IFR Interrogatives

[Talan2000]

Hi guys,

Well you knew it was coming...I'm starting my IFR course work. Half trained, half skilled but wholly enthusiastic

Playing around with the I-1 last night and filing some other IFR flights previously.

1. ATIS tells me KSNA is landing NORTH so being a go getter I look up the north approach and uh oh...BACK COURSE LOC...so I lookup what that is and proud of myself for setting the inverse course into my HSI to get Right is Right and Left is Left sensing on the needle I move on
- I presume this is what everyone does?
- Any way to know which direction an APT is actually landing in PE? As in this case they weren't landing North despite the ATIS...would save a bit of hassle on briefing the wrong approach.
- What if you DO want to shoot an approach that's against the current landing direction - is that out of the question? And if so do you tell ATC you want "to circle", "the circling approach of LOC 02L?" - what's the phraseology and will tower tell you pattern directions for your circling? (phew)

2. Since I'm going to El Toro anyway (I figure) why not file ELB instead of SLI? So I do that too. (It wasn't for the rating fyi).
- The clearance came back the same SLI..I asked the CLR DEV guy about it and he says that the clearance is canned that way. Would this happen in real life?

2.5 What do you tell ATC if you want to practice multiple approaches? Do you tell tower for example you just want a "low approach" and then Direct SLI (or do you give them a heads up IF you intend to fly the Missed Approach ahead of time - and when?)

3. Standard clearances also came up when I filed a KRMN to KONT the other day. I had a nice single airway to PDZ and got surprised by a TEC route in return. Does Real ATC always assign TEC Routes despite what you ask? I came up the coast and through the "valley" near Chino. Does SOCAL actually keep people out of the E. side of the central valley? Or is that a PE idiosyncracy?

4. I've screwed up the "expect ILS-20R" vs "Cleared ILS-20R" a couple of times (alas)...Will ATC always tell you to expect Before Clearing you or can they just clear you (trying to mentally align the sequencing).

Thanks!

Todd

[HRutila]

Bottom to top:

4. You'll almost always get an approach to expect before a clearance for the approach. It's very important to distinguish between "cleared" and "expect" because an approach clearance is an authorization to descend at some point, whereas the latter is just to let you know the game plan.

3. If there's a TEC route for your route you'll always get the TEC route, both here and real world.

2.5. "Request multiple practice instrument approaches." ATC needs your first request (specify circling here), how the approach will terminate (landing, low approach), if you want the published missed or hold, and your next request. Climbout instructions are available that don't require you to fly the missed approach or hold. It is preferable if you advise of your intentions to go missed when with the approach controller. In real life you will almost never get the published missed by default.

2. Yes.

3. c. Opposite direction ops can be done. Tower always specifies direction to circle and how to enter the pattern. "ILS Runway 20R circle to Runway 2L."

b. There will be a better way soon but for now you can ask the clearance delivery or ground controller directly if you cannot infer it from the existing traffic flow.

c. On an HSI you shouldn't have to do that since they account for reverse sensing. On a standard CDI you can, but it's more common to set the course to your course heading and shoot it with reverse sensing.

[Jorge Rojas]

And to answer most of the first one:

- Any way to know which direction an APT is actually landing in PE? As in this case they weren't landing North despite the ATIS...would save a bit of hassle on briefing the wrong approach.

You can ask the controller which runway to expect for departure after you get your clearance for example. Normally you will land in the same direction. The wind for your flight yesterday was at 5 kts, based on historical METARs. Our typical procedure on PE is to switch runway configuration if the wind is in the other direction at greater than 5 kts. There are exceptions to this rule, such as SFO. The ATIS from your flight sim may have different parameters set up for when to switch runways.

- What if you DO want to shoot an approach that's against the current landing direction - is that out of the question? And if so do you tell ATC you want "to circle", "the circling approach of LOC 02L?" - what's the phraseology and will tower tell you pattern directions for your circling? (phew)

We can typically accommodate these requests, traffic permitting. If we have a lot of aircraft going for the other direction it may just require you to wait a bit for us to fit you in. Just ask the controller and we will begin working on it.

If you want to do the approach for one runway and circle for another just let the approach and tower controller know as well. An instruction you get from the tower can be similar to:
"CALLSIGN, Circle west of the field for a right downwind runway 20R, runway 20R cleared to land."

[kullery]

1. ATIS tells me KSNA is landing NORTH

Todd,

I'm curious what the source of your KSNA ATIS message was.

The system logs for the KSNA ATIS messages on MyFlightRoute (which I know you are familiar with) indicate that KSNA was reporting 2L & 2R from PE opening until 2:00PM (Pacific). At 2:00PM, it switched to 20L & 20R and remained in that configuration until 9:00PM (Pacific) when it returned to 2L & 2R. I believe that your flight was at about 5:20PM (Pacific), so our ATIS message at that time would have been reporting 20L & 20R. As Jorge indicated, winds at that time were reported as 030 @ 5 resulting in a tailwind of 4.97kts to 20L & 20R.

There was a problem with ATIS messages for KWHP yesterday (KWHP METARs were not being issued for an extended period) however this should not have had any impact on KSNA.

The MyFlightRoute ATIS messages have been designed to be consistent with PE operating procedures however like the fine print says "ATIS broadcasts are based on current weather but may not reflect the currently active runway on Pilotedge".

[Talan2000]

Hr and Jorge, wonderful thank you.

Jorge, weird thing on the wind. From the ATIS, I have written down O, wind 050/08 G16. That would seem to meet the criteria for North ops. No biggie. It's a pain to reverse landing directions I'm sure.

HR,

I'll pay closer attention and expect to 'expect' first.

Thanks especially for the request multiple phraseology. hope to put it to good use.

Ok - so the HSI thing is definitely confusing. The "interweb"http://stoenworks.com/Tutorials/ILS%20B ... aches.html told me to dial in the reverse course -- so in this instance (KSNA LOC BC 2L) I set CRS TO 196 on VOR 1 and it seemed to work like a champ with "regular" sensing. I probably said it wrong, or maybe you should dial in 016 From. Same thing I guess.

So here's a kinda silly question. I was trying to use 2 VORs instead of any GPS. I was flying an "C47.air" Piper Cherokee and I couldn't figure out how to dial in the CRS for the 2nd VOR. I could set Nav1 (electronically and with the VOR1 steam guage) but there isn't a VOR 2 steam guage and I couldn't figure out how to get the radial on it for my second LOP for the fixes along the approach. So I just looked at the bearing indicated as it ticked along instead of marching towards a specific set radial...Operator error I am sure but if someone has the aircraft with a default xplane glass cockpit and knows how to tune #2 NAV to a specific radial I'm all ears!

[Talan2000]

Ken,

With an up all night sick infant it's actually hard to remember when it was I flew. I seem to recall flying later than 5 but maybe that was it...I know I had a long pause to reconfigure after planning to fly 02L Back Course...the tapes won't lie of course :" ... well the log has it at 5 something so that must be it.

I definitely Pulled the ATIS from http://myflightroute.com/index.php? and it definitely was Oscar. I remember distinctly because (1) I wrote it down and (2) I heard a VFR cessna call up with Echo I believe and I thought that was weird so I then dialed in ATIS on the field and got the Oscar identifier again...If this is all insane, then I wonder if I accidentally clicked KONT ATIS as I had it set up initially as my departure airport. (I really don't think I did - especially as I can usually tell the difference between a 26R and a 20R rwy...Would that make more sense though?

Love the myflightroute page, keep up the great work!

[kullery]

Thanks Todd,

050 @ 8, G16 is consistent with the KSNA ATIS reported between 1:00 PM (Pacific) and 2:00 PM (Pacific) (with 2 L and 2 R in use). I think you accessed this message at 1:47PM Pacific time (perhaps during your initial planning). The winds changed in the next METAR (observation at 1:53PM pacific) and the reported runways changed to 20L & 20 R at 2:00 PM.

I think you again accessed the KSNA ATIS @ 4:45 and 5:14 at which time you should have received new broadcasts (with 20L and 20R in use) but I suspect that your browser may have cached the original message. I have code in place which should be preventing the browser from caching the message but perhaps there is an issue with it. In any case, always be suspicious if the ZULU time reported in the message is significantly more then one hour old. I will do some more research on the potential caching issue.

Thanks for the information you provided!!! Hope the baby is feeling better.

EDIT: Confirmed that there is a caching issue when using Chrome......working on a fix for this

ken

[Talan2000]

Ok Ken, I'm equal parts impressed and creeped out! Don't tell my wife the others sites I accessed between 3- and 4:30 LOL.

Good stuff.

Todd

EDIT: Just setting up again to have a go at I-1 and I am getting what must still be the cached ATIS -- 2053Z 050/08 G16...

Closed Chrome and reloaded . I still get that ATIS. I think it's stuck in a loop somehow.

Todd

[kullery]

I'm equal parts impressed and creeped out! Don't tell my wife the others sites I accessed between 3- and 4:30 LOL.

Fear not , we were just lucky that you were the only one accessing KSNA ATIS in that time frame so we were able to pin it down.

Closed Chrome and reloaded . I still get that ATIS. I think it's stuck in a loop somehow.

Yup, that is exactly the problem I found with Chrome. I just changed the file naming convention which should help. Now if you don't hear anything when you push "play" it means that the ATIS has changed since you loaded the page. Hitting refresh should get you the new updated message.

[Talan2000]

Ken

That's great to prevent bad info. Might be a little tricky for a user to understand that if you don't post a note on the relevant page saying "if no Atis plays reload page" or somesuch.

Todd