saddletramp
Line Up and Wait
I had different experience today with one of my students. Our mission was to take his new to him 182RG to a nearby class D airport & get his transponder certified. I noticed when looking through his logbooks that it was a few months out of date. We reviewed the flight before departing our uncontrolled field.
We landed without event & got the certification done. When we began to taxi out & was about to call ground we heard the tower announce they were closing. This was at 13:00 hours local & since the airport has numerous airlines flying in & out I thought this was a bit unusual. My student was a bit baffled. I told him we're now at an uncontrolled field. We switched to tower freq & started self announcing. We intended to do some touch & go's which was great because as we were on downwind a Skywest airline flight called on 4 mile final. We told them we'd extend our downwind leg & this gave my student some wake turbulence avoidance training too.
I later learned that the tower was closing occasionally due to short staffing issues. It was interesting hearing other aircraft trying to contact the tower. Sometimes Notams can sneak up on you.
It ended up being a great training flight for my pre-solo student.
We landed without event & got the certification done. When we began to taxi out & was about to call ground we heard the tower announce they were closing. This was at 13:00 hours local & since the airport has numerous airlines flying in & out I thought this was a bit unusual. My student was a bit baffled. I told him we're now at an uncontrolled field. We switched to tower freq & started self announcing. We intended to do some touch & go's which was great because as we were on downwind a Skywest airline flight called on 4 mile final. We told them we'd extend our downwind leg & this gave my student some wake turbulence avoidance training too.
I later learned that the tower was closing occasionally due to short staffing issues. It was interesting hearing other aircraft trying to contact the tower. Sometimes Notams can sneak up on you.
It ended up being a great training flight for my pre-solo student.
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