Recent content by atcpeter

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    Vfr Flight plans

    One of the most surprising things I learned in the FAA Academy is how slow the ALNOT process is, especially regarding an overdue VFR flight plan. Nothing happens until an hour past your due date. Then they start calling the origin and destination towers (or airport manager if uncontrolled) to...
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    Center sectors and schedules

    The overall boundaries of each Center's airspace are widely available, but for maps showing high and low sector boundaries you'll have to do more searching, or make a FOIA request with the facility. But it's highly likely you're hearing the same controllers on your regular flights. For example...
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    CFII badgering me about radio communication, reading back too much

    If things are busy on frequency and there's no ambiguity as to the controller's instructions to you, a "Wilco, [callsign]" readback is great. Assuming of course that it's not a hold-short instruction, landing/takeoff clearance, etc. Tower: "Cherokee 8-6-Bravo, enter right traffic runway 1-6...
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    Controllers entry level job?

    Agreed. We spent a lot of time scratching our heads after the rejection figures came out. I believe even the FAA hiring people were expecting to get 20% through that initial "background screen," but ended up somewhere in the single digits. At that rate, they'll never make their hiring targets...
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    Ground Point XX ?

    At SFO during busy periods we use two ground control frequencies. Thus you'll hear the tower controller issue "Contact Ground .8" to one aircraft after landing, and "Contact Ground 124.25" to the next, depending on which terminal they go to. There is no "Ground .25" in that case -- we always...
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    ATC instruction to follow the traffic

    From my VFR tower days, this sort of situation is pretty common. Chicago approach would set the arrival sequence for IFR inbounds (and VFRs on flight following), but we could change that sequence as much as we wanted, including "inserting" a guy in our pattern between two inbounds if there was...
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    Controllers entry level job?

    This seems like a good place for my first post on POA. I was an off-the-street hire in 2010, but having an aviation background (CFI and flying for fun since college) gave me a good starting point in ATC training. I'm not going to defend the FAA's hiring process, which is opaque and baffling to...
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