feedback for next event

[Keith Smith]

It's clear that catering to multiple aircraft types is working well, and there are healthy numbers of piston, turboprops and jet pilots who want to participate.

From an ATC perspective, we really enjoy merging multiple streams into a single airport. For example, having a SFO-LAS and LAX-LAS event would be great as we'd have two jet streams to merge at LAS. The downside is that we'd need quite a few jets to make that work.

The other discussion point is the event duration and number of legs. 2 hours seems to be a good number, 3 might be a bit long for some people (depends on time of day, I suppose).

Would you rather a long enroute, single leg, or a medium hop followed by a short/medium hop?

For staffing, we can't easily highlight more than 2 departure airports, so it would be hard to have a LAX-LAS and SFO-LAS event while also having, say, PSP-VGT for props as that would require high end staffing for 3 airports.

So, thinking it through, my guess is that having a single jet departure/arrival airport and a piston departure/arrival airport is a good way to go. The question then is event duration and number of legs. If circumstances allow, we might be able to swing a common destination or departure airport, that could be fine (as we did with LGB once).

[Pieces]

What are your thoughts on running a fly-in type event like the few I set up earlier this year? Those seemed to go pretty well, albeit with less traffic than an officially orchestrated event. I thought they catered nicely to all aircraft and flight rules.

I like the format because it allows the pilot to define their own leg length. The traffic flow is also more interesting. Instead of a big line of planes, traffic comes from all directions.

The problem is the more complex traffic for ATC to handle, along with potentially numerous departure airports.

[Cyrus]

Would you rather a long enroute, single leg, or a medium hop followed by a short/medium hop?

I still say that having smaller planes fly into HHR while larger jets fly into LAX (assuming both are landing west) would be pretty cool. Actually, even cooler might be to have *everyone* land at the same spot, e.g. LAX (in this scenario, you could staff north and south tower and ground atc). Heck, open up Edwards for the event and let someone land the Space Shuttle from 100,000 ft (just as a C172 is exiting the rwy ). I know you didn't ask for input on which fields, but I'd be surprised if people didn't offer up their favorites.

Anyway, back to your question... and my 1.5 cents....

Personally, I would prefer a medium hop followed by a short/medium hop. The reason being that on one long flight, if you're not all departing around the same time (and I noticed some folks departing SMX at least 15 minutes before the event "Departure Time") otherwise, some people are going to be essentially flying alone for much of the flight - and that's a very different dynamic. Better to throw everyone into a smaller area around the same time and see how they all do ("they" being the pilots *and* ATC).

At the end of the day, I think "merging multiple streams into a single airport" idea is probably best for everyone. It gives us small guys a feeling of participating with the heavy metal and it reminds the jets that they're sharing the airspace with GA. Plus, it's always fun to hear things like "watch for wake turbulence" or "Cessna 123, fall in behind the 747 on taxiway..."

[wmburns]

Me personally, I have enjoyed each of the PE events. Each for different reasons. The one constant is the increased traffic level. It's so nice to hear the other pilots on the same frequency. It's so nice to be given taxi instructions with "give way" "or follow the.." as part of the instruction.

The Fly in style does have the following advantages:

• allows everyone to determine their own leg length
• sets up the possibility of a wide mix of fast/slow arrival streams. Phrases such as "maintain best forward speed", or "caution wake turbulence" become more likely
• IMO a fly in event might offer the greatest possibility of someone actually being told to hold! How many of us could actually perform a hold from clearance to execution? Image what it would be like if the weather was marginal

However, I thought this latest event did a fantastic job of allowing the fast/slow streams to mix together in a very interesting way while still allowing the jets to be jets. Hats off to Peter! Great work!

IMO, one reason the 2nd leg was poorly attended can be traced to the communication outage. My 1st leg took a lot longer because of a "go around" (I'm suspecting KVNY tower wasn't able to communicate while I was on final).

However, the multi-hop paired departure/arrival pair offers the chance to have a more complex taxi out environment. The multi-hop event also puts some added pressure to complete a "quick turn". Sometimes I can spend a lot of time flight planning. This offers an incentive to be more efficient.

What might also be interesting is to pick a time that might be easier for the non-USA pilots. For example, I often see a ton of people on early afternoon during the weekend. Perhaps look at some other "peak" times and pick a time that would be better for someone outside the USA. Just a thought.

Any thoughts about using Pre-departure clearance (PDC) for events? Obviously there couldn't be any "issues" with the filed flight plan.

Or using Abbreviated IFR Departure Clearance (Cleared. . .as Filed) Procedures. I could see this speeding up Clearance delivery.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publica ... m0502.html

[Pieces]

Another point (positive for some, negative for others I'm sure) for the fly-in style is that pilots have to do their own flight planning. The route and start time aren't given to you. Granted, most of SOCAL is TEC routes, but you still need to plan how long it is going to take you.

[Marcus Becker]

While the random departure airport to a fly-in style seems great from a pilot perspective, it's a staffing nightmare for the controller side of things. Imagine 35 aircraft sitting 35 different airports calling for clearance delivery on 35 different frequencies to one poor controller. Of course I'm exaggerating a bit but I hope you get it.

See here: https://soundcloud.com/kevin-meyers/pil ... ht-lots-of but make it much worse.

It would be fun as a pilot but really hard to coordinate staffing.

[Keith Smith]

The only saving grace would be that the departure times would be at least somewhat spread out, since the arrival time is 'fixed' at the destination. Still, I think it would be tough to make that scale.

We can try a few different formats and see what pops without giving our controllers a stroke

[Perk]

Plus, it's always fun to hear things like "watch for wake turbulence" or "Cessna 123, fall in behind the 747 on taxiway..."

Ahaha, this reminds me of taking flying lessons at a USAFB Aeroclub while growing up... we're holding for wake turbulence in a Cessna 152 while a C-130, a C-9, and a freaking C-5 stack up on the taxiway behind us. I don't even want to think about what that cost the taxpayers in JP-4.

[hoser70]

I like the idea of having two "focus" fields then having folks chose their own departure airport. You will end up with a lot of traffic between the two focus fields I'm sure (in both directions) along with traffic arriving at both from other directions.

[Cyrus]

Keith, Peter, et al -

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is looking forward to what you guys have planned next.

Coming soon...... ?