencing the approach, tell the controller where you want to go next. When you are on the miss from the current approach, they will clear you to the next airport that you want to go to. It is also worth noting that almost every IFR training flight in the area is done under IFR. Even on VMC days, it works for every controller there. Bar one. Remember I said there are special people there. Oh, bar one. Right. The special controller. Mr. Special has his own rules. He insists on every airport you plan on going to be on your flight plan. This one controller's insistence on being different can be dangerous. Okay. This is interesting. I want to hear this. In December, I was on an IFR currency flight attempting to get some approaches and ceilings were about 500. And I was solo with no autopilot. Okay. This came up in the last show too. When I told them that I wanted to go missed at the first airport, got very angry with me and started berating me on frequency and demanded that I file another flight plan to go back to where I came from. He would not let up. My brow beating carried on on frequency for about five minutes, which left me rather flustered while attempting to file a flight plan and hand flying in IMC. Oh, no. No. I tried to explain to him that I had to the Traycon and that multiple controllers there endorsed the way that I had filed. He did not care. Oh, man. This in my opinion leads to a very dangerous situation. You have no idea which controller you're going to get until you're in the air and it is too late to change how you filed. Do I file only one airport like most controllers there prefer or do I file every airport like the one guy wants? Ultimately, it doesn't matter. You run the risk of upsetting someone while doing 120 knots through a cloud. The lack of standardization across a single facility never mind the entire NASA is dangerous and leaves pilots not knowing how to file. Pilots should not be forced to file flight plans to one single controller's preferences. We should be filing to a national standard until that day we'll be filing one way or the other and hoping that we don't get yelled at while trying to fly a plane. I appreciate everything that you have done for the safety of the NAS with your show. Here's to 400 more. Charlie Bravo PS. Even though Tottenham are rubbish this season, my offer to RH to attend a match still stands. Okay. All right. Let me ask you this. You're in the room while this braiding is happening. You're here in the controller go up on a soapbox. Is it for you? Is it for the room or are they doing that for the pilot? It's probably a lot for the room. Here's a couple things that I would say about this. One, you need to call the facility and have a discussion about this. Time of day matters. Where you are when it happens so they can find out who it was. Yep. And explain why this is dangerous, why this is unacceptable behavior. Listen, I get that maybe he has a preference, but it can't involve compromising the safety of a flight or having this interaction on frequency. If there is something, and I'm not saying that I agree with this, especially if a facility like this one that is so pro training has come to you know, some sort of standard on how they want this to happen. And just one person doesn't agree with it. That battle should not be taking place between you and the controller on frequency. That's between that controller and the rest of the facility or a supervisor if it comes to that. And I think it's worth a phone call to the facility to say, hey, I was under the impression that this was not how things were done here. And I felt like this, you know, subjected me to a condition that is not good. This is not safe. We've already said that under the best conditions, by yourself, IMC hand flying is a high, high workload. I can't imagine now at trying to add in filing a flight plan airborne. I want to talk about that real quick. Okay, if I were in that position, single pilot IFR, no autopilot, even if I had autopilot, okay, just take this argument, we're gonna have it later. All right, we're gonna be full stop, get on the ground, do your filing then, and it may be you're only going back to where you started just this day isn't going to go the way we thought I'm not gonna file 17 flight plans, and then make that phone call but get on the ground. I don't know how people are filing in the air because flight service won't pick up anymore. I don't even think that's a thing anymore. I don't know. If it is, good for you that you still have that, but most flight service stations are gone. I don't even think you can do that airborne. If you have internet, which is going to become pervasive, I would say within the next couple of years, it will be normalized for GA airplanes to have some sort of internet live working fast internet in their airplanes. Right. You could theoretically do that, but I would wait to get on the ground file with your normal internet access on the ground, not while you're flying an airplane, and trying to wrestle with your plane through the clouds. That's it. That's all I wanted to say about that. Okay. Yeah, I agree. Do well without throwing anybody under the bus. How does your facility now handle the special controller? I got side chats. Do just leave it alone because there's no change in their mind. Like, I'm trying to get them an understanding that this may never change for this person. Yeah. If it really is, becomes a problem like this is, this is a problem. This can't be happening all the time like this. Especially if the facility is saying do it this way, and then one person is saying not. It needs to be addressed. Maybe by management, I don't, you know, there are other avenues within air traffic to do that, that you could start with. But you know, maybe it needs to be escalated to that level. I don't know. In our facility, I don't, not a lot is done. I am not afraid to say something. I will say something to anybody. I just ask them at work. I will say something. Come on, man. Like, what? Why? Why? What is it that we're doing here? You've lost sight of it. I've told people this. You are losing sight of what the purpose of this building is. Provide a service. That's all. Like, not trying to be ugly about it, but you're, the way you're behaving on frequency is not acceptable. Right. And it's embarrassing to the rest of us. Right. And I think when I asked you the question, I think people like that that are making a stand on frequency, they couldn't wait. And it's a certain audience that's in the room. Someone they've had a discussion with before they disagree with. Right. This is why I don't do this. And I'm going to show you on frequency. I'm going to show you right now. I'm going to, I'm going to take all this conversation out, all this frustration I have with the facility doing it the way I don't like it. I'm going to put this guy under the microscope, make him feel terrible at the risk of like really making it unsafe. That's not cool, by the way. Yeah. Just so everybody in the room can hear you. You want to take your stand, do it when you go on break. Hold your court somewhere else, not on frequency. You know, it's, it really is that, that really is a good point, especially when you know that the facility has told pilots to do it this way. And now you're going to beat him up about it on frequency. It's unacceptable. I don't like that at all. All right. Thank you for the feedback. Let us go on a rant for a minute. All right. Fancy jet music. Moving on. All right. So, show topic I politely called pilot advocacy for letters to airmen and model facilities brought to us by Supercaster, Charlie Hotel. I wanted to take a different angle on this, not just sharing some data and information points, but turn this into something that you can use, moving forward at your facility and with the controllers that you work with. Maybe give you something that you can take back into the NAS. If you're not so lucky to be training in a facility that is training conducive and training friendly. All right. Hello, gents. I'm sure you'll get an avalanche of responses on this, but I'm hoping this adds value. Letters to airmen are available on the same official FA site that hosts the notams. And that's, I'll try to put that in the show notes, notams.aim.fa.gov, notam search. And if you type that in notam search, you can select a Treycon and you can filter for letters to airmen or you can use for a flight. And they're easily found. We found that out yesterday using mine airport in the airport, go to the procedures tab and then there's an airport tab. We did get some feedback that some of the facilities that are listed on say a letter to airmen that's from Duke, let's just Duke has one. Some of the airports in that letter to airmen don't have this procedure available on their tab, but that's a cross-reference thing that's probably a nightmare for the people at the EFB world and four flight. I would look for improvement over that over time, especially if it's something new they've been doing. So if anybody at four flight is listening, I don't know how you would do that outside of creating some sort of spreadsheet with cross referencing them also make sure it just shows up at not just the main airport like Duke, but in every tab of the facilities included in that letter. Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah. I did check locally at Duke and their non-towered airports that are included do have a link. So the feedback I got was from one that thought it was just a non-towered that weren't included, but turns out there was no method behind it. It was just some of them had it and some of them didn't reference it, but I think over time that's going to get better. Yeah. Charlie Hotel continues. I'm an unapologetic nerd, so I went through the available letters and posted all the letters to Airman's associated with practice approaches on a Google sheet. I will share this in the show notes for supporters. Feel free to share this on the show if you wish. This is a Google document that he created. If you want to click on that and click on a random letter and read them, I love, thank you for putting this together. It's worth noting. We're going to highlight some of the wording in some of these letters and kind of make some general suggestions for the NAS here. The link does not allow editing, but anyone can open it and choose make a copy on the file menu and then they'll have ability to use filters to show by state and other options. As an example of what listeners could do with this, I love this. I'm sorry. I'm reaching out to Beantown Approach to find out if the manager intends to renew the current letter that expires in February. I'm taking bets on whether or not they're shocked that anyone is paying attention. We'll see. During me making the notes for the show, we've got follow up on this. Okay. Okay. I'm going to paraphrase. The manager here thought it was entirely odd that it was even a question as to whether they would renew the letter. He is in the, it's our job camp for sure. Huh. So that brings us to our next point here. Interesting. Our, well, really our first point, the air traffic manager is signatory to this. They're the ones authorizing it for their facility and saying, this is what we're going to do. These are the airports we're going to do for. That is the exact person that needs to hear your request. How do you get in touch with them? Once you get in touch with a big Bravo or Charlie Traycon that controls that airport. So we're talking about radar ATMs. Air traffic managers. Air traffic managers. Yep. I'm sorry. I didn't say that. You can use the phone number technique we've given you for non-towered airports. When you get approached on the phone, Hey, what's the number to the office? I want to talk to the ATM. Now you're speaking their language. They know you want a specific person. Having examples. I'm going to go with the first one being your facility doesn't have one and you want one have examples using this spreadsheet and or that notam search with LTAs of similar sized operations with letters to airmen to present to them so that that ATM understands that you're not asking for the moon here. Here. Right. We're a level seven or eight facility here. I found five examples of them that include towered and non-towered airports and I want you to see them. Yeah. Ask if they can bring the NACA facility rep or the safety rep to discuss the importance of the letter, why it matters for your training and why you think it will make that airspace safer. Yes. You got to speak their language. Yes. I'll let you in or interject there. I I already basically tried to do this at our facility. After the episode where we talked about this and discovered that every facility that borders us has a letter to airmen for practice approaches and we don't. I was embarrassed. Like what? Why do we not? Why are we not doing this? And basically tried to advocate. I don't know where this is going right now, but I feel like it would mean a lot more from users than it does from grumpy AG at work who is like an old fuddy duddy when it comes to this kind of stuff. Right. Well, and you're a pilot too and in that conversation with that audience, it doesn't help. Because you're not the user of the LTA. Right. You're just trying to tell it from your point of view as a pilot also and they look at you as you're different. You're not like the other controllers in this because you're one of the only ones that's a pilot. There might be a couple more. Right. And you're advocating that we do more work. Right. And well, more work and you are also from, you got trained by, you know, for example, Charles Delta, who's back in the building as a contract trainer now. Right. Have him in the room next time because that's what we got taught by them and they made that normal. Right. That was normal back then. Exactly. Right. With terrible radar, by the way. Yes. Sorry. No, that's a great point. He would be a great advocate for that. And I don't know if you tried to show them any examples, but I agree with you. It's going to sound different coming from a flight school or a CFI that does constant flying through that area and say, by the way, we come over here from Duke who has a letter yet they still send us all over here. Right. Figure me that. Right. All right. Charlie Hotel continues. Listeners might want to reach out to facilities they interact with that don't have a letter and ask if they intend to publish one. One CFI reaching out and asking for this guidance could be all it takes for them to realize these letters are valuable to others. I agree with this 100%. If right after you got out of that office, a pilot called and said, hey, why didn't you guys renew this? And that we're on speakerphone. It might have been the best phone call you've ever heard somebody else take. You want to continue there? Yeah. Others might want to take a trip to Kalamazoo to find the most training friendly Tersa in the NAS. That's AZO. Kalamazoo gets the prize for most training friendly, having 39 airports listed as offering IFR separation to aircraft on VFR practice approaches. Oh my gosh. So I did pull this one up. I didn't count them, but yes, there are a lot. I'll just name a few here. Battle Creek, Grand Rapids, Flint, Lansing, Kalamazoo. This is good. It goes on and on. It's unbelievable. This is a very extensive. Mm-hmm. Technically, NCT. North Cal Traycon. Oh, has a few more, but at Tersa having 39 seems exceptional. Exceptional. Now I lost my place to me, especially given their second only to a massive consolidated Traycon. That one is by the way. This is a new consolidated facility as well. Okay, I didn't know that. That's why there's so many. Yeah, I can't remember the names of all the facilities that went into one umbrella, but that's a lot. So if you were in airspace R-Size, I can't imagine having over doubled the amount we have. We're already stacked up and approach is conflict, with airports being 10, 15 miles apart. And we have 17. Right. 39 would be outrageous. But when it's a huge facility like this, that makes more sense. Overall, in the NAS, it's about 60% of facilities that have a letter versus not. So the majority have one. Mm-hmm. The spreadsheet shows a higher percentage, but that's because some facilities have multiple letters addressing different areas. And I was too lazy to have it do the calculations to count each facility only once. You know what, we'll let that slide. Yeah, we'll let it go. Yeah. I also might have old approach facilities listed in there as the list I took from still had K90, Cape approach. And I know that's now part of A90. Okay. All right. So I think it'd be a good time to talk about who would have letters. And that 60% is really, that's an unfair, if you just looked at every facility in the NAS, it's not really a fair representation because not everyone would have them. Who wouldn't have one? Stand-alone towers. Yeah, right. Sure. Yeah, non-radar service facilities. Right. Now, they may be referenced in another LTA for nearby Charlie, but there are parts of the NAS that have deltas that are standalone and don't have a Charlie radar facility nearby that isn't a center. I don't think centers would necessarily have these. I can't imagine that they would be doing that as part of center to the surface areas just because those are less populated and probably less flight training happening in those areas. Right. So the Bs, the Cs and the D towers, referencing the overlying approach control facility. So the big Treycon, which is usually, it is a Bravo or Charlie period, those are the ones that are going to have one. At Triad, we have what, 16 or 17 airports depending on which ones you count based on their proximity to our boundary. And we will run approaches one way and Metroplex does the other way as part of L.A. We only had six that were included in the expired LTA. Those seemed very random to me. Yeah, they were kind of random. But just keep that in mind. If you're trying to find, if your facility has one, poke around a little bit on the map and you might find out there is one, it's just not referenced on your airport. But it's Bravo's Charlie's and Delta towers that have an overlying approach control facility that does multiple practice approaches or satellite airports that'll have these. Right. So if you find one at an airport that isn't referenced in LTA and you think it's worth including because they have, you know, the only VR approach left in that state, the only back course. Yeah, right. Because now our nav approaches both directions that airports is common, which got rid of a lot of those approaches. And you, you know what, I can't even do the approach. They won't give it to me or an arc or something. What else? And the approach, if you ever, if you have the equipment to do that, something unique, right, and they don't have one advocate for the inclusion of that airport. And in Triads example, don't just stop at the six. Why can't we have it at one of these? This is a great approach. We could use this. And by the way, I'll remind you, air traffic manager, it's out of the way. I'm not on the arrival or departure stream in your main airport. Right. I'm super low. I'm not on your downwinds. I'm out of the way. Right now, you do them to the Charlie, but do you really want us to do that? When we could go to these other airports, like, Yeah, sure. That will, I think those are the words that kind of ring in and make sense when you're having that conversation. I highlighted some of these. Thank you, Charlie, for doing this. You want to continue there with Bangor? Yeah, Bangor gets a shout out for, although not mandatory, these services are encouraged language in their letter. I love that too. That's fantastic. Mobile has a following statement, which he thought we would like. Mobile approach control, this is, they're speaking to an audience here. Someone wrote this letter, not at the pilots, this is aimed at somebody administratively. This is like a sh, I'll show you. Mobile approach control has provided the service in the past and will continue to provide for a safe and efficient flow of IFR and praxis FIFR approaches in the mobile terminal area. They're making sure everybody who reads that knows, you can put it in the 7110 that you're going to make it harder for us to do this, but we're going to keep doing it. Yeah, we're going to keep doing this. This is what we do. And Charlie Hotel said, that's defining it as this is our job mindset that you've expressed on the show. I might have said that a little snarkily, but I felt like that was where we did our work. That's where we fit into the NAS. It's a training facility and I don't mean for controllers. And though it is that it is also a training for pilots facility. There are a lot of flight schools around. It's a thing that we do put in a transfer if you don't like it. Yeah, if you only want to work airline traffic, there are tons of bravos where that's might be all you have to work, except for the one time a week you get stuck on a satellite scope. Right. And wham wham, you have to complain about it and everybody'll make fun of you because you probably are terrible at it. Right. And that's just part of it, but didn't go ahead and do that. But if you want to be at a Charlie, you make a great point. You're not going to change the mindset of the entire NAS by being grumpy about it on frequency. No, you're just making it miserable for everyone. Exactly. Yes, stop it. You want Cleveland? Cleveland has a list of five airports. They will give IFR set to VFR practice approaches and explicitly states the other 26 airports can only take practice approaches that are on a filed IFR flight plan. Oh, which is clearly a thought out response to the needs of flying public balanced against the workload it takes to meet those needs. That's a lot of other airports. That's a whole lot of airports. I think they have some 31. I think they have some center boundary issues and competitive Treycon issues that maybe that's part of it. And that big body of water that most GA doesn't like flying over could be part of it too. Sure, yeah. And that letter was just published. It's recent. So it's a great example of the current state of the NAS and how it could be. I meant to make the next thing blue, but it's an important element in this. We're trying to get you to advocate for it, get on the phone. There are places in the NAS that probably have a very good reason why they don't have LTAs. They need to refer to Coffee Bravo to find out that no, you could do a lot more. But some facilities are not staffed with the scopes or the bodies to provide this service. So even if they wanted to do it, okay, imagine Metro Pucks if they didn't have, I think they have an east and a west. There's just one all the time. Is it one person? Satellite. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. What? One or two scopes? One satellite, one scope. Yeah. Yeah, imagine if they didn't have the bodies to do that. Hey, you know what? We don't have the resources to do this. And we're certainly, if we're going to stop services, it's going to be two satellite approaches, especially to IFRs, or I'm sorry, VFRs, we're going to, we can pull somebody's workload and make them do it, itinerant stuff, but we're not going to do a bunch of flying around there. Imagine if they didn't have the bodies, then okay, they may agree with you that they should have one, which they do by the way. Right. Right. Yeah. So if they were to make an excuse, just keep that in mind. You may run into resistance that's a valid point. I can see, you know, for our facility, if you really wanted to go down to like a bare minimum, these are the airports we're going to do, you might just exclude west airports. Because west is also working final. They typically get busier than south. And so, okay, fine. Just include the satellites that are in south. All right, I'll buy that. As part of that. I'm just saying as some kind of consolation, as some kind of compromise, don't pick every, it doesn't have to be every satellite. Look at these facilities, these are great examples. They do five out of their out of their 31. Kalamazoo, just crushing it at 39 airports though. I can't, you know, I mean, you have embedded that as their culture there. Right. And Mobile saying, no, no, this, we are going to continue to do this. I feel vindicated because I have argued for this service to be provided and plenty of controllers, the majority, the culture at our facility has shifted away from this to not providing it. Oh, we don't, we don't have a letter. It says in the 7110, you know, we're not supposed to be doing this. Uh-uh. This is what other places are doing. Look at it. Where are the odd, where are the outlier here? Yep. Because you're right, you remove the facilities that don't need a letter to Airman. And I bet this 60% number goes to 75. Maybe more. Maybe more. That can have it and need it and have it. Yeah. The majority of airports boundary in us have them. Come on. So we are taking a different spin on this in this episode. Don't be afraid to advocate for it. The Grand Prix controllers like A. G. and I are probably not going to be helpful in a place that has embraced this new 7110 rule that says you don't have to and unless there's an LTA, you don't have to do it anymore. They are going to fight you. They are, they're the ones, those individuals are the ones that are resistant. It's probably not the manager though. Ask to speak to them. Set up a meeting. Hey, we want to do a tour. After the tour, we want to sit in an office and talk to you about this. We have some letters to show you. We can give you the wording. And if, if you have a chance, A. G., take a look at some of them. They're all pulling from the 7110. They're all putting caveats in to some extent, giving the individual control of the ability to say, uh-uh, no, I know everybody else does it, but I'm too busy. I can't do it right now. Okay. They're still, they're still allowing for that, the caveat of when, when able, when time permits, when, when traffic permits, no delays to the itinerant airplanes. I want to say mobiles when I looked at it, specifically says itinerant aircraft may be delayed to allow for these approaches in certain cases so that they're not overly delayed. So there is a point at which if the majority of your traffic is this training traffic, that, that, that's just what this area is. I'm sorry. These people have to get training, right? Yep. And so sometimes there is going to be a delay. There is going to be a jet that gets slowed on the downwind because you have a Cherokee inbound or you have two Cherokees. Hey, start slowing down. Are you going to fly to Virginia before I can turn your base? Okay. So it just is part of how all of this works. We are just making an attempt here on the show to synthesize all of how all of this works together. I think, I think Seattle and now looking at some of these other other places are great examples of how this can happen. And look at the feedback we've had from multiple people just about Coffee Bravo about how accommodating they are and willing to, to train I think everyone can understand and agree that this has to happen. Training has to happen. It is part of becoming a pilot. It has to take place somewhere. Yeah, okay. I get it. It's not taking place under a Bravo. You know, no, it's taking place at Kalamazoo and at Triad and Mobile and in parts of C-TEC. It has to take place. I don't understand the resistance. Should make everybody in the facility that hates you right now listen to this episode. They do because they do man. I tell you what they, I'm not, they don't hate me but I don't think but they do not like that I advocate for this. And I get it sometimes it is a pain to be, to be the controller working and now you've got three or four practice approaches going on plus other traffic and yeah, it is, it is, it can be a workload but that's where it is up to you as the controller to say, okay, this is too much. Know what the limits are but don't just say at the beginning when there's nothing happening. Yeah, we're not doing that. Agreed. All right, we've beat the LTA horse to death. We'll get more feedback on this. The next, here's what we want on the next round of feedback and this may take several months. Who knows? Give us examples of where you tried to advocate for the renewal or the formation of a new letter and let us know how that goes. Yeah. It's going to change if pilots and flight schools speak up. The users of that airspace are the ones they want to hear from. Yeah, that's, you're the ones they need to hear from. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, maybe I should rephrase. They don't necessarily want to hear from you but if they're going to change the facilities culture, it's going to start with the users asking for it. Right. Not controllers that love doing it that way and took pride in it. I did. I took pride in that. I did too. I still do and if you are, the place they're going to have the most influence and pull are going to be like a flight school for us, the bigger one on the field. If you were the owner of that flight school and you came to the facility and said this, look how this would help us. You're going to have, you definitely have more pull than me asking why we're not doing this. 100%. Yeah. Please share your feedback on advocating for the LTAs in your area. Yeah, please. We love to hear that. Yeah. Thank you, Charles, Hotel, Charlie Hotel. And if I forget, remind me, I want to try to do my best to include this in the deep dive or somewhere where at least supporters can see the link. You did a great job putting that together. Really helpful and easy for you to just click on every one of them. Just look at examples. Yeah, I did it while we were recording the show. Super easy. Yeah. Does it bother you that Duke has one and we don't? There's even a phone number. You know, kind of. Makes me wonder if they've actually read it. It would be different if they were exercising it. So it's more of a letter, it's an LTA name only. But yes, it does kind of it does kind of bother me. I think that's a cultural thing too with certain controllers. There's some side of that schedule that just won't do it. Yeah. And I think there are some old school ones that do it and are fine with it. They just don't have as many either. They don't have as nearly as many satellite airports as we have. So we won't make fun of them. Yeah, this maybe. Yeah, no, we will. All right, moving on. Oops, wrong button again. Oh my gosh. Feedback time. Feedback. All right. I'll do the first one. Okay. From Supercaster Julia Charlie. Hey, R. H. and A. G. Quick. Thank you. First, your show took me from a 130 hour VFR pilot in 2022 to an instrument and commercial rated with 550 hours today. Excellent. Very good. Working my way through multi and tail wheel now. Sadly, no plans to add a rotor rating. I like my wings securely bolted to the frame without physically trying to fling them away from me every moment of flight. Just kidding. I'm just not cool enough to fly helis. So thanks for that. It is the most important part of an airplane and it's spinning. It's spinning and it's trying to get away from the beginning of the plane, the middle. The pins. Have I ever, the pins that hold the blades on? I don't know that we've talked about those. They're like 18 inches long and maybe six inches around. They're hollow. Oh, of course. But they weigh probably 25 pounds, 30 pounds. There's two of them per blade, a vertical and a horizontal. So there is a large piece of metal that is preventing the blade from flinging off, as you say, away from the helicopter. Yeah. I'll read a little disclaimer here. We're not sponsored by this site, but we asked our permission to share the website with our audience. If you have follow up questions for this project that I'll mention, please use the contact tab on their website. The feedback continues. I built a digital maintenance log with inspection and AD tracking app targeted for general aviation and I need feedback from the community. Your listeners seem like exactly the group that might appreciate the transition. If you know anyone tired of paper log books who'd want to try a digital platform, I'd love the critique and the website is project1903.com. Feel free to forward this to your circle. Happy to talk with anyone interested. There is a contact tab on that website. I breezed through it real quick and I don't have an airplane. I don't have a need for a maintenance log book, but I'm sure our audience being the show we are has somebody who might be. So check it out. Cool. Project1903.com. Thanks, Julie Charlie and thanks for supporting the show. Yes, thank you. You get number two. Number two from Supercaster Delta Sierra, a caution to the OB community during OB 423. It was announced that OB episodes are designated by OB than a three digit number on or about March 3rd, 2037. Our illustrious host will release their 1000th episode. This means that we will have to add another digit to the episode number. Those of you over 30 or so will remember the panic that led up to Y2K when the year rolled over from 99 to 2000. I do remember this. Typical, just a typical crowd, you know, fervor. This is not that though. This is much more serious. Everything was going to stop working. Planes would suddenly go inverted, etc. All because some systems used two digits for the year. We faced the same dilemma. Only having gone through Y2K, we're much more aware of the consequences of delaying dealing with the inevitable OB1K. This is our warning. You have 11 years to get things updated before icebergs fly inverted or penguins melt. Don't wait. You have been warned. I love this. Okay, we'll start thinking about it. We never thought we'd have three digits for sure. Maybe we just, at 999, we're done. We could. We could just make that announcement now. You heard it here. This is the end. We will not continue past 999 to avoid said problem. All right, 2037. So that's, oh man, another 11 years. Okay. I don't know. Maybe we challenge accept it. Right. All right. Thank you, Delta Sierra. Number three from Supercaster Whiskey Sierra, Romeo Hotel and Alpha Golf. You both rock. I love the show. You have given me the confidence, inspiration to finally pursue my dream of flying. Naturally, the first step in my journey has been to get held up by the FAA and the medical process. How nice. Hopefully I will have some good news to share sooner than later. No details really, but I'm sure it's been just fun. Yeah. Right. Until then, I stay busy flying commercially off and on penguin airlines from the Lone Star Urban Bat colony, Charlie. What? To RH's Big Apple Base where my girlfriend's family lives. I always see the Channel 9 option on the In-Flight Entertainment, but it never seems to be on anymore. I heard you all reminisce about Channel 9 in one of the early episodes of the show. I did reminisce about that. I think it was episode 10. Yes, I do remember. Yeah. Down memory lane in the DC 10, I think. Yeah. You have never been able to listen. Oh, but I have never been able to listen. I guess my question is for RH. What's the old Channel 9 these days? I've heard rumors that times have changed and pilots don't want passengers listening. I'd love your opinion or insight if you have it. Thanks again for more to come soon. Whiskey Sarah. All right. In our manuals, it describes the method to which you need to follow and adhere to so that the frequency you are putting on Channel 9, which let's remind everybody what Channel 9 is. Before today's In-Flight Entertainment screens, before that, and probably a couple iterations before that, all you had was a little tube of, it was like a plastic tube that you could put into the arm rest and project sound from the arm of the plane. It wasn't like, it was, how did, I don't even know how. I think if you put your ear up to that hole in the arm rest, you could hear. It was not a 3.5 millimeter. It was a plastic tube. Yes. That went to tube plastic. It was akin to our headset coming out of what comes out of the headset that goes into your ear. It's just a plastic tube. So you could change channels and like there would be a movie playing in the front of the airplane or the section you were in. And if you wanted to hear the volume, the sound from that movie, you had to have this really archaic plastic tubes going into your ears. They have little bippies on them. You remember these? Okay. Yeah, I think so. And your arm rest had channel selector and a volume selector. Let's say Channel 3 was the movie. Channel 9, some of them were radio channels. There was no movie. There was only one movie. Yeah, just music. There was no like, hey, let's go pick the whole, you know, a season of an Apple TV show. No, no, no, no. Yeah, I'm going to binge an entire show on this flight. No, that wasn't an option. You watch what was projected underneath the VHS, the housing of the, you know, the life vests and stuff onto the wall. Terrible quality, by the way. Anyway, that's how you listen to that. Channel 9 was set up to listen to the audio air traffic of your airplane. Their Com1 was being broadcast. And that's how I heard air traffic for the first time as a kid. Yeah, I used to, I loved listening to that. It was awesome. You heard your call sign. You heard the instructions, climb, turns, like, even somebody with no aviation knowledge back then, we didn't know anything. You could understand when they called your call sign. Yeah. It was the same pilots the whole time. They changed frequencies and you just kept hearing it. Right. Today's Channel 9 is not much different, except now it's selected on a screen, which lends itself to the possibility, just possible, that people don't want to listen to it anymore. And they want to watch one of the movies or TV shows or streaming something. Because they have like, there's hundreds of hours of stuff that you can choose from. But you can select Channel 9. And most of the time, it's probably not being broadcast. And the fleet that I'm on, there's a button to push to turn it on. I've only been on two legs with the same captain who's very popular on YouTube. He's talked about this. He is the only one I've flown with that asks to make sure it's on. So it is still available. You're telling me. It's available. Interesting. Now, my fleet, now my fleet is old. Yeah, right. It's possible that that's not on every fleet. Huh. Now, here's the catch. Okay. Because we have jump seats in there, it's feeding off of one of the jump seats, calm ones or whatever they're monitoring. Oh, so there's a risk, albeit small, for the one person in the back that might be listening, that you have selected the wrong frequency for them to listen to, or you are monitoring the intercom between the front and the back, all the flight attendants talk on a phone. You could accidentally have that selected. That would not be ideal. Now, I'm not saying they say anything bad. But you would be invited to a conversation that they didn't know you were a part of by mistake. Now, I purposely never push those buttons. I don't want to hear what they're talking about. The only button I'll push outside of listening to a calm one, I'm in that jump seat, my important bunky jump seat. I will listen to the PAs so that I know when it's okay for me to talk. I don't want to step on one of their PAs, which my PA button would, it would just cut them off. I don't want to do that. So I listen to make sure they're through their thing, which is all automated now too, on my fleet. And then that's the only button I would push. I would never listen to the intercom between us, just throwing that out there. Now, the last thing I'll mention is there's some pilots who just have never done it. They don't know how to set it up. And they're certainly not going to experiment at the risk of them saying something on the phone to the back to someone on a flight attendant that now passengers can hear. So instead of learning how to use it, just leave it alone. And if you select that button, they're going to say something. Now, I've only been on one flight where the captain said, no, no, no. Turned it off. Yeah. And they made a remark like that could get us in trouble. Yeah, it could. But they can also go on live atc when they get down and they can hear everything we said in most scenarios. That's the thing. Like it's already public. Yeah, it's not private anymore. So the thing I was thinking of is, if you had an emergency and you're talking about the emergency to air traffic, do you want your passengers hearing that? Then all you have to do, it's turn it off. I can't quote a checklist, but there's consideration to that for the people that turn it on. Now it's time for everyone in the back to not be part of this conversation. Boop. Because I want to say, and I don't know if this is documented anywhere, but it's hard to get news access. Even with on my breaks, I have access to the internet. Some news sites won't even work. Like they don't want to say they're hiding things from the passengers. But it's probably best that some people don't know what's going on if their plane was subject to being on the news. Right, right. Does that make sense? Yes. So if we're having an emergency and we're talking to air traffic, you could create a panic very quickly. Yeah. Part of the captain's job, one of many, and I'm saying this seriously, I'm not minimizing this. Right. They have to formulate a calm message that doesn't freak people out. Right. Hearing all that back and forth with ATC about fuel and what's actually wrong, or diverting, we need fire trucks. The passengers don't need that. I believe one of our checklist even says consider turning off the IFA monitor button, which is just one button. It's not going to take you. Boop. Yeah. It's right there. Both pilots can, all three pilots can get to it. Very easy. What's it called? What's the button called? I said IFA. That's in flight entertainment. It's, I can't think of the acronym, but it's written on there, O-onboard, OBM, on-board monitor button, I think. Okay. So basically, I want to know what to ask for when I get on my next flight. If you turn the corner, at least in my company, most of the captains have been here long enough to know what that means. If you said, hey, are you going to have channel nine on? Yeah. They'll be able to answer, hey, our plane doesn't have it, or yeah, we'll make sure it's on. And then the FOs can be like, wait, what? I don't even know how to do that. Oh, you just push this button. That's it. Okay. I'll just ask for channel nine. I don't think any other airline does that. It's a very cool feature. Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. So it should be normalized. And for the ones advocating for it, the reason I don't push it is because I kind of leave it up to the captain to figure out if they want that on. And maybe they think it's up to us to put it on. But I've only been on two flights. They're back to London with an awesome captain who that's his favorite button. Boop. Love it. Love it. He wants it on. Is it in the picture that you're in front of right now? Is it cut off? It is. Hold on, let me look on the other side because this is weird. I'll just ask for a cockpit tour next time and then sneakily, you know, bloop. So okay, so over here, that button there, we have two of them right there. One is to turn the Wi-Fi on. Oh, and the one below it is to turn that channel mine on. Okay. It's right there. Cool. That little square is designated for Fun Buttons. All right, anything to add before the chat? I don't think so. Thank you, Whiskey Sierra, letting me go down memory lane again with AG, our little mini Charlie Alpha segment here. Yes. All right, we do our best to respond to support our feedback and let you know when you'll be on an upcoming show. Anything, AG? Nope. Closing out, episode 426 of Opposing Bases air traffic talk, Romeo Hotel. And Alpha Golf. Goodbye, everyone. Drop. Opposing Bases is a listener-supported, ad-free weekly podcast. The views expressed on the show do not reflect the opinions or official positions of the FAA or Penguin Airlines. Episodes are for entertainment purposes only and are not intended to replace flight instruction. To get on-time access, bonus content, and full archive access, join the crew at opposingbases.supercast.com. Yeah. Drop.