[May 18 1600-1900 PDT] "Light Up" featuring PHX TRACON

[Keith Smith]

We’ve got a new style of event for our WUS users this month!

“Light Up” refers to flooding a certain airport or area with traffic on our network. Contrary to our typical "A to B" style event, our Light Up events encourage you to be creative with your VFR or IFR flight planning while enjoying the high volume of traffic and staffing in the area.

Remember that Phoenix TRACON covers far more than just PHX - they own the airspace all the way up to FLG and PRC.

PilotEdge Towered airports: PHX, FLG, PRC.

Reminder: SDL, IWA, & DVT are considered to be non-towered on PilotEdge as part of the Western US operating area.

[smaze17]

This is gonna be awesome. I’m assuming you can do more than just one flight in the 3 hour time frame.

[Kevin_atc]

This is gonna be awesome. I’m assuming you can do more than just one flight in the 3 hour time frame.

Absolutely! Do as many as you can.

I also want to make it clear that pilots are encouraged to make Phoenix Approach part of whatever flight they choose to do, even if that means just stopping through on a flight from ABQ-PHX-SAN or TUS-PRC-LAS (just random examples). Whether you make your entire flight within Phoenix Approach airspace and shoot 10 approaches throughout the event, or just stop by briefly, the goal is to create a diverse and realistic level of traffic.

[smaze17]

Beautiful. Really looking forward to it. FLG to PHX in a 172!!

[Ken Quinn]

This was great, thank you.
Nice flight in the Mooney from KIPF to KPRC, and lots of activity coming into Prescott.
Ken

[Kilstorm]

Great time yesterday.

I was robbed due to Covid from being able to rent a plane and fly when I was out in Sedona at the beginning of the month. Not complaining by any means as I was there for other reasons but none the less it would of been nice. So with this months event I was able to do that missed flight and it was awesome fun. I rented a system C172 from FSEconomy at Prescott where I was going to rent one at North-Aire Aviation. Being I would need to do a checkout flight with them, I added a "checkpilot" in the right seat of my A2A C172. With the added weight at the higher altitude, I could easy see the performance change in the climbouts.

20L was the active with a nice semi cross wind. I did 3 touch and gos to mimic a check out flight as well as bring me back to being current for taking pax (although my girlfriend Tracy wasnt going to fly with me anyways if I was able to make that flight). While in the pattern there were a few planes operating in and out of KPRC as well. I would have paid for the checkpilot to stay with me for my flight over to Sedona as I have only flown on the East Coast and never over any mountainous terrain so I would want the extra local knowledge and could make this a learning flight. I got cleared to depart on the downwind after my 3rd touch and go and flew over to Sedona for a full stop as they dont allow touch and go's. While on the ground I used the Avatar to walk to the terminal and saw a few planes operate out of there. I had the radio playing on my iPad via AeroNavMap as when i was there at KSEZ a few weeks ago, they had a loud speaker in the FBO and outside of it playing 123.00 CTAF. Picked up FlightFlo on the return leg and with a shift in the winds got a new active. I had traffic behind me that was going to land and hold short on 20L while I was on 12. Got in way before them and was able to plane spot them landing while i was securing the plane back on the ramp.

I really liked this months event. Most realistic event for me so far. I had different controllers for every freq and the traffic was almost exactly what one would expect for this field. Perfect amount of radio activity and since each controller had their own freq or close to it, the static calls of planes far away from me finally shined this feature of PE. If the static was a lot then I knew the plane was far away from me and if more clear then they were in the area. I really hope more events like this happen in the near future. Thanks again for all who participated in this months event.