flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Okay, I've been kinda slow about posting this, but since I've been hinting at it in another thread, here goes.
I got to tour the Madison (KMSN) tower and TRACON after a very informative presentation by (and chat with) tower chief Dan Hoke.
Here's a few things I picked up that might apply to other places:
* A note about the arresting cables (marked BAK 12/14 on the airport diagram): They are held *down* by air pressure. In the event of a power failure at the airport or any other failure of the system, the arresting cables will fail UP. Other issues have caused failures as well. If the tower tells you a cable is up, make sure you either land past the location of the cable, or ask for a different runway to avoid damage to the airplanes.
* It's common in Madison to get a 04xx squawk code (different code groups are used in other cities) and get "Radar service terminated, squawk VFR, frequency change approved" as you get near the edge of the TRACON airspace. You can ask Clearance Delivery for "NAS VFR" (NAS=National Airspace System) and get a squawk code valid outside the Madison area and they will hand you off. (I've also had "request flight following to the destination" work in the past.)
A few interesting things specific to the Madison area:
* The next instrument approach chart cycle that comes out May 7th will include two new editions of approaches to Morey. The RNAV(GPS) 10 will have a new missed approach procedure that turns planes to the north and then west. The RNAV(GPS) 28 will have an additional step-down fix at 3500 feet roughly where this procedure crosses the final approach course to runway 36 at Madison. Both of these are to reduce the potential for conflicts with traffic on approach to Madison. That may make it a bit easier to get into Madison during IFR conditions.
* They showed us a couple of maps. One was a map of all the various sectors overlying and surrounding Madison's airspace. Another was a map of the way Madison's airspace is sliced up for departures and arrivals, along with some valuable tricks to avoid getting vectored all over creation (more on that below). Finally, they showed a map of their MVA's (Minimum Vectoring Altitudes).
* Finally - Madison's TRACON is likely to go away in the next few years. It will probably move to either Milwaukee or Chicago (shudder). They will build a new tower at the same time, somewhere on the east side of the airport, and that might be a contract tower.
So, here's the magic trick for not getting vectored all over:
First, a little note about how things work here. They are either operating north or south depending on winds. When the flow is north, they generally use runway 32 for GA and 36 for the airlines, south flow is generally 18 for airlines and 21 for GA. 18, 21, and 36 have ILS approaches, 32 has a VOR/DME approach and those are the default instrument approaches for those runways. (There are several other VOR/DME approaches, VOR approaches, and GPS approaches available to all runways except 3, but they are generally only issued by request.) Runways 14 and 3 are not used very often, since the thresholds of both are on runway 18/36. (Actually, 14 has a displaced threshold now, but as there is no parallel taxiway, that doesn't help much.)
So - The way they work here is that there's an imaginary line drawn due east and west across the airport. Approach "owns" all of the airspace on the approach side of the line, and Tower "owns" some of the airspace on the departure side, that is, they can clear airplanes for takeoff without coordinating anything with the TRACON beforehand, they can just toss out departures willy-nilly into these sectors. The limitations of the airspace are like so:
During a North flow, Approach owns everything south of the 90-270 line. Tower gets from 270 clockwise to the 14 extended centerline up to 3,000 feet, from the 14 centerline clockwise to the VOR 21 final approach course up to 5,000, and from the VOR 21 FAC clockwise to 090 up to 3,000.
During a South flow, Approach owns everything north of the 90-270 line, and Tower gets from 090 clockwise to the 32 extended centerline up to 3,000, from the 32 extended centerline to a 200-degree mark depicted on the scopes up to 5,000, and from a 250-degree mark depicted on the scope to 270 up to 3,000. No departures are ever given a heading between 200 and 250 due to some large TV towers in that direction. That's also part of the reason that there are no instrument approaches to runway 3 and for the obstacle departure procedure from 21, which interestingly enough directs you to maintain a 209 heading - That's just inside the "no-zone" for Tower.
Anyway - Here's the important part. If you're on your way *in* to Madison, you want to stay out of those departure sectors or Approach is going to vector you "10-12 miles east or west of the airport." For example, if they're landing and departing to the north, and you're coming from directly north of the airport, you want to stay above 5,000 feet or you will get vectored out and around. So, you'd either want to stay high, or cheat east or west to get out from that middle V between 14 and 21 where you could descend to 3,000. Otherwise, you'll get vectored around.
That's also why you'll always get "maintain VFR at or below 3,000' from Clearance Delivery, or "Climb and maintain 5,000" if IFR (and those departures will be given runway heading or something in the 5,000' sector that belongs to the tower).
It's not an absolute that you'll get vectored around - If it's quiet enough, Tower can put a D on your tag that shows up on the scope and Approach will send you direct to the runway even through Tower's departure sectors.
Going on the tour really made me want to work ATC - Especially in an up-down facility such as this (the controllers do some time in the tower, take a break, do some time on radar, take a break, back into the tower... They pretty much rotate through all the positions over the course of a shift). Unfortunately, I'm too old.
I got to tour the Madison (KMSN) tower and TRACON after a very informative presentation by (and chat with) tower chief Dan Hoke.
Here's a few things I picked up that might apply to other places:
* A note about the arresting cables (marked BAK 12/14 on the airport diagram): They are held *down* by air pressure. In the event of a power failure at the airport or any other failure of the system, the arresting cables will fail UP. Other issues have caused failures as well. If the tower tells you a cable is up, make sure you either land past the location of the cable, or ask for a different runway to avoid damage to the airplanes.
* It's common in Madison to get a 04xx squawk code (different code groups are used in other cities) and get "Radar service terminated, squawk VFR, frequency change approved" as you get near the edge of the TRACON airspace. You can ask Clearance Delivery for "NAS VFR" (NAS=National Airspace System) and get a squawk code valid outside the Madison area and they will hand you off. (I've also had "request flight following to the destination" work in the past.)
A few interesting things specific to the Madison area:
* The next instrument approach chart cycle that comes out May 7th will include two new editions of approaches to Morey. The RNAV(GPS) 10 will have a new missed approach procedure that turns planes to the north and then west. The RNAV(GPS) 28 will have an additional step-down fix at 3500 feet roughly where this procedure crosses the final approach course to runway 36 at Madison. Both of these are to reduce the potential for conflicts with traffic on approach to Madison. That may make it a bit easier to get into Madison during IFR conditions.
* They showed us a couple of maps. One was a map of all the various sectors overlying and surrounding Madison's airspace. Another was a map of the way Madison's airspace is sliced up for departures and arrivals, along with some valuable tricks to avoid getting vectored all over creation (more on that below). Finally, they showed a map of their MVA's (Minimum Vectoring Altitudes).
* Finally - Madison's TRACON is likely to go away in the next few years. It will probably move to either Milwaukee or Chicago (shudder). They will build a new tower at the same time, somewhere on the east side of the airport, and that might be a contract tower.
So, here's the magic trick for not getting vectored all over:
First, a little note about how things work here. They are either operating north or south depending on winds. When the flow is north, they generally use runway 32 for GA and 36 for the airlines, south flow is generally 18 for airlines and 21 for GA. 18, 21, and 36 have ILS approaches, 32 has a VOR/DME approach and those are the default instrument approaches for those runways. (There are several other VOR/DME approaches, VOR approaches, and GPS approaches available to all runways except 3, but they are generally only issued by request.) Runways 14 and 3 are not used very often, since the thresholds of both are on runway 18/36. (Actually, 14 has a displaced threshold now, but as there is no parallel taxiway, that doesn't help much.)
So - The way they work here is that there's an imaginary line drawn due east and west across the airport. Approach "owns" all of the airspace on the approach side of the line, and Tower "owns" some of the airspace on the departure side, that is, they can clear airplanes for takeoff without coordinating anything with the TRACON beforehand, they can just toss out departures willy-nilly into these sectors. The limitations of the airspace are like so:
During a North flow, Approach owns everything south of the 90-270 line. Tower gets from 270 clockwise to the 14 extended centerline up to 3,000 feet, from the 14 centerline clockwise to the VOR 21 final approach course up to 5,000, and from the VOR 21 FAC clockwise to 090 up to 3,000.
During a South flow, Approach owns everything north of the 90-270 line, and Tower gets from 090 clockwise to the 32 extended centerline up to 3,000, from the 32 extended centerline to a 200-degree mark depicted on the scopes up to 5,000, and from a 250-degree mark depicted on the scope to 270 up to 3,000. No departures are ever given a heading between 200 and 250 due to some large TV towers in that direction. That's also part of the reason that there are no instrument approaches to runway 3 and for the obstacle departure procedure from 21, which interestingly enough directs you to maintain a 209 heading - That's just inside the "no-zone" for Tower.
Anyway - Here's the important part. If you're on your way *in* to Madison, you want to stay out of those departure sectors or Approach is going to vector you "10-12 miles east or west of the airport." For example, if they're landing and departing to the north, and you're coming from directly north of the airport, you want to stay above 5,000 feet or you will get vectored out and around. So, you'd either want to stay high, or cheat east or west to get out from that middle V between 14 and 21 where you could descend to 3,000. Otherwise, you'll get vectored around.
That's also why you'll always get "maintain VFR at or below 3,000' from Clearance Delivery, or "Climb and maintain 5,000" if IFR (and those departures will be given runway heading or something in the 5,000' sector that belongs to the tower).
It's not an absolute that you'll get vectored around - If it's quiet enough, Tower can put a D on your tag that shows up on the scope and Approach will send you direct to the runway even through Tower's departure sectors.
Going on the tour really made me want to work ATC - Especially in an up-down facility such as this (the controllers do some time in the tower, take a break, do some time on radar, take a break, back into the tower... They pretty much rotate through all the positions over the course of a shift). Unfortunately, I'm too old.