HPNPilot1200
En-Route
My grandfather who is IFR rated and owns a Bonanza A36 has owed me an IFR trip for a while now in the ‘nanza... We canceled an IFR trip two weeks ago since we made it too much of a last minute deal, and the weather was deteriorating (at times, below minimums). What better than to launch on an IFR trip for my birthday??? (My birthday followed the next day, but I considered it my birthday flight J)
I have a friend who lives outside of PVD, so we decided to head East to Quonset, RI (KOQU) to see him and his father. I wanted to get practice with some IFR routes, so my grandfather said to pull out my Low Alt., IFR-enroute chart and plan a route and take the preferred routes (and/or TEC routes) into consideration. I told him file this route (and amend as needed): (KDXR) CMK V188 GON V374 WACKY. Most of the preferred routes coming out of the NY area dump you on V188 to GON and then either WACKY int. or direct.
We checked weather and it was excellent. Clear skies, calm winds, good, crisp vis., etc. We picked up our clearance (especially eager to see what we'd get in terms of routing) and to my surprise we got: CMK V3 HFD V167 PVD -D->. DXR was real busy so we had to wait a while to pick up the clearance (during normal op. hours they assign only one controller to work GND and TWR [x-mitting on both freqs] unless it's a busy weekend in the summer and/or other busy times as needed).
DXR Tower finally got the IFR release from NY approach and we launched 26 "direct CMK after departure." After about 3 outside of DXR we called them to ask for Departure, since we had already climbed through 2,000 (for 3,000) and were approaching 4 miles outside of DXR (and didn’t get the frequency change to departure) which we got after we stated “climbing X,XXX ft requesting NY Departure.” Tower gladly handed us off and the NY Approach (NOBBI sector) controller gave us -D-> CMK and up to 4,000 and switched us to 120.55 (NYACK sector [only used when highly congested with traffic]) on his initial contact. After being cleared to 6,000 for traffic we received a vector to intercept V3 before we even reached CMK. After on V3, we were handed off to 133.1 (SEALL sector) and were given our final cruising alt. of 7,000. We putted along for a while until we hit BDL airspace and was handed off to "127.8" and stayed with Bradley Approach for a while on V167. Bradley had some receiving problems on their frequency, but we were able to communicate with them fine. Sometimes a call was repeated 3 to 5 times before aircraft could finally read the transmission(s).
Once 15 or so outside of PVD, we were handed off to PVD Approach on 133.45 which is unusual because that is not a standard PVD Approach frequency. (Me being an ATC enthusiast [yea…haha, I know
] know that PVD TRACON only uses 119.45, 128.7, 135.4, and 125.75 running their sectors so they must have had some problems, and were using a ‘back-up’ frequency of some sort). That sector seemed to run all airspace to the west of PVD (in PVD airspace) and southwest as well. He issued us plenty of vectors [as shown in the attached image] prior to PVD (breaking us off V167) and turned us north…and then east….and kept us at altitude and stepped us down by the 1000’s of feet over many miles to accommodate PVD departures he had to turn and climb and then south…until we got a decent to 2,000.
Surprisingly, KOQU doesn’t have an AWOS/ASOS/ATIS of any sort so the Approach controller had to relay the weather to us. I pulled us METARs before of KOQU and they only appear when the tower is open which might be due to the airport/tower being privately run. [which I’ll talk about later.]
Providence set us up on a looooooonggggggggg left downwind for runway 34 @ KOQU and asked us to call the field when we had it, which we did and were cleared “visual approach runway 34 at Quonset, contact the tower, gooday.”
Apparently KOQU is operated privately and upon retractable gear aircraft (or a/c believed to have RG) OQU Tower issues landing clearances like the following: “Bonanza 9er-3-X-way, runway 3-4, cleared to land, check gear down.” It is one of the only airports that I have heard this instructed to small, GA aircraft (as well as big ones too). I know Canada does this often and it is said frequently at Military airports/fields.
After landing we turned off and taxied to the FBO where the line-man chocked us and said, “Gee, it was so quiet, I didn’t even hear ya guys come in!” He was friendly and asked if we needed fuel, which we didn’t. Unfortunately, the on-field restaurant was closed L and we took a drive into town where we grabbed lunch before launching again.
We decided to go VFR on the way back since the IFR flight was just a demonstration for me on how you go through the system from clearance to the last vector, etc… We obtained a squawk from OQU Tower and had to back taxi runway 23 for takeoff. After launching, we contacted PVD Departure on 128.7 and proceeded on course to DXR. There was a scattered to broken layer at 4,000 ft. or so to the west, so we stayed below that for 10 to 20 miles and then maintained “appropriate VFR altitude” as the controller instructed. After leaving his airspace he handed us off to the next PVD sector we were heading into which was 119.45 which we stayed with for a long while. Providence handed us off to Bradley where the controller asked us to switch to “my frequency one-two-tree-point-niner-fife.” He had a nice Bradley TRACON accent and gave us the rest of our flight following into DXR.
We didn’t want a handoff to NY Approach (nor do I think he wanted to initiate one [we heard 1 a/c’s handoff get refused and BDL had to terminate him and told the pilot a suggestion freq] so we called in our descent and DXR in sight so he terminated our FF and we switched to 119.4 (DXR Tower) frequency where I called in 10 to the east and received a straight in to 26. I reported a 5 mile straight in final as requested by the controller and was subsequently cleared to land.
I learned A LOT from this trip. In addition to the re-route, many freq. changes, weather, etc…I also noticed that “ya get whatcha get.” It’s interesting how you’re handled under IFR compared to VFR and I had some interesting thoughts throughout the outbound IFR and inbound VFR flight.
In the A36, we rarely go south since it’s not too enjoyable to my grandfather to get in the busy airspace so we venture North/Northwest/Northeast/East as much as we can. One interesting thing is that after installing SkyWatch (many years ago) and coupling the TIS to an Avidyne moving map, you get a really good feel for where the traffic is in the area you’re flying in. It’s helped in numerous cases and most of the time, suffices for flight following when you head north and planes become far and few, but they’re still out there.
As the Scattered/Broken layer thinned out and we started to climb from 3,500 to 6,500 on the way out of PVD, there was an indescribable view as the cumulous clouds reflected the suns warm, golden tones/colors. We climbed through the haze level and the beautiful white, puffy clouds just stood out and I suddenly realized what flying is all about. It’s just one of the many times where the beauty of flight and sky is absolutely magnificent.
Attached is the track of the aircraft. The datatag is where we canceled flight following on the inbound-to-DXR flight. NOTE: We did land and stop at OQU, but the track of the a/c remained on the same map/diagram in flightaware.com.
Thanks for reading this incredibly long post…I’m not a fan of them, but decided to write up on my “birthday” flight. I was just thinking next year on November 20, 2006, I will be doing what I’ve drempt of doing for oh so many years—SOLO!!
Jason
I have a friend who lives outside of PVD, so we decided to head East to Quonset, RI (KOQU) to see him and his father. I wanted to get practice with some IFR routes, so my grandfather said to pull out my Low Alt., IFR-enroute chart and plan a route and take the preferred routes (and/or TEC routes) into consideration. I told him file this route (and amend as needed): (KDXR) CMK V188 GON V374 WACKY. Most of the preferred routes coming out of the NY area dump you on V188 to GON and then either WACKY int. or direct.
We checked weather and it was excellent. Clear skies, calm winds, good, crisp vis., etc. We picked up our clearance (especially eager to see what we'd get in terms of routing) and to my surprise we got: CMK V3 HFD V167 PVD -D->. DXR was real busy so we had to wait a while to pick up the clearance (during normal op. hours they assign only one controller to work GND and TWR [x-mitting on both freqs] unless it's a busy weekend in the summer and/or other busy times as needed).
DXR Tower finally got the IFR release from NY approach and we launched 26 "direct CMK after departure." After about 3 outside of DXR we called them to ask for Departure, since we had already climbed through 2,000 (for 3,000) and were approaching 4 miles outside of DXR (and didn’t get the frequency change to departure) which we got after we stated “climbing X,XXX ft requesting NY Departure.” Tower gladly handed us off and the NY Approach (NOBBI sector) controller gave us -D-> CMK and up to 4,000 and switched us to 120.55 (NYACK sector [only used when highly congested with traffic]) on his initial contact. After being cleared to 6,000 for traffic we received a vector to intercept V3 before we even reached CMK. After on V3, we were handed off to 133.1 (SEALL sector) and were given our final cruising alt. of 7,000. We putted along for a while until we hit BDL airspace and was handed off to "127.8" and stayed with Bradley Approach for a while on V167. Bradley had some receiving problems on their frequency, but we were able to communicate with them fine. Sometimes a call was repeated 3 to 5 times before aircraft could finally read the transmission(s).
Once 15 or so outside of PVD, we were handed off to PVD Approach on 133.45 which is unusual because that is not a standard PVD Approach frequency. (Me being an ATC enthusiast [yea…haha, I know
] know that PVD TRACON only uses 119.45, 128.7, 135.4, and 125.75 running their sectors so they must have had some problems, and were using a ‘back-up’ frequency of some sort). That sector seemed to run all airspace to the west of PVD (in PVD airspace) and southwest as well. He issued us plenty of vectors [as shown in the attached image] prior to PVD (breaking us off V167) and turned us north…and then east….and kept us at altitude and stepped us down by the 1000’s of feet over many miles to accommodate PVD departures he had to turn and climb and then south…until we got a decent to 2,000.Surprisingly, KOQU doesn’t have an AWOS/ASOS/ATIS of any sort so the Approach controller had to relay the weather to us. I pulled us METARs before of KOQU and they only appear when the tower is open which might be due to the airport/tower being privately run. [which I’ll talk about later.]
Providence set us up on a looooooonggggggggg left downwind for runway 34 @ KOQU and asked us to call the field when we had it, which we did and were cleared “visual approach runway 34 at Quonset, contact the tower, gooday.”
Apparently KOQU is operated privately and upon retractable gear aircraft (or a/c believed to have RG) OQU Tower issues landing clearances like the following: “Bonanza 9er-3-X-way, runway 3-4, cleared to land, check gear down.” It is one of the only airports that I have heard this instructed to small, GA aircraft (as well as big ones too). I know Canada does this often and it is said frequently at Military airports/fields.
After landing we turned off and taxied to the FBO where the line-man chocked us and said, “Gee, it was so quiet, I didn’t even hear ya guys come in!” He was friendly and asked if we needed fuel, which we didn’t. Unfortunately, the on-field restaurant was closed L and we took a drive into town where we grabbed lunch before launching again.
We decided to go VFR on the way back since the IFR flight was just a demonstration for me on how you go through the system from clearance to the last vector, etc… We obtained a squawk from OQU Tower and had to back taxi runway 23 for takeoff. After launching, we contacted PVD Departure on 128.7 and proceeded on course to DXR. There was a scattered to broken layer at 4,000 ft. or so to the west, so we stayed below that for 10 to 20 miles and then maintained “appropriate VFR altitude” as the controller instructed. After leaving his airspace he handed us off to the next PVD sector we were heading into which was 119.45 which we stayed with for a long while. Providence handed us off to Bradley where the controller asked us to switch to “my frequency one-two-tree-point-niner-fife.” He had a nice Bradley TRACON accent and gave us the rest of our flight following into DXR.
We didn’t want a handoff to NY Approach (nor do I think he wanted to initiate one [we heard 1 a/c’s handoff get refused and BDL had to terminate him and told the pilot a suggestion freq] so we called in our descent and DXR in sight so he terminated our FF and we switched to 119.4 (DXR Tower) frequency where I called in 10 to the east and received a straight in to 26. I reported a 5 mile straight in final as requested by the controller and was subsequently cleared to land.
I learned A LOT from this trip. In addition to the re-route, many freq. changes, weather, etc…I also noticed that “ya get whatcha get.” It’s interesting how you’re handled under IFR compared to VFR and I had some interesting thoughts throughout the outbound IFR and inbound VFR flight.
In the A36, we rarely go south since it’s not too enjoyable to my grandfather to get in the busy airspace so we venture North/Northwest/Northeast/East as much as we can. One interesting thing is that after installing SkyWatch (many years ago) and coupling the TIS to an Avidyne moving map, you get a really good feel for where the traffic is in the area you’re flying in. It’s helped in numerous cases and most of the time, suffices for flight following when you head north and planes become far and few, but they’re still out there.
As the Scattered/Broken layer thinned out and we started to climb from 3,500 to 6,500 on the way out of PVD, there was an indescribable view as the cumulous clouds reflected the suns warm, golden tones/colors. We climbed through the haze level and the beautiful white, puffy clouds just stood out and I suddenly realized what flying is all about. It’s just one of the many times where the beauty of flight and sky is absolutely magnificent.
Attached is the track of the aircraft. The datatag is where we canceled flight following on the inbound-to-DXR flight. NOTE: We did land and stop at OQU, but the track of the a/c remained on the same map/diagram in flightaware.com.
Thanks for reading this incredibly long post…I’m not a fan of them, but decided to write up on my “birthday” flight. I was just thinking next year on November 20, 2006, I will be doing what I’ve drempt of doing for oh so many years—SOLO!!
Jason
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