lost comm clarification

[minitour]

Hope y'all know which ILSs will be in use when ya get here, because half of them will be turned off, guaranteed.

For the ATCers...

In a radar environment (cuz in Non-Radar it wouldn't matter), how long would it take for a controller to switch an ILS over to the other runway if they saw ya on an Initial Segment of the approach?

-mini

 

[Vector4fun]

For the ATCers...

In a radar environment (cuz in Non-Radar it wouldn't matter), how long would it take for a controller to switch an ILS over to the other runway if they saw ya on an Initial Segment of the approach?

-mini

To actually switch the ILSs takes around 30 seconds. 3 to reach over and push a button twice, and another 25 or so for the electronics to do their self-test. The problem comes in getting everybody down and off the ILS in use first....

 

[NYCPilot]

Hope y'all know which ILSs will be in use when ya get here, because half of them will be turned off, guaranteed.

I would imagine that if you were NORDO, they would have them all on if they anticipated your arrival. Of course this would be more likely in a RADAR situation, but if you were heading to an area not covered, perhaps they would still keep them all on for you. Not sure if this is the case.

 

[Vector4fun]

I would imagine that if you were NORDO, they would have them all on if they anticipated your arrival.

Not possible, and that's what I was getting at. If we have the ILSs on for the 17s, it's impossible to also have the ILSs on for the 35s. We can only have one pair on at a time.

 

[huncowboy]

How about "If your clearance limit is an airport, you simply select an appropriate approach, make your way to the IAP, fly it and land. ATC will clear the airspace for miles around you?" What more really needs to be said? Now for another question, what are you guys teaching your students about leaving altitude?

'Sled

You and me, we are on the same page about the above. If you read back a few posts before I was saying the very same thing. If the clearance limit is the field, than don't hold. The problem is that the other half of the community is on the view that we will need to hold, and I am trying to find some solid written interpretation that does not seem to exist. Without such we all look like the 2000 Presidential Election.

 

[Lead Sled]

Not possible, and that's what I was getting at. If we have the ILSs on for the 17s, it's impossible to also have the ILSs on for the 35s. We can only have one pair on at a time.

But if the wind was 330 @ 15 G 20 guess which ones would be on?

NORDO is an interesting conceptual thought these days and it does happen occassionally, but probably not as much as it use to with every person on the planet over the age of 11 having a cell phone in their pocket. Granted, a cell phone won't do you much good if you're at FL410 (However, those guys typically have SAT and / or FLITE phones, HF, and other ways to talk to people if they had to.) It's probably a good idea to carry one of those cell phone booster batteries in your flight bag.

What probably happens more than anything else is pilots out flying a given controllers airspace and not getting handed off in a timely fashion. Then you are, for a short period, essentially a NORDO since you're not communicating with someone who deeply cares about you. This seems to happen on a somewhat consistant fashion now that most of use flying jets are on direct "somewhere" routings. Controllers simply forget about us and by the time they realize it, we're out of range and can't hear the hand off. It often takes a while to realize that "Hey, how long has it been since we've spoken to..." At that point the greatest American invention since _______ (FILL IN THE BLANK) kicks in. There is an alphabetical list of every VOR in the country starting on page V-3 of the 2005 AC-U-KWIK. Along with each VOR the give you the appropriate center frequencies. It's usally much faster than tying to find the information on the enroute charts.

'Sled

 

[Lead Sled]

You and me, we are on the same page about the above.

Sorry. I don't always read all of the previous posts. I was getting of on the part about filing to an IAP as being a good idea.

'Sled

 

[Vector4fun]

NORDO is an interesting conceptual thought these days and it does happen occassionally, but probably not as much as it use to with every person on the planet over the age of 11 having a cell phone in their pocket.

[snip]

What probably happens more than anything else is pilots out flying a given controllers airspace and not getting handed off in a timely fashion.
'Sled

Yeah, I guess my opinion is always going to be biased by my experience, but I can only count 4-5 truly NORDO IFR aircraft in the last decade out of the hundreds of thousands I've worked. Each and every one of those was GA, and every one had an electrical failure, and every one could have landed VFR at an out-lying GA field no problem had they not brain-locked over these dated regs. And if the WX had been really down, would you really want to start an approach with a flaky nav/CDI and only 6-8 volts left in a 2 yr old battery? I wouldn't if there was any other option. My PU battery has about 3 times the reserve of a typical Gill G-25.

The second scenario happens quite frequently, but eventually the crew calls a FSS, or App freq, or figures out the correct Z freq, or we reach them on Guard, or company freq, or ACARS, or..... We never see those crews actually start an approach without re-establishing comms.