Symbol Key for (AF?) HI ILS or LOC RWY 25 at KFSM

kontiki

kontiki

Cleared for Takeoff
Joined
May 30, 2011
Messages
1,121
Display Name
Display name:
Kontiki
Subject approach came up in a ground school discussion. Anybody know where the (AF?) symbols are described for KFSM HI-ILS 25 Approach. I'm curious about the white and black border and dotted flight path.
 

Attachments

  • HI_KFSM LOC 25.png
    HI_KFSM LOC 25.png
    584.1 KB · Views: 81
Last edited:
Think the ANG have A-10s there don't they? It's a military (USAF) approach. These HI approaches start way up in the FLs from what I remember from my USAF ATC days.
 
White and black border is likely the visual alert that this isn't your typical ILS us non-military types would use.

Still applying google-fu about the dotted flight path
 
AggieMike88 said:
Still applying google-fu about the dotted flight path
Click to expand...

Still applying? You mean still trying to figure the dotted line out? It's the pilot/plane's ground track during the recovery from the FLs I believe and to intercept the LOC.
 
Looking closer, I think I puzzled it out.... Coming from the West, you're crossing the FSM VOR on a particular course and then a right turn to intercept the localizer.

From the East, you're on the 255° radial of FSM, until ZOKAT, then the side step to intercept the localizer.

But not sure why dots over solid lines.
 
We looked in the regular front material and dots were lost com procedures, but it seems like an awful lot of lost com routing.
 
I'm guessing it's what @mscard88 said. Sometype of routing to get you out of the flight levels while still on the approach.

I wouldn't worry to much about it. You'll never fly one of these as a civilian. Plus you might f yourself one day when you didn't catch the fine print that says TACAN ONLY.

The A-10s are long gone. They changed the base over to drones unfortunately. The good days were the F-16 days!
 
The hashed border tells you that you're looking at a HI-something approach.

The dotted path is the same as the bold line on a LO PTrack. It's the path for the "high procedure track." Again, we dot it to differentiate it from a LO PTrack. It has nothing to do with lost communications.

Doing a HI approach can be a good excercise in approach briefing. Some of these approaches have higher than normal descent gradients to make the at-or-below altitudes, and when you're flying at Cat D or E speeds, you better have your lead radials all figured out before you start.
 
Sluggo63 said:
Doing a HI approach can be a good excercise in approach briefing. Some of these approaches have higher than normal descent gradients to make the at-or-below altitudes, and when you're flying at Cat D or E speeds, you better have your lead radials all figured out before you start.
Click to expand...

Gawd yes! I was at Columbus and those T38s coming down from FL250 were honking on the high approaches.
 
mscard88 said:
Yea forgot about the F16s. That approach probably leftover from those days. Not sure A10s get that high on a local hop lol.
Click to expand...

They mostly did low level stuff. I have a few videos from back during the last North Korean uproar of them doing "bombing" mission over the town. Some of the pilots were graduates of the university I went to. So they got the missions planned with our town and airport sitting in as an enemy base.

I talked to one of the guys a few months later and he said it was urban warfare practice just in case the DPRK went nuts.
 
It's a DoD FLIP Hi-penetration approach. Mil only. We hardly do them in anger anymore as they're fuel inefficient. I shoot these weekly, and yes we haul the mail. 300KCAS is the standard, and the one at the home drone starts circa FL240. They're very uncommon in operational use outside of training.

It's a handful for the students. They require prior study and even then they still eff them up wholesale. The mental math at 300KCAS downhill is the biggest challenge. A funner way of keeping my 6 month FAA IFR currency I must admit.
 
White and black border just identifies it as a high altitude approach. The dotted Procedure lines are
hindsight2020 said:
It's a DoD FLIP Hi-penetration approach. Mil only. We hardly do them in anger anymore as they're fuel inefficient. I shoot these weekly, and yes we haul the mail. 300KCAS is the standard, and the one at the home drone starts circa FL240. They're very uncommon in operational use outside of training.

It's a handful for the students. They require prior study and even then they still eff them up wholesale. The mental math at 300KCAS downhill is the biggest challenge. A funner way of keeping my 6 month FAA IFR currency I must admit.
Click to expand...
I always thought fuel efficiency was the point of them. Stay high until close in and then descend pretty much at idle the whole way down without any 'step down' level offs on the way, particularly during the transfer of control from Center to Approach. Many years ago the phraseology "penetration" was actually used. Being cleared for "penetration and approach" would be used sometimes. Sometimes there was no intent to fly the Approach portion but just get down and do a GCA or go to initial and do the overhead.
 
And keeping your enroute aircraft away from them is a lot of fun on a busy day. :(. Need to have those distances and altitudes down pat.
 
Velocity173 said:
And keeping your enroute aircraft away from them is a lot of fun on a busy day. :(. Need to have those distances and altitudes down pat.
Click to expand...
Penetrations were used a lot in the 1950s before there was any en route civil jet traffic. Even after the civil Jets came along, they were usually above the flight level for beginning the penetration. These approaches were useful for the early century series fuel-limited fighter airplanes.
 
This one sucked on a busy day. Runs right through your Hilton Head arrivals and departures. Then from 10 DME to the TACAN it blows through your overflights along V437. Then as you go outbound and teardrop in at 3,000, you got to keep your overheads and GCAs out of the way. VFA-106 students did them all the time. Fun times. ;)

http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1704/00916HTY23.PDF
 
Velocity173 said:
This one sucked on a busy day. Runs right through your Hilton Head arrivals and departures. Then from 10 DME to the TACAN it blows through your overflights along V437. Then as you go outbound and teardrop in at 3,000, you got to keep your overheads and GCAs out of the way. VFA-106 students did them all the time. Fun times. ;)

http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1704/00916HTY23.PDF
Click to expand...

That looks like a really fun approach :)
 
Caramon13 said:
That looks like a really fun approach :)
Click to expand...
When I was a young Lt going through UPT, this was the Gold standard of hazing approaches in the T-38. You'd be flying this Hi-penetration at 300 knots inside a canvas bag*. This was work, but when you landed out of this, you could at least you conquered the "Widow Maker" at Roswell. The FBO even sold T-shirts with this approach on it to UPT students who survived long enough to make it to the lobby. Good times!
ROW-page-001.jpg


*The view-limiting device in the T-38 wasn't foggles, or a helmet visor like students would use in the T-37. They installed a large canvas bag in the rear cockpit that you would slide over your head and just being sitting in the seat with all this bag around you.
 
Sluggo63 said:
When I was a young Lt going through UPT, this was the Gold standard of hazing approaches in the T-38. You'd be flying this Hi-penetration at 300 knots inside a canvas bag*. This was work, but when you landed out of this, you could at least you conquered the "Widow Maker" at Roswell. The FBO even sold T-shirts with this approach on it to UPT students who survived long enough to make it to the lobby. Good times!
ROW-page-001.jpg


*The view-limiting device in the T-38 wasn't foggles, or a helmet visor like students would use in the T-37. They installed a large canvas bag in the rear cockpit that you would slide over your head and just being sitting in the seat with all this bag around you.
Click to expand...
Wow. All kinds of at or aboves, at, and at or belows. That looks like an approach that was built before there was Radar there.
 
Sluggo63 said:
When I was a young Lt going through UPT, this was the Gold standard of hazing approaches in the T-38. You'd be flying this Hi-penetration at 300 knots inside a canvas bag*. This was work, but when you landed out of this, you could at least you conquered the "Widow Maker" at Roswell. The FBO even sold T-shirts with this approach on it to UPT students who survived long enough to make it to the lobby. Good times!

*The view-limiting device in the T-38 wasn't foggles, or a helmet visor like students would use in the T-37. They installed a large canvas bag in the rear cockpit that you would slide over your head and just being sitting in the seat with all this bag around you.
Click to expand...

That sounds awesome.

Having said that, I don't quite understand the hazing aspect. Seems to me a student doing this HI IAP under the canvas in a T-38 successfully, was proving his mettle.
 
The thing about the T-38A and the Widowmaker was that after everything you had to do to get to final -- leaving the hold at 265kts and speeding up to 300 for the penetration, the inbound/oubound over the TACAN, managing your descent angles and power/speedbrakes to make the altitude restrictions, slowing down in time to get configured -- students would frequently forget to rotate that switch up on the panel from TACAN to ILS.

All of that work just to pork it up right at the end. The final insult of the Widowmaker.
 
aterpster said:
That sounds awesome.

Having said that, I don't quite understand the hazing aspect. Seems to me a student doing this HI IAP under the canvas in a T-38 successfully, was proving his mettle.
Click to expand...

He means the approach is gratuitous, considering no such approaches are shot in anger operationally. Many of our MAJCOM-approved local-aircraft-only departures and arrivals are built with multiple stepdown restrictions, not for legitimate deconfliction reasons, but in order to induce task saturation.

As to why one would do such a thing? That's because it's military flight training and your feelings are immaterial. You either have the predisposition or adaptability to react and perform adequately under stress, or you don't. If you do not, we want to know about it early enough and attrit you. That's part of the opportunity cost of multi-million dollar flight training. Thankfully our "business" doesn't depend on positive customer feedback. We don't do Hamburger Helper Hands up in here...
upload_2017-4-27_0-35-23.png
 
hindsight2020 said:
We don't do Hamburger Helper Hands up in here...
View attachment 53128
Click to expand...

When did 3Ks become part of UPT?

Or is this referencing some sort of "Fluid Maneuvering" or "Extended Trail" sorta-mock BFM setups from late in the formation blocks?

I've only been outta teaching UPT 38s for about 4 years, but even using BFM-like terms (e.g. "3K setup") was righteously taboo. That would be excellent if that changed.
 
Hacker said:
When did 3Ks become part of UPT?

Or is this referencing some sort of "Fluid Maneuvering" or "Extended Trail" sorta-mock BFM setups from late in the formation blocks?

I've only been outta teaching UPT 38s for about 4 years, but even using BFM-like terms (e.g. "3K setup") was righteously taboo. That would be excellent if that changed.
Click to expand...

Oh no, the orthodoxy still claims blashphemy if BFM nomenclature is uttered pre IFF. We at UPT may be viewed as the janitorial crew by the practitioners of IFF Bullshido, but we try to keep the bigger picture in sight and prepare our students to suceed in their next phase of training, without the insufferable vestiges of self-importance coloring everything we do. Part of that is inculcating the fighter pilot mindset in every single one of our students fighter tracked or not, and challenging them as early in tac form as we can. Down here we just dont have the luxury of believing ourselves uniquely qualified to speak in mixed company. Frankly we re too busy cranking out the Nation's next batch of universally assignable CAF pilots in such a horrid retention environment. We are stretched thin and there is work to be done.

To your question, no, we are not allowed to introduce IFF engagements. The reference is as you point out, perch setup entries to an extended trail exercise. But it IS now a separate graded item in the tac form block, so its formally taught and evaluated now. The post terminate is also same as IFF now, with emphasis on min time to next ready call, to prime them for the pacing of IFF.

The parameters are identical to a BFM setup for both bandit and fighter (though we have to call them offender/defender) except for airspeed (ours is 350 not 420) and the graded parameters for validity on the part of the defender are less strict than IFF (30- 45 aspect for a valid setup at FIGHTS ON, versus 40 max in the IFF syllabus.)
 
I used to run the graduate flight at Vance ("Z-Flight") and I'm a former IFF IP, so my entire world for a while was treading this line of trying to run grad student sorties as IFF-like as possible without incurring the wrath of AETC higher-ups for performing maneuvers that were not directly out of 11-251.

I took the BFM admin briefing slides from my IFF days, and plunked the 11-251 ET setup numbers in there, and briefed them exactly like I would an IFF 3K. Same thing for the "fights' on" stuff: I made offender and defender DLOs that were pulled directly from 11-251 verbiage.

So, hopefully the Stans would see an act that looked/smelled like they were going to see in blue jets, and leadership would see direct adherence to Extended Trail exactly as published in 251.
 
Last edited:
2020 always has a way of explaining things so I can easily understand. :confused:
 
My apologies, i should have taken that response to PM. Yes, as to the meme, it's basically sarcasm to highlight there's no crying in baseball (pilot training) .

As to the rest, hacker already addressed it. There's a lot of specific fiefdoms within the aviation communities of the usaf that hold on to anachronistic orthodoxies for no other reason than potato. Tensions that don't add anything positive to the perception of tone deafness from senior leadership at the Pentagon and Af personnel center.
 
I enlisted as an airman right out of high school in 1954. Seems it hasn't changed all that much in 60 years.
 
Hacker said:
We are both expressing our frustration at arbitrary limitations placed on USAF pilot training by AF leadership for frivolous CYA and tribal reasons.
Click to expand...

Nobody in the real world would call that "leadership", they'd call it "bureaucracy". :)

But having been a military brat and around military folk my whole life, I get why someone would say the L word. Mostly self-preservation. ;-)
 
denverpilot said:
Nobody in the real world would call that "leadership", they'd call it "bureaucracy". :)

But having been a military brat and around military folk my whole life, I get why someone would say the L word. Mostly self-preservation. ;-)
Click to expand...

Around fellow AF people, I use the word "management" instead of "leadership" just to get under their skin, since "leadership" is such an ingrained cultural term regardless of if those people are actually acting as such.
 
Hacker said:
Around fellow AF people, I use the word "management" instead of "leadership" just to get under their skin, since "leadership" is such an ingrained cultural term regardless of if those people are actually acting as such.
Click to expand...

LOL. It truly is. I worked for a bunch of ring-knockers once. Nice guys, sharp (they came out of the space side of things), but they definitely had some funny quirks.

I laughed when one day the roof of a data center was leaking in a downpour and someone actually asked, "Is there anything about this in the Ops Manual?"

"Well, since I wrote half of it, and nobody expected a brand new roof to pour a hundred gallons of water through a couple of power distribution panels, other than the safety section that says 'Don't play with power while standing in water', I'm gonna say... no. But there's a nice section on ordering more diesel for the generators... right after the hospital's and the morgue get their deliveries in a disaster."

Ops manuals. Manuals everywhere. More manuals than you could shake a stick at. Not nearly enough human beings at a start-up to write them, let alone maintain them.

But... I learned how to deal with that after a while.

"We're going to go fix this. Follow me around with a legal pad and a pen and after this is over it'll be added to the Ops manual. You can type up a rough draft and send it to me and I'll edit it and send it back to you, and you can turn it in for extra credit with your boss for review time. I certainly don't need it." ;-)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top