Mostly playing devil's advocate, but in my plane, 90 knots is slow. Completely doable yes, but slow, sluggish, and a decent AOA when heavy, which with that long nose, forward visibility starts to become an issue.
Add flaps. Lean forward. Get a seat cushion maybe.
The problem is when you inevitably have to slow down.
And *that* is what needs to be eliminated. It was OK to have minor speed differences when the arrival was only 10 miles long. Now the arrival is 40 miles long, and one
@ColinD at 80 knots is going to take 30 minutes. If there are 10 planes doing 80, the guy doing 90 will pass ALL of them on that arrival.
I'm not sure what problem the long arrival really solves. The Fisk arrival started at Ripon for 37 years and it was fine. They had one bad year, extended the arrival halfway across the state, and it seems like there's been nothing but problems since. Sure, you can stack more planes on the arrival, but it only works if everyone can do 90 knots. Maybe we need a descent as part of the procedure so that the slower birds can keep up! Everyone starts at Endeavor at 13,000 feet, Puckaway at 10,000, Green Lake at 7500, Ripon at 4500, and arrives at Fisk at 1800.
It'll help with engine cooling too, and the pilots will be too hypoxic to argue.
I'd say there needs to be a procedure for passing, but that's probably too dangerous and everybody is going to be trying to do it.
Yep... So again, we've gotta get the slow movers separated out.
The other thought would be to allow you to bail out and rejoin without going back to the start, but then you have the line cutting problem. I think the best fix would be 3 streams with a MINIMUM speed, as in you get sent back if you're slow. 90% of planes could do the 90 knot stream if they aren't being forced to slow down to 75 or less. Keep the 135 and 90 and have another line for those who can't do 90.
Yes. I think you're on to something here.
Now, I'll freely admit to not having enough experience to comment here. I've only done Fisk twice.
I've done it about 40 and I agree, so you're just fine.
Last year, I left 63C (Adams County) with the fuel tank brimming at 13 gallons and entered the arrival at Endeavor bridge, prepared to break out and try again later if they turned me back to hold around the lakes. Throttle firewalled, I was going about 80 KIAS and got passed a couple times.
Yeah, putting you on a 40-mile arrival with a bunch of other planes going 90 is just going to be a disaster. There needs to be a third stream at somewhere in the 60-75 knot range.
First: I do not agree with the calls for enforcement against line-cutters or people talking on the radio. Egregiously unsafe actions should be addressed, but otherwise, just let the jerks be jerks.
The problem is that if you let people get away with ignoring the rules, what's the incentive for anybody to follow them at all? It just turns into pure chaos, as we've seen a few times. Make an example of the biggest jerks, and maybe people will prepare better and follow the rules.
If the system is tweaked, I think people will be less incentivized to be jerks.
Hope so.
Having some traffic SS squad reviewing ADSB data will just have guys turning off their ADSB-out or going anonymous. ADSB is not required, but it is a benefit, so let's not incentivize people to "fly under the radar".
It is required if you're equipped. Ask Martha Lunken what happens when you turn it off to do stupid pilot tricks.
I heard on frequency multiple times that "2300 is closed". People were frustrated because they were having to fly at 70-80kts to try and maintain spacing due to a very few slow aircraft way up the line somewhere. Some of these guys just decided to go to 2300 at 135. The NOTAM gives that as an option "if needed for safety of flight".
Interesting. I went back and looked over the wording of this over the years. Originally, and all the way up through 2016, the instructions said if you were "unable" to maintain 90 knots then you could fly 2300/135. In 2017, it changed to "unable to operate comfortably at 90 knots". Then, the "If needed for safety of flight" was added to the 2300/135 in 2021.
In any case, 2300 needs to be kept open but restricted to airplanes that really need it. IE, twins. And maybe
@Jim K.
In fact, I think a better way to do this would be to add lateral separation, and make the procedure 1.5 times longer than the 90 knot procedure so that there isn't an incentive for the jerks to use it to get to the front of the line early.
He then said most of those twins can go 90 kts, they just don't want to. That attitude really bothered me.
Yeah. In a twin, you need to be able to maintain at least Vyse, not just Vs0 plus a reasonable margin. Even the lightest twins like the Twin Comanche, 90 knots is right on the edge.
The lack of understanding of what we pilots were dealing with and then the somewhat snarky attitude of this one guy (who I'm sure is a good person) concerned me. It seemed as if he considered these pilots as prima donnas who were trying to game the system (that was my take, I could be wrong).
The problem is that there HAVE been plenty of prima donnas who were trying to game the system. If you put every aircraft that is capable of 135 on the high arrival, it'd be an even bigger cluster than it is now.
I do think it'd be good to have a meeting between the controllers and some Fisk-experienced pilots both as a debrief as well as a briefing for next year.
Or both. Anything over 3000 gross (or whatever) flies the Warbird approach. Anything unable to maintain 100 flies low and slow to the grass strip. Everyone in between does the conga line. No 2300 option.
That'd just cause problems on the warbird approach.
Its not that a twin or big bore single can’t fly at 90 - it’s keeping the engine cool is the challenge. It’s curious the Fisk controller doesn’t understand that as the lead who was interviewed on Oposing Basses certainly did.
It's not that hard to keep a big engine cool at 90. It's hardly working. Looking at the data from my last Fisk approach, I was at 40% power and my hottest CHT peaked at 373.
Perhaps a lot of this year's heartburn was the strange Canadian smoke that killed the visibility and balled everything up.
Yes - Whenever weather shuts down the VFR arrival for a significant length of time between Fri-Sun, it creates a backlog that's hard to clear.
Assuming this isn't a permanent thing, and we'll be back to last year's "acceptable level of heartburn", we might be looking for a solution to a problem that won't be there next year.
Yeah, it's kind of ironic that the 2018 "heartburn" caused the procedure changes that have led to a lot more heartburn.
Doesn't mean that adding a grass strip for slow movers and making 90 kts a minimum on FISK isn't a bad idea. Where would you put this new strip so that people don't hit each while flying in and out?
The location for a grass strip is definitely the rub.
For sure. Most clear spots already have things parked on them. The Ultralight field has a max of about 1400 feet available, and that's somewhat obstructed. Pioneer Airport is longer but there's no way to taxi to the rest of the field. About the best I can find is parallel and east of taxiway A (aka 36R) and south of 31, you might be able to squeeze in an 1800' strip there.
Between 36L and 36R has been suggested.
There's a bunch of connecting taxiways there though, it'd probably be quite a job to make that safely landable. But if 1800' is enough, I like your suggestions for how to use it:
Then slow aircraft could be sequenced in on a straight in from the south, perhaps have it active until 10:00. Fisk arrivals would only use 36L until the grass strip goes inactive. There could be an entry point set up like Fisk with controllers in communication, and a hold area if slow aircraft traffic gets heavy. Shut it down after 10:00.
And, of course, 36R is another possibility for the slow movers. That runway is rarely used IME - Out of those 40 arrivals, I've used it once.
We had a grass strip marked out for a few years. It was put in primarily for aircraft that had only tail skids (rather than tailwheels) that really couldn't take a paved runway. It was just south of the glideslope transmitter building (where the firefighters hangout down at P5).
Yabut, there didn't used to be parking way down there. Now, that's all South 40.
We already lost more vintage parking this year to designate a crashing area for helicpoters using the ultralight runway.
As if helicopters choose where to crash.
DOH!
