OB451: Malfunction Master Class

0:00I think what would have been wrong is deciding to continue 40 to 50 miles and not told anyone, and hoped that you were able to get the tower when you got close. Ready. Welcome to a Puzzing Basis air traffic talk. An aviation podcast by two air traffic controllers and rated pilots who love to talk about flying, controlling and everything in between. The show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for your instructor, your supervisor, the FAA, the NTSB or your cat. The show will give you a better understanding of how things work in the national air space system and maybe even make you laugh along the way. Please welcome retired Army pilot Alpha Golf in first officer at Penguin Airlines Romeo Hotel.

1:10It's Wednesday, August 26, 2026 episode 451. On today's show we'll share a great story of teamwork on the flight deck, make another pitch for flight following light and answer more of your aviation questions. What's up, Bayji? Hello, hello, hello. I'm happy doubleheader Wednesday. Yay. We haven't done one of these in a while. What? It's been a while. We've done more this year than we have. Yes, in a long time. Before I left for training we did FUNARO, maybe three in a row. This time it's been a month or so. So, how have you been this week? I think I've got just dandy. Two days in the tower. In a row. Well, half your week because you do four shifts. Yes. I know where to go. Actually, the cold. Because the meds are up there too. So, you've not been in the radar room in a week.

2:11I don't want to go back to work. It's taken my will to leave the house. Well, I'm not a tower person. Rehash that. Tell us why. Just compare the two environments and how it makes you feel and how the day goes and all the things. Well, in the tower you have to look outside. A 360 degrees. You have to move around. It's more active. It requires effort. And it's boring. Especially right now, it's so boring. There's nothing happening. I'm just sitting up there staring at each other. Well, ground's always busy talking to vehicles, which is really getting out of control.

3:13One of the contractors, Charlie Hotel, was up there yesterday for a little bit listening to ground. And was going out of his mind. Couldn't take it. He said, you have ground has worked more vehicles in the last hour than I did my entire career at Metroplex. I want to tell you something I heard recently from someone I know who works at Busy Tower. Yeah. Remember I used to do things I used to know a lot of people. I talked to one of them recently. We talked about movement of vehicles on the ground. At a busy Bravo. I won't say which one I don't want to get them in trouble. They have areas where the trucks are allowed to be and look and go on active taxways. Yeah, it's they see a plane. They don't move or they get off the taxway. The ground controllers and the way that they said it's me. They're like, wait, you guys talk to your vehicles? Every single one.

4:15You better keep that secret because there will be mutiny. I talked to airport gator 16, like 28 times yesterday. A gator. Where are they going? What are they doing? I have no idea. They just go around, place to place. So aggravating. Okay, so we know why the tower aggravated you this week. What about the radar room? Why is it better? Why is it awesome? It's dark. It's not. You don't have to swivel around in your chair or get up and walk around. Everything you need is right there next to you. I do. I do remember that. I like that. Your fan of concentration is less than 30 degrees. It's just all right here. You're locked in as the kids say. Really?

5:15And very little movement. You have to move your hands. Move your mouse around occasionally. You have to hit buttons on your screen to talk to other people. But it's relatively low physical fitness, right? Yes. It's way more relaxing. And the only time you have to turn around is to yell at the soup. Which is enjoyable. It's just wave things at that. I need something. I'm not getting up to do it. Yeah. Speaking of relaxing and doing nothing, it's been me for the last week and I have one more week before I have to go back to work. That's my prize for going away for a month straight. So I get a couple weeks off. So I'm going to start doing some chair flying this week. But at least mentally, maybe sit at my computer and look at some stuff. So when I do get back in the plane, I'm not like, huh? I did forget to remember this.

6:15Anyway, we're going to do two episodes today to catch up for this weird schedule that I have coming up this month. All right. Shall we begin? Okay. Okay. Since OBA 450, we have some new members on the Penguin Club Sierra Hotel, Charlie Delta, Bravo Lima and Alpha Sierra are new on Supercast. HG, take away. All right. If this show has become part of your weekly aviation routine, the best way to support the show is by joining us on Supercast. Supporters keep the show ad free and community supported. And they also get more of what makes opposing bases work. Early access, full bat catalog, private YouTube live streams, bonus audio, and supporter only email access. So your questions and feedback can become part of the show. So if you want to help keep this thing going, head over to opposingbases.supercast.com and join the crew. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Bye, music. It's a good one.

7:16Good one. Review, what announcements? Review, what announcements? I've been doing the review lately. You want to have it back and I'll do the announcement. Okay. Okay. The review titled a perfect read back five stars naturally. Posing bases has been my constant companion for the past two years. I started listening as an avgeek, as flight lists as the show's mascot. Then took it along for my private pilot training and now it's with me through instrument training. There's no question that what I've learned from OB has helped me better understand the ATC side of instrument flying. In fact, during my fifth instrument lesson today, I got a perfect read back from the controller. I'm giving at least some of the credit to AG&RH and to all the extra penguins who have launched themselves onto my iceberg over the past two years. Funny informative and genuine, useful opposing bases has become an essential part of my aviation journey. Keep the penguins coming

8:19by golf bravo from the US of A. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're taking the time to do that. For announcements, Julia Charlie is multirated. Congrats. My soundboard is messed up. I have to fix that. RH&AG, first of all, thank you for your kind response to my previous commercial checkride pass announcement. I know you guys probably get a ton of these emails and I'm so grateful that you take the time to respond to each one. I truly appreciate your support and the effort you put into celebrating your listeners. We enjoy this section. How long have we had this section? Years. Yeah, it's fun. Next, congratulations to you RH on your successful 737 checkride slash type rating. Thank you. That is an awesome accomplishment and I can't wait to hear how you like flying the 737 fleet for penguin airlines. That is my dream airline slash job. I hope to be there in the next 10 years. Well, oops, I just called down in Morgan News.

9:20I passed my multicechride this week. Congrats. After all the dreaded commercial maneuvers and landings, which you don't do in the twan, there's a whole set of new things, but they're fun compared to stupid chandelts. I really enjoyed the pace and the feel of multi-training. Now on to time building before the regionals. Excellent. Well, good luck in the time building phase. I don't know if you're planning on doing that without your CFI and build in some sort of time building environment, but good luck to you. Get us posted. We didn't mention the magazine. It's going to be talked about on the next one, but go ahead, plug it again. I got it on the next one. All this stuff I forgot to put in this one. I put it in the next one. Well, it's in the chit chat notes. Oh, it is. Oh, yeah, it is. Go ahead. Talking about it. Okay, so we were interviewed for an article in Pilot to Pilot magazine.

10:27And we have pictures in there, some of our photos. And one of mine, very proud of this picture, was turned into the poster that's inside this magazine. So what we don't have on here is where you can go find this in order of this magazine if you want to. I will read it off the next show notes. That's what I was talking about. I mentioned it in there. If you want to check out this magazine, Pilot to Pilot magazine is a byproduct of another aviation podcast called Pilot to Pilot. You can find that on all your podcast players that website to go look for the magazine and the show is pilot to pilot HQ dot com. Spell just like I said it. Pilot to pilot HQ dot com. T.O. Not not the number two. Right. And you can pick up a copy of volume three and find some of AG's photography work in a poster. What did that remind you? Like did you see that right away when I brought it over to you? No. I didn't either. So I'm texting back and forth with the author and producer of this great show.

11:34And they said, hey did AG get the magazine? I said, yeah, we got him. And he was waiting for me to be like say something about the poster. All right. So we thought it was an awkward pause. What did he see the poster? Like poster? What poster? Yeah. It was hiding back there. It is. Mine was towards the back and I had been perusing through it. I just hadn't got that far. But I did find it eventually. Very cool. Yeah. That's a beautiful magazine. It is. Quality, it's great. Yeah, it is a print magazine. It has fantastic photos. The articles are great. I love how his format and how he puts that together. It's really cool. Anyway, go check that out. Yeah. All right, sorry. Sorry, I skipped that part.

12:34That's okay. Okay. Play music. Time to feedback. Time to have feedback. I'm exhausted. You go. Okay. I'll get the picture on the screen. Are we here? Oh, there we go. I know. I'm sorry about the spacing. I put in some pictures and you're going to have to move things around. Sorry. Number one, from Emperor Captain Mike Julia Kielo. Hello, Skygods. This was posted on the COPA forum. Today, it looks like the FAA is getting on board with the flight following light idea of having a special squat code to tell ETC that you're listening on a defined frequency. And if they need to reach you, they've posed this one as being related to increased traffic and unique terrain challenges. But maybe it will spread elsewhere in time. I hope the 737 training is going well. RH, all the best. Emperor Captain Mike Julia Kielo. Okay. So scroll down. I copy and pasted the words from the actual notice if we want to

13:36hit on some of those while the picture is up. Okay. Okay. Oh, let's see. I've RVFOR conflicts and discrete awareness code 1246. The background, Jackson Hole Airport and its surrounding radar environment. Worked by Salt Lake Center contain high volumes of air carrier passenger jet, firefighting glider and general aviation operations. Geography, operating practices of airport users, overflight aircraft and lack of surveillance tools create a complex operating environment posing a significant risk to aviation safety, the letter to airmen purpose. Okay. Now hold on. This says, oh, yeah, letter to airmen. Okay. I was thinking it was a note. It's a letter to airmen. To enhance safety in and around Jacksonville and to reduce, I said Jacksonville, Jackson Hole and to reduce the risk of traffic conflicts, VFR aircraft, when operating VFR within 30 miles of the Jackson Hole VOR,

14:40Salt Lake Center advises pilots to broadcast ADSB flight ID at all times, squawk 1246 and monitor frequency 133.25. All right. So a note, if you're squawking that code, it indicates that you are monitoring that frequency. And for the purpose of this letter, pilots are advised that radio coverage on the west side of the Teton mountain range is extremely limited because that is a huge mountain range. Aircraft operating in this area should not expect to establish or maintain two-way radio communication with ATC. All right. So they have a depiction of the affected area. Yeah, it looks like some AI. I appreciate their efforts to make this into some sort of graphic that's usable. Big squawk 1246 in the middle, frequency to monitor. An indication that the terrain may cause reception issues, at least in the written form of this.

15:42Squawk and monitor on the poster, it says, controllers, know you are listening when your code is displayed, enhancing situational awareness when it matters. So for whatever reason, you may not be getting flight following in this error or you're not accustomed to it. This is sort of a like the author said, a flight following light. Hey, I'm listening. I paid attention. I know it's can get crazy around here and that terrain may cause some reception issues, but if you can get in touch with me, I'm on this frequency. That's all that saying when you squawk that. And for the controllers that are working it, I think it's awesome. It's going to give you a display of participating airplanes in this, I mean, let's call it an experiment. It's this is new in the US. Well, I mean, they've implemented this. A couple of places, I think. Yeah, okay. I didn't mean new. It's not as common as it is in Europe. I'll say that. Right. Right. I think this is going to start catching on. This will become more common everywhere.

16:48I hope it does. I think this is a great practice. I think it's unfortunate that this area has that radio coverage problem. But it's good that they're making that known. We have radio coverage problems where we are. And it's not known. There's no, it's not published. You just sort of have to figure it out as you go. But this is great. I like this a lot. How would the controllers at Triad, let's just say they put out one for, hey, there's a lot of airplanes between Duke and Metroplex, your flying near Triad. Within 30 miles of this airport, we would love it if you monitored this frequency and squawked this so we know you're there in the paying attention if we do call you. How do you think controllers would like that? I think they would love it. It's already happening. You already have ADSB data.

17:49And when an aircraft becomes, I don't want to say a problem. But when the controller gets to a point where I would love to talk to you, they're looking at ADSB and they're reaching out. Hey, are you there? What if there was a procedure that told me the plane is there? Oh, you're listening. Yeah. And electric electronic flight bags make this much easier from a pilot workload perspective. Well, if you're used to flying around without flight following, then you're not listening to the show. But please get flight following. But if you're one of those that isn't, this is sort of a basic way for you to say, hey, I don't want to bug you, but if you need to call me, I'm telling you I'm listening instead of the call on the blind, like you just mentioned. You know, the odds of, and with electronic flight bags, you could have that frequency on the screen.

18:49It's very easy to get. There's radio buttons you can find out who should I be talking to around here at this altitude. Yeah, it would be fantastic if it just popped up. It said monitor this frequency as you crossed into the next boundary. Boom. There's all radio on my on my four flight that comes up. It says you're you're nearing the class Charlie surface area when I'm in the back on the way home. Being here are a project and class Charlie airspace. They can do the same thing. They can set up a perimeter. Right. Hey, you're about 30 miles from this airport who seems like they're not busy, but the controllers want to talk to you. Right. How about you monitor this frequency and put the squawk in? Right. Yeah, right right there on the screen. I don't know. Maybe it says something like not mandatory, but squawk this monitor this. Don't be surprised if ATC reaches out to you. Hmm. Excellent. Love that. I agree with you. I think this might slow. This is for whatever reason

19:54they've introduced at this area whether it's the terrain or unique challenges with comms. I don't know. But I hope it comes up everywhere. I hope they make it more common. What if this happened? Look, I'm giving away all the secrets. All right. And we're throwing away millions of dollars. But. But on the same screen, on the same message, it pops up. You know, monitor, squawk this. Triad is landing southwest. Dynamic airspace in effect. Yes. All right. So the Charlie is changing. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine how beautiful that would be? We mentioned dynamic airspace a long time ago now. Yes. We have to be very careful about our trade secrets on this one because when it comes out, we're going to get paid, all right? We're getting

20:54compensated for this. Yes. We're going to revolutionize mapping in the United States. You heard it here, dynamic mapping. What is it? Just stay tuned. Yep. You'll find out. All right. Anything else on that one? No. All right. Number two is from Emperor Captain Joliet Mike. I have some audio. I'm ready to hit play on when you are. It's down there at the bottom. Hold on. I'm lost. Widgets, media, oh, there it is. Okay. Okay. I'm ready. One, two, three. Hey, this is Joliet Mike. I've been listening to the episodes about the jet-grag failures with IFR training in the circle confusion. And I don't instruct anymore, but I was a CFWI for about two years actively teaching instrument.

21:57And we never had a problem with that MDA being weird outside of the traffic. Like we just go lower than normal. Our airports were super busy, but I have a couple thoughts on that. I think we're over complicating it all. So first of all, like if you're circling to the runway that everyone else is using, you're coming in from the opposite direction or across the runway and if you break off any circle, it doesn't really matter what altitude you're at. You just fit into the flow of traffic. Now you have to stay within the 2.7 or whatever it is, not a commiles of the airport, which is really easy to do. And if you're say 800 feet or 500 feet above the ground, 600 feet above the ground, and someone's a thousand feet above the ground, a normal pattern, just keep your work into the traffic, which is to stay at your altitude. They will be descending in front of you, and that's totally fine, and then you descend from your point.

22:59So I'm not sure why it's such a big deal that you have to go up to pattern altitude. However, if that's something that you must do, all you'd have to do is talk to the DPA and your instructor should be doing this too. It's like, hey, the published min is whatever. 550 feet a kilo. However, since there's a lot of traffic, as long as it's okay with you, we're going to do our MDA at pattern altitude. So 1000 feet a kilo. And that's going to be MDA, and you could do everything according to the ACS. No problem. You just have to race a weather. That's 100 feet higher than that. Is the ceiling. And you just come down to pattern altitude. That's your MDA. You fly your circle, and you leave MDA and you land. It's really not that complicated. I think everyone's making a way

24:06more complicated than it needs to be. And as far as circling goes, I fly for the largest fractional in the world, and yes, we still practice circles. Every year in the sim, I think it's dumb, but it is what it is, and we circle every once in a while at a time there, of course, we go to. You just have to be smart at what conditions are actually circling me. You may not want to actually do what the circle at the minimums as far as visibility goes. The weather needs to be a lot better, usually to be safe. But anyways, those are my thoughts on that. I think we're just over-complicating a pretty simple solution to the whole problem. So anyway, those are my thoughts, thanks. Thank you, Jolette Mike. I believe you met him recently. I'm tour of the tower with this F.O. Yes, yes. I like that company.

25:08Yeah. No one is going to have a hard time convincing me that we're over-complicating things, just generally, about an array of topics. This one included, but I think what I think happens here is, and I hope we touched on this before in this discussion, there is a lack of communication between a DPE and a candidate about how this is going to go. Yes, I think, simplify it, but that has to be discussed, because if not discussing it is resulting in failing to check, right? One, that's super expensive, and a setback and a big mental thing now. So I agree. I mean, make it simple, but there needs to be communicated.

26:14So we've gotten a ton of feedback that we have not read on the show about circling. We definitely poke the hornets nest on this. This topic is controversial at best. Yeah. I think one of the things that I've taken away from the feedback and just kind of step back and look at the big picture. For check-ride purposes, if your plan is, and you must do a circle maneuver, and the DPE has a set of guidelines that they have to evaluate you on, do your best, prioritize going somewhere that is relatively slow, that you can accomplish this without other conflicting VFR traffic, because that's where we're crossing the line into testing them in over and being safe. And in real life, if you were going to circling minimums and the clouds were above you, you wouldn't be fighting other VFR traffic. That wouldn't be a problem, but in the testing world, that could be. That's just one of my takeaways. Do your best

27:16to go somewhere that is not busy. Preferably you're the only one there. Yeah. It may mean flying a little bit further out of your normal comfort zone on a check-ride, but I think everybody wins in that case. Yeah. I agree. Thank you, Joel. Mike, for sending an audio and sharing your opinion on it. Yes, thank you. All right, Mova. Plank music. It's the chat thing. All right, this week's Show Topic is brought to us by Amper Captain Delta Sierra, Hey, our H&A G. I want to relay a story of what happened to my pilot friend and myself today in the great help of ATC around the Pacific Northwest with our issue. If this merits the show, hopefully we can learn something from it, and what to do better next time. What? All we hear is good things about this area. It's amazing. And they're very friendly to training environment, training airplanes too. Yes. I fly out of the suffering Delta under coffee

28:22bravo. Hold on. Isn't that the actual name? Is it? Suffering is in the title, isn't it? I don't know. Something around there has that. Okay, I'll go find. I'll go look. And I had some routine maintenance to it for my plane. Okay. Due to the fickle schedules of mechanics, I ended up flying a brief 55 mile north to almost Canada Delta to get it serviced and had arranged for my friend to follow me in his plane based at the same Delta airport as I am, grabbed in her and then take me back home. I like this little aviation car pulling here. In return, for the lift flight home, I had agreed to safety pilot for him while he picked up a couple of via far practice approaches at smaller ports along our route back home, which we'd plan to do without talking to ATC just for expediency. Practice approaches, this is me talking now are always better with ATC period. The whole radio thing and compliance

29:28with their instructions is what makes them feel like actual approach. It's so maybe next time, caller traffic. If you want to do practice, just me being snarky. All right, a few minutes after departing almost Canada, he mentioned that his battery warning was on and that we seemed to be dropping in voltage. We had just exited the Delta and he suggested as we knew his plane could fly without battery power, he wanted to try power cycling to see if that would fix it. Unfortunately, when the power pick came back on, the voltage was still dropping, he seemed a bit perplexed and was starting to troubleshoot, but before we went too far down the path that I decisively said, I've had an alternate failure before and this looks like one to me, we're both rated pilots, so I propose you focus on the flying and I'll get the radios. We know we can fly without power and we have about a million miles of visibility in front of us. It's day VMC, guys, everybody before you get upset. Okay? Right. VFR, not on flight following it. Just take a bite of

30:30a Delta. It's great weather. They continue. So I don't think we need to turn back and we can continue on home, but practice approaches will have to be another day. All right, let's pause right there. Did you find any names that match this? Yes. Okay. It is a town and so Adrian would be because of this. Okay. You have this and you are suffering. Okay. Okay. Blank and suffering. All right. Oh, I'll spill a little differently. I know what you're saying now. And it's not what I was thinking about, but now that makes sense to me. Is there a town called Suffrage? Suffrage. I'm sure that there is. There's a town called Anything in the United States. All right. Come back to us on the show.

31:33Posing right there, they decided they're going to fly the plane. They're not going to fall out of the sky. He's going to troubleshoot. They think to have an alternative failure. They're not going to turn around and go back to the Delta. They just dropped the other plane off at. What do you think about their decision to go home versus turn around or land somewhere else? In this condition and this environment? Well, and it's so hard to just, you know, kind of get your head in that. I think I might have a tendency to say, hey, we just had maintenance done right behind us. And if they messed something up, well, this plane is the pickup plane. He just dropped his off. Oh, this is a different plane. Yeah, this is the pickup. I missed that. Well, I know you're all looking for city names because I'm a ding dong. I'm sorry. I got you distracted. This is just a normal plane. Yep. I would go back and blame them anyway.

32:42Okay. Well, all right. Shoot. Disregard that. I mean, the plane is going to fly. Mm-hmm. If you lose all electrical power, though, I don't know what kind of plane this is. And I don't know what is still working on battery for a little bit. And how long that lasts. We're going to talk about some of that. Okay. But it's a short flight. We're talking 45 minutes, maybe. 40 minutes. Okay. Maybe down to even that. Maybe more like 30 minutes. Okay. You can practically see home. What about you're going under a bravo? Mm-hmm. That would be a bad place for this to happen. Right? Yeah. That's no transponder. We're going to get to that. Isn't that required? Mm-hmm. It is. All right. So I think you also made a good decision about dividing up to these. You concentrate on flying the plane.

33:45And I'll handle the radios and try to figure this out. Well, one of us is always flying the plane. Somebody's going to say, even though we've had a brief discussion about it, why not just turn around. I think you could defend this. It's Dave, EMC. You still had some power, which you do have battery power left. And the plane's functioning fine otherwise. I think you tackled this with ice wide open. We're going back. We can get through this or two competent pilots. We can make this happen. Yeah. Okay. With it. All right. Yeah. I am too. Okay. No, I didn't think you weren't. Okay. I just went. You know, Devils F. Get I'm just trying to think of the things that people are going to say. Okay. They continue. He agreed that this was a good plan. And he focused on hand flying and shutting off excess lights. We still had about an hour of daylight left. I suggested in case we lose our radios, I'm going to call up Island Charlie until them are intention is to fly back to the

34:47suffering Delta. That way, if we do go dark, they at least know who we are and where we're going. Again, my friend agreed with this course of action. I called up Island Charlie and informed them of our dwindling battery. And they put us on a squat code and got our destination and aircraft type. There wasn't much traffic today and to their credit, they kept pretty quiet on the radio until telling us that they'd be transferring us to the coffee approach in a few miles. All right. What do you think about calling ahead? Love it. I do too. I love this. Not only are you making the approach control aware, but they can call the tower. And they can now be made aware. They know that there's a primary out there. This was absolutely the right thing to do. 100%. After the handoff to the coffee, let me start that sentence over. After the handoff to coffee Bravo approach, who knew of our situation, they surprised me by saying November 1, 2, 3, 4,

35:50I'm going to transfer you to the Delta. But before you go, I have you tagged up and you can turn off your transponder to save battery. I wasn't expecting that. And it was really good feeling to know that the controller understood our situation and was going the extra mile to help us eke out as much battery as possible. This is genius. Not sure. Everybody would have thought of this. I don't know who is training these people up there. But it is amazing. You need these controllers. So I just, yeah, you guys need to make a team and go around the country infusing this attitude into the rest of the controller workforce. Let's do something non-aivation or airplane related to transponder is sucking a lot of power. It would be like shutting your air conditioner off during a power added to where you off a generator. Your AC isn't going to work. This is the same type of thing. You got to start getting rid of the power sucks. So the battery

36:53is what they're getting power off of. If you don't know what an alternator is that's providing with electrical power. That's not working. Now your only juice is from a battery that has a time associated with it. Good luck figuring that out. You don't want to be there when it all goes away. Okay. So the controller, I think this is smart, said, hey, I've got you chagged up manually. With your primary target, I've already called the tower. They know you're coming. They also have radar. They can see this tag. I've flashed it to them so they can keep it an ownership of this tag. And shut that big power sucking device transponder. Just shut it off. Sorry, I interrupted. It's amazing. I love it so much. To answer the next question. No. Do you think most controllers would do this? No. I don't

37:55either. They don't even know. They don't even know. All right, they continue as we went over to the suffering Delta. We were asked if we had the Aetus and I mentioned that we turned off our we had turned off our second radio. So he was also quite helpful and read the Aetus to us and mentioned that if we were to lose lose us on the radio, we're cleared to land. How about this? Who are these people? I told him where we were parking and while we were still high in the sky, he cleared us the taxi once we did land. He did say that out of caution, they needed to smell if we needed assistance that the fire trucks were going to roll for us and we needed our fuel and souls, but in the end, we had a normal landing and we were able to taxi back before all the power died. All right, I'm not gonna make these controllers are great. Everybody seems to be working well together. The fire trucks is kind of an overkill. It's a bad radio. They're not going to come fall out of the sky, but they probably got to check a box for hey, we did a response.

39:02You know, this month. Right, so it's in the evening. They just got to shift. The fire departments like hey, if you guys have anything, we could get this busy. This would be great. We got a Nordow coming. Well, he's not really Nordow, but he might be possible that he could be definitely is not every plane we're getting suited up. Thanks. All right, so there are thoughts and questions. While this type of electrical fare on a relatively short flight is not dangerous per se, I was very happy with how each facility we talked to worked with us to get us back safely. It's because of opposing bases that I had the immediate thought to get in touch with ATC and tell them our intentions. Because you've said many times over how keeping everyone in the same shared pool of knowledge helps everyone. We have said that. No secrets while we didn't land up losing power and meeting light gun signals. It made us calm or knowing our intention was understood and being relayed along our route. All right, I'm going to give you an A-plus for

40:05crew resource management, the vision of duties and coming up with a plan, having a discussion. Great. A-plus for systems knowledge. Some people might not know what's going to happen next and in fear of that next unknown happening or going back. Right. And now both of you are looking for an Uber for the probably 100 mile trip in a car to go home. And I'll give you an A-plus for ATC, like you've already said, for understanding and playing along. Your thoughts so far? This is, okay, so before I knew the outcome of this and the path that they took. The, I'll say this, if you're going to continue on and you're going to go and you're going to go somewhere that's towered under a bravo, this is the only way to do that. The idea that you would just go in there hoping that you didn't lose it by then. And then if you did that you hadn't

41:10called ahead and coordinated, I think it would be a huge mistake. While you have power and comms, use it for this exactly. This is exactly how this should have gone. Just, and you couldn't have got a better controller or there was somebody behind their back telling them whatever was happening. However that happened, I have never heard such a thing uttered out of a controller's mouth. To save power, turn off your transponder, unbelievable. Just genius level stuff. That is a professional. That is a true. I just, I just love it so much. Why don't you pick up at number two? I'm exhausted. Number two, ironically because I had brought my personal plane up for maintenance, I had left everything in it except my tablet, I say ironically because I always carry a backup handheld radio in my bag and didn't have it on me for the one time I could have used that backup lesson

42:16learned. I didn't think of it because I was just a passenger but it should have been easy to grab and would have made the stress level even lower. Yeah. We're a huge abacus for backup handheld radios. In all situations. I mean, never leave home without it and keep it with your headset. So your headset and your backup radio just live together. They're married. They're always together. And maybe you could call clearance using your handheld from line of sight to the tower and know that that's how you test it. You know it works. Right. And what, you know, and maybe you have a bag that they both live in, a big bag. And what they do in there on their own time is none of your business. Okay. Number three question. Does ATC know that activities like transmitting

43:19on the radio is a high battery drain activity? Is ATC trained to keep conversation to a minimum if a plane is potentially going to go dark? Oh, man. You know, this controller was. I'm trying to think back if we had a class on alternator failures. And if we did, did it mention this kind of thing? I don't ever remember that happening. I don't either. I don't remember ever hearing this. I don't even remember thinking that as a pilot that I was draining my batter. The transponder I knew about lights and lights make sense. But like pushing that push the talk button, I wouldn't have associated that with expending energy, but it is. It's a drain. Yeah. I mean, you're sending a signal out. So it makes sense. Right. Receiving doesn't cost you a ton. Right. But transmitting does. Good point. No, I don't think controllers are thinking about that.

44:27For the controllers out there, this is probably, I don't know, top three most common potential or emergency situations, at least that I've dealt with, that try at working a ton of GA, maybe that's a better way to say it is this is a very common GA sort of situation, an alternator failure. I think that would be a great thing for controllers to study up on. And this is a master class on how to grade work this on all sides of the microphone here. Okay. Number four question two. This is getting very confusing. I totally. I can't. I didn't number the first migraine. What? What would ATC have preferred us to do? Was it okay to continue 40 to

45:2750 miles to our destination? Or should we have just turned around and land at the airport? We started from it felt like a pretty clear alternator failure scenario with daylight clear viz and a mechanically sound plane. We felt safe continuing. But I don't know if the increased workload on ATC to keep an extra close on us was a hybrid. No. I think what would have been wrong is deciding to continue 40 to 50 miles and not told anyone and hoped that you were able to get the tower when you got close. I think it'll work. No. You probably also wouldn't have shut the transponder off. You wouldn't have felt okay doing that if you had power still. You would have waited for power to shut the transponder off. And then that would have been a bigger problem. So and the I think the transponder being off might have been the thing that allowed you to make it there with power remaining.

46:30So that go back to that real quick. When the controller said turn your transponder off, I've already tagged you up. I don't know how that worked. I can't remember if it was possible to manually tag up an airplane that was it is. Yes. A primary only you can tag up. Well, I'm saying he said he made it sound like it had happened already. Like before you turn off your transponder, I already tagged you up. I don't think that could have happened. He would have just said turn it off and now I'm going to take you up. Right. Well, I think they were already tagged up. They were. Okay. Somebody's squawking one two three four. Yeah. If you tried to type in their call sign and slow and primary tag up that airplane, will it work? If they're already on a tag, no. Right. Okay. So that means they have. But if they're on a tag and their transponder stops working, the tag doesn't go away. It may it sticks to that primary. And it says coast or RDR or whatever the

47:41you're right. Okay. Tag says I don't remember. But it's going to stick to that thing. It does just fall off and become like a blip on the screen. Uh-huh. There's still data there. Yes. I have to refresh my memory on this. Now you could. I don't know about that order, but I think the tag is just going to stay there. If it did drop off or something had it and it went into coast and became unassociated, you just hit track. You either hit initiate control and pull it out of the coast of spend list or track reposition. Click on the data tag. Click on the primary. Okay. But yes, it would. I think it will stay there. I like that you use the term master class. This is the order of operations. The time that you did this, the decision making tree that you went through with the other pilot, I think you guys did a master class on this. This is how it should be done. Don't be afraid to share this. You're not admitting something. You did something wrong to

48:45ATC by saying this thing is happening. You're I think you did all the right things. That's why it's a show topic. And I think that's show title for this so that people can find this easily should be alternator failure master class or something to that effect. So so that other people can come and find this and and have this in their in the back of their head if they have an alternator failure because this is how it should go. Ben, I'm hoping you're taking show title suggestions. I wrote that one down. Please send them after the show. Anything else on this? Thank you, Delta Sarah, for supporting the show and sending in a story that may have seemed benign to you when it was all said and done but I think this can be very helpful for our audience. So thank you. Yeah, huge, very good. Thank you. All right. Moving on. How long button?

49:45Hey, back time. How about I get number one? Okay. From Everett Captain Trelemike from the frozen north, long time no visit. This is Trelemike from the frozen north I'm preparing to participate in air show as a fly by general aviation aircraft and they asked if I have a formation flying credential. That sent me down this aviation rabbit hole. I hear on frequency flight of aircraft coming into the airport. I assume this November 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 flight call sign is completely different than a formation flight for air show standards. What does flight mean to ATC? How tight of a formation are you expecting? Would you expect a flight of supercubs to be within a half mile horizontally at roughly the same altitude? How do you expect them to land if you have cleared a flight of two to land? Can they share the runway or does one need to be off the whole short before the second crosses the threshold. Trelemike from the frozen north. That is a really good question and I'm glad you're here to answer it because I never landed to it once

50:50on the runway. Yeah, together outside of a brief stint I did it sun and fun in 23 where that's part of the whole procedure but can two airplanes in a flight touch down at the same time. Let's just say that they had they were had gone through all sorts of training to make that safe and they're G A they it's at 150 wide runway. Have you ever seen two touchdown? Hold in hands. I don't think so either of I. I don't know of any and somebody's going to send me the thing the blurb in there that says you know oh this is okay as long as X is happening. I've never read that. Blurb. This is what that that flight break-up

51:51procedure in the overhead is for is you know one maybe comes into land and two peels off into the downwind to make that separation. I'm trying to think if somebody said hey we're both going to land at the same time. I'm going to do right side of the center line they're going to do left side of the center line. I'm I'm going to approve that. I don't and I don't think so. Yeah I'm not super comfortable. If something happened, imagine the YouTube clickbait pilot clears two airplanes to land at the same time on the same runway everybody died. Yeah I mean cash if use if something happened and then you touched and the planes got banged up or whatever I'm totally their phase buying it. I approve it. Yep you did this you caused this. Now supercubs within a flight of supercubs within

52:52a half a mile. Yeah that would be I've seen that before. What do I expect how close do I expect you to be? I don't care. Have the wings 18 inches apart. Whatever blows your hair back I just don't like but the runway is a different thing. That's different. The blue angels don't even do that. Now they don't they peel off in the right pseudo overhead it's now two two supercubs on 150 foot wide runway. That doesn't seem as bad. But look if the best formation flying professionals in the world aren't willing to do it on landing everybody knows landings are way sclerier than it then take off and anything else. Then the ice probably would not do that. Yeah I agree. Even if you're in a non-towered situation you have a wide enough grass area where you're going to have fun I wouldn't put

53:57two airplanes that close together in a landing situation. It's just right for problems. Yeah if this so if this had to happen for whatever reason at a tower where there wasn't an air show happening okay at an air show I mean what I guess probably not even me working in any way. Right. It's some but air boss and but if this some for some reason has to happen at an at an towered airport under that is under FAA jurisdiction you're going to need a call ahead and explain what's happening. And and if you're asking for permission the answer's going to be now. Yeah there's never going to. Yeah they're going to walk away from that existence. I know I know BK is in the chat room and he's like no this is why it can happen here's what here's the thing one last thing if you're supercubs I don't know if the newer ones have electrical systems and full transponders if you are in a flight only one of you should be squawking and everybody else should have their transponder in a mode that

55:00doesn't transmit collision alerts for the for the controllers that's super annoying because you're going to be close enough together where yeah yeah VFR to VFR it's going to give you collision alert cock that I don't want to go off constantly so the transponders of the trail airplanes the ones that are not in charge of leading this pack should not be working just be a flight and make it make itself control we'll see the primaries if they're a little bit further apart maybe but it won't cause the primaries yeah yeah but it won't cause their secondary sensors to say thanks to or about to touch and remind you every six seconds for the duration of you being in their aerospace please make it stop yep someone in the tracon will out of the words goose do you see a trailer negative Marlin anything else on that one no you want number two number two

56:04from imprecaptant Delta Fox here's the two more use cases for IFR related pilot to pilot transmissions I stole these from a great article I just read an IFR focused magazine written by Jeff and West one okay so we talked about this I don't remember what show it might have been last week quick disclaimer there was a follow up email on this these are both CTAP scenarios where the pilots are speaking to each other on a non-ATC driven frequency go ahead okay one you're cleared to a non-towered airport so one in one out is now in effect with another IFR flight behind you heading for the same airport you have the airport insight in day VFR and good citizen of the nest that you are you want to cancel in the air but you're in a valley and you've lost radio contact with approach you could call up the plane behind you on the CTAP and ask them to relay your cancellation request yes we use relays all the time for all manner of things some controllers

57:12are not comfortable doing it for cancellation I am comfortable doing it for cancellation I mean you hear it all the time these pilots fraudulally canceling for someone else because it's all about them they just want them out of the way yeah right I mean it's it's ridiculous like this number two guy oh I heard him cancel he canceled did you hear him I heard him no one's doing that so I'm okay I'm okay doing that mm-hmm I've used a relays for just about everything you can think of so I like that one number two same situation but now you're the trailing aircraft you could contact the plane ahead of you on CTAP and ask them to consider canceling in the air okay it says controllers cancel this at a cancellation but it doesn't say other pilots can't okay I like that

58:14I I'll accept that that article link below is a very well written and concise summary of many of the topics you guys routinely preach and teach about not sure if it's kosher but you might consider putting a link to that piece in your show notes with arms to guards you're devoted Beatrice yeah huh that's interesting I never thought about as another pilot trying to get someone to cancel mm-hmm it's kind of funny like it's clear to a million there's the number two guy you're like hey I'm waiting on a cancellation you might have to hold if for some reason you can't cancel see the pros that go into co-factory mm-hmm all right that are masters at this if they're number two

59:15and the front guy hasn't canceled they just cancel exactly if it's clear okay fine we'll cancel yeah now we're not part of the problem we're out of it goodbye it just would be super funny if that it was fun folding on the frequency and some other person keyed up and and just had just canceled dude yeah you're in a narrow band of weather where the second person is still in the soup the first person is able to cancel because they're legal to be a VFR and say we're going to cancel so it's a very narrow situation where one of the players wouldn't know hey I'm holding things up here right right most of the time I feel like you a pro controller broadcasts what's happening while everybody's on that frequency all right there's a couple of you going in here just see you know the second one can't go in until you get done right all right we're not telling you what to do but the sooner you cancel the quicker this number two gets in right yes someone is waiting on your

1:00:20cancellation yeah and that seems like a stretch if you don't if you're not used to doing this and you don't only go itinerant to a non-towered airport once every couple years all this is going to be over your head yeah yeah if you're not presented with this scenario yeah like these guys at Coat Factory are on a weekly basis yeah they live in non-towered world this is bread and butter for them right so they know how to play the game but I agree these are good cases for using it on CTF so thank you Delta Foxrat and if I remember I will try to put that article link in the deep dive for supporters very good number three in the last one from Emperor Captain Charlie Papa all right there were some audio that they did not like so now they summarized it into bullet points I'm gonna do it this way all right this is their summary home airport is a delta under the penguin bravo I don't believe we've ever heard that term before if we have I've forgotten sandwiched between the very wealthy person delta and Air Force one president golf trip to

1:01:21F.R. every weekend in the summer delta okay okay as a beautiful penguin I get the flight following on all non-IFR flights including flying home from the northeast over the Hudson I get handed off to approach control responsible for penguin bravo oh that's that's see that's because where it's where I'm based that's what they're saying oh I get it right and the three deltas two of which see heavy traffic these controllers are great and I think it's important to stay with them rather than cancel flight following I'm usually tunneling under the jet arrivals for the very wealthy person delta and they often ask for turns or descent to facilitate the jets it's happened a few times now that I'm under the bravo shelf barely into my home delta and I can't get a word into the approach controller to ask for handoff note I have established communications and given a des and received altimeter setting this fills me with thread as I consider whether to a even though I'm in contact with ATC just hold outside of the delta enter the bravo shelf in the approach path seems like a horrible idea but

1:02:23under would get the bravo shelf I said under I'm sorry I forgot to say under under the bravo shelf in the approach path seems like a horrible idea but it would get someone's attention yeah be just squawk 1200 and switch to tower and ask them to tell approach or see just continue flying into the delta with approach and pay and pray for the handoff even though tower may be working five to ten bugs masters and they and the pattern and I'm on through mile final all right let me just say what's happening here it's busy you're on flight following the controllers up there that and they do provide via far services routinely while working final into penguin bravo it's normal they're busy mm-hmm you're going to this delta they haven't said contact the tower so you think ah what do I do and those are the options you laid out we'll find out what the what they said because kind of comes out in this feedback but there is some anxiety there you're not sure what to do until someone tells you to go over to the delta tower I understand the anxiety is that fair

1:03:25there's some anxiety there yeah okay I've always chosen b which was squawk 1200 and switch to the tower and ask them to tell the approach controller the only thing I don't like about that is changing your squawk code yeah right I'm trying to think it's cigarette if somebody did this yeah I would I guess it would make me realize oh I forgot maybe I forgot to switch them we're gonna tell her huh let's let this unfold we're gonna talk to that okay okay the first time this happened I asked my tower how they think I should handle it and they suggested just using my second radio and calling them the tower while staying with approach they could then prod the approach for the handoff don't sounds like an obvious solution why didn't I think of that and then I tried doing this recently and discovered that trying to listen to a covered up

1:04:26approach controller while also talking to the tower and explaining my predicament while descending to pattern altitude and looking for traffic is more difficult than single pilot IFR I'm gonna share my opinion at the end of this right now just add two more radios and you're doing army and you're doing army combat missions just four radios and everyone's chattering I've tried to wrap my head around why you needed to be speaking to several more than two different entities at once and it I can't I can't reconcile it so I feel you after this fun experience I called the approach controller and they said it's fine to squawk 1200 but still need to verbally terminate the flight following with approach so don't switch to tower just try and butt in I tried to explain that I would love to but don't want to stop on all the jet control instructor step on the jet control instructions he said I still need to terminate verbally and good luck yeah you're rolling your eyes and so am I so how do I say this nicely

1:05:37when you get that close to the airport and you just disappear I don't bet you most controllers in that environment would be would never think about it again they just assume they hand it you off if they forgot to some of them might just don't go just let them tell go I got other things to do okay so one thing I'm confused about is the term handoff yeah there is no handoff right so they're not actually handing the the data tag off to tower right let's review that real quick we did this years ago but I want to talk about it again in triad when you say goodbye to an airplane landing at the Delta inside of our airspace cigarette you how do you do that what are you how do you accomplish this transfer of radios I just switch okay do you ever do a handoff are they ever flashing on cigarettes tower no okay that is a handoff handoff is transferring radar

1:06:40responsibility and the way we do that automated is by making the tag flash and the receiving controller scope that does not happen I'm guessing that's not happening here I I agree what you mean by handoff in this feedback is the controller saying contact the tower on this frequency goodbye a goodbye is not a handoff it we should be talking about for what it is when you are not getting a transfer of radios to the other to the tower frequency that's when you're in this confused what do I do state right the radar controller is saying we don't care what you squat but you still need to tell us that you're done talking to us and they're not appreciating the fact that you would have done that and the reason you're calling them is because you can't find an opportunity to do that because there's no busy right of all of these options I think as a controller by most preferred would be that you just switched to the tower yes just stay on your code go to the tower and probably if I

1:07:49forgot about you if that's why this is happening I'm busy and I forgot about you it's never going to enter my mind again you're never just like you're going to drop off the scope and that is the end of the story all right they continue I was wondering if you had any additional perspectives or recommendations what ends up happening if you just switched to 1200 but don't say something how how our flight following requests canceled on the approach end is this a good time to use the ident button or is that a bit too passive aggressive I don't think this might be a good opportunity to do it like get right yeah getting close here and it should it'll blink on the controller screen and the first reaction is they're gonna say why is this why are they identical oh huh all right contact the tower did I switch you yeah is this ever a problem in a busy uptown like try out appreciate your thoughts and hopefully this is helpful for any other penguins under busy provost nervously straddling the two icebergs of approach and local see a all right my my two cents

1:08:53and I've been in this airspace I hear these guys I know they're busy as soon as you get within about 10 miles of that delta you need to start looking for your opportunity to say goodbye don't wait to your like right up on the doorstep 10 miles is pretty far out you may think that's really far but the tower can see you they're looking at enough airspace where you're not often off the scope land and their little game boy scope in that tower they can see you start looking for your chance there's there's opportunities to say all right we'll cancel I can see the tower goodbye just say it just get it out you might not even get a response for them but hey they told you to tell them all right and if they don't respond that's on them yeah so if the tower has a scope and they can see your data tag going to a 1200 code just eliminates that for them and now just an extra step you know that would be that would make me mad in the delta tower if you did that right why did you do that for yeah so that's happened for planes going into cigarette where

1:09:58the communication transfer happened normally I they're pointed at the tower about eight miles out I said contact cigarette tower they just squawk 1200 I'm like why so then I call the tower and say hey that guy that 1200 code is this guy I was just talking to him I did not do that I did not tell him to squawk 1200 I just because I don't want to ruin the relationship we have with cigarette tower do we have transplants at Triad that routinely had airplanes squawk 1200 when they approached other facilities within their airspace I guess so because it is happen they do it the controllers say to do it yes go to be a far contact the tower huh yeah I said stop doing stop it that's very odd to me yeah this is the weird things we learned on this show that

1:11:00other places do why would you do that I don't know go go to coffee bravo and figure out what they do guarantee it's better than what you're doing anything else on this one no you're in a great this is a great question I get it this is a big deal because you don't want to make anybody mad there's almost no way to not make some of these some of their mad sets you're gonna be that was rough old yeah well you know just left my frequency you you squawked a code I didn't tell you to squawk yeah well you didn't tell me to do anything you you forgot about me yeah okay we do our best to respond to support feedback I'm like you know when you'll be on an upcoming show a geny thing before the intermission no closing out episode 451 of opposing bases air traffic talk Romeo hotel and alpha golf goodbye everyone drop opposing bases is a listener

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