{"id":1565,"date":"2012-10-21T22:18:14","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T06:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2012-10-21T22:18:14","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T06:18:14","slug":"how-you-can-tell-youre-in-your-home-airspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1565","title":{"rendered":"How You Can Tell You’re In Your Home Airspace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was cloudy in Southern California, which means it’s a great day to fly.\u00a0 Chances to get real time in real clouds are rare, so I took the time to bop off to Oxnard<\/a> and Camarillo<\/a> and play in the clouds on the way there and back.\u00a0 These were instrument flight plans, so, “play in the clouds” really meant “fly where air traffic control (ATC) tells you to fly and hope there are clouds there,” but I had pretty good luck.\u00a0 I had some lunch at Camarillo and was flying back to Santa Monica<\/a> when I got to do a little visualization.<\/p>\n

One of the things about instrument flying is that you have to learn to visualize where you are with only a little bit of information.\u00a0 It can be the angle and distance your aircraft is from known locations, or other fairly arcane bits of info.\u00a0 When I was learning to fly on instruments I spent a lot of time learning to decide where I was based on those kind of deductions, but these days I have a moving map that’s telling me where I am all the time.\u00a0 It makes flying much safer, but it’s nice to flex those visualization muscles.<\/p>\n

Here’s how I got to do that today.\u00a0 Take a look at my route here (image from FlightAware<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"Flight<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m flying from KCMA on the left to KSMO on the right.\u00a0 The green line is my flight path.\u00a0 The extra northward (upward)\u00a0 line at the end of the flight is a data error of some kind – I landed at Santa Monica.\u00a0 The visualization happened at the little loop halfway along.<\/p>\n

I’m in and out of the clouds along that part of the flight – exactly what I was hoping for – and I’m practicing some control under instruments and the distractions of coming in and out of clouds.\u00a0 I’m listening to the radio, too, because (1) I’m listening for instructions and (2) I want to hear what else is going on.\u00a0 It’s that second part that was interesting today.\u00a0 As I’m cruising along I hear the controller issue landing instructions to a Southwest 737 inbound to Burbank<\/a>.\u00a0 If you’re playing along on the map, that’s the grey ‘>’ near the right side of the map.\u00a0 The 737 is west of the field, being told to fly to SILEX intersection at 4000′.<\/p>\n

That’s pretty much where I’m going to be shortly.\u00a0 Of course, I’m also going to be in a cloud shortly.\u00a0 And I say to myself “Is there something you’d like to share, Mr. Controller?”\u00a0 Sure enough, I get a message to turn more than 90 degrees to my left.\u00a0 And, I’m not sure, but it may have been a different controller – meaning that an instructor decided to make sure Southwest and I were far enough apart to be legal.<\/p>\n

While I make my circle, the much faster jet goes into Burbank and I’m back on my way about 2 minutes later.\u00a0 If I didn’t visualize the jet’s route, this would have been a fairly unfathomable circle to make.\u00a0 But since I know this airspace well, I knew exactly what was going on.<\/p>\n

As an aside, we were certainly never close enough to be dangerous.\u00a0 There are a couple other layers of safety systems that would have activated if we were actually close together.\u00a0 I should also point out that, strictly speaking, I don’t need to know why I’m making that circle.\u00a0 But understanding what’s going on gives that extra layer of comfort.<\/p>\n

Other Cool Stuff<\/strong><\/p>\n

While I was at Camarillo, I saw a Diamond DA20<\/a> two-seat trainer.\u00a0 I know they’re out there, but this is the first one I’d seen.\u00a0 When I was covering my plane after the flight, I got to see two what I think were Chinook<\/a> helicopters overhead.\u00a0 Even with a cell phone, I think the pics are pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\t\t