Night flight and an FAA seminar

Plane: Cessna 172
Instructor: Jamie
Route: MGY-LUK-MGY 
Weather: Broken clouds, 55 degrees, wind 330 degrees at 6 knots

I'm not sure why but there were a few different FAA Safety Team seminars in the area tonight. Jamie sent me a message a few days ago asking if I wanted to go to one in Piqua and I mentioned that I was planning on driving down to one in Cincinnati. We bounced our schedules back and forth until deciding we'd fly down to Lunken in the 172 this evening.

Safety seminar (including WINGS credit) plus regaining night currency? Sign me up!

The flight line at Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport

We met at Wright Brothers around 6:15. The runway's still quite soft at Stewart so 2814L's been tied down at MGY this week. We'd have to return there anyway after dark (no lights) so it worked out quite well. Jamie was just completing his preflight as I walked up to the airplane so I hopped into the left seat and got situated; I had the propeller turning a few minutes later.

I turned onto Runway 2 at 6:30 and we were quickly off the ground and on our way to Lunken. It's only 35 miles (about 20 minutes) by air down to Cincinnati. I tuned in the ATIS and didn't bother calling approach; I called Lunken Tower 10-15 miles north and was told to report a two-mile final for Runway 21R.

Hour drive or twenty minute flight? I'll go by air, thank you very much.

Kings Island from a couple miles away

The image stabilizer on my new lens does a pretty good job, eh?

There was a jet off our left landing 21L, which I spotted and reported. Once I had him in sight, tower cleared us to land when we were still about five miles out. I landed long and turned right onto Taxiway C, then taxiied to the old terminal at the southwest end of the field.

We arrived just in time as the seminar started roughly the second we walked into the Greater Cincinnati Airmen Club on the second floor of the terminal building. It was a great seminar - controllers from Cincinnati Approach gave a really nice overview of the local airspace and procedures, followed by a Q&A with a bunch of folks who work for the Cincinnati FSDO.

It's always nice to meet the local controllers/feds and tonight was no exception. Everyone was enthusiastic about aviation and lots of helpful information was exchanged. It was also a nice reminder that I need to fly down to CVG and log some Class B takeoffs and landings while I can since they're not too busy down there these days!

There was a trio of Blackhawks parked on the ramp at Lunken

The seminar wrapped up around 9:00 and we headed back down to the dark tarmac to preflight the airplane. I was back in the left seat but Jamie taxied to the runway and made the takeoff, flying us back to Wright Brothers while I handled the radio comms. Tower cleared us onto 3L for takeoff but didn't turn the lights on. A quick, "tower, 2814L on 3L, can you please turn the lights on for us?" call over the radio took care of the black hole! :)

Visibility wasn't great on the way home, though it was still thoroughly VFR. I'd estimate it at 10-15 miles based on when I finally saw the antenna farm southwest of Dayton come into view. Jamie flew an approach to Runway 2 and landed, with two airplanes in the pattern behind us.

We took turns at this point, alternating each time around the pattern until we got in our three takeoffs and landings to extend our night currency for another 90 days. I never really nailed one (last July's solo night flight was much better) but all were acceptable. The winds were squirrely on final and I was quite active on the controls all the way down. Jamie certainly won this round!

Still, I'm night current again and I have a feeling that might come in handy at some point over these next three months. At this point, I think I've been night current more in the past year than in the previous five years since I passed my checkride. Not too shabby, huh?

Flight Track: Google Earth KMZ File 
Today's Flight: 1.9 hours
Total Time: 305.0 hours

Up in the tower

This morning I had an opportunity to go on a tour of the control tower at Dayton International Airport. I certainly did not pass it up! A local group of pilots organized it and, through the magic of email and Facebook, I found myself on the visitor list when I arrived at the airport.

Dayton's new control tower opened in 2011

Dayton used to house a TRACON in addition to the tower, however approach was moved to Columbus when the new tower opened a couple years ago. It's still weird to call Columbus Approach for flight following over downtown Dayton but I'm slowly getting used to it. That meant no tour of a radar room this morning. Thankfully, I saw an impressive one before when I visited Cleveland Center in 2009.

We met with Sean, one of the supervisors, and he started the morning with a Powerpoint presentation. It had a great animation of the progression of an example flight. Once the pilots contact clearance, ground, and then tower for takeoff there are a series of handoffs to get into "the system" and out of the local area. The presentation illustrated how all flights leaving Dayton's airspace (which is a roughly 60-mile radius around DAY up to 10,000 feet) have to leave out of a series of gates - basically, three or four sections on the radar scope - to get passed onto Cleveland or Indianapolis Center.

It's 255 feet tall and covered in over 1,000 glass panels

After a really nice Q&A down in the main building, we hopped the elevator up to the top of the tower in two groups. First stop was two stories below the cab; they have a nice little break room for when the controllers don't want to come all the way back down. That's where I snapped the photo below - above that level, no phones are allowed.

They've got quite the view of the airfield up there!

Next up was the equipment room. Really just a bunch of switches, electrical panels, and computers. I also noticed a bank of CD-R drives where they record all the ATC communications. Sean mentioned all the backup systems in place. There are three generators in total (along with batteries) at the airport ready to take over if power is ever lost - one for the tower, another for the approach lighting, and one for the airport itself. The FAA manages the first two while the city of Dayton manages the latter.

Finally, we climbed one final set of stairs and found ourselves in the tower cab. It's quite expansive and the view is awesome, as you would probably expect. There are computer stations all the way around, each with a specific purpose, plus two displays showing the local approach radar. Usually there are two controllers - one handles clearance and ground, and the other handles local (i.e. tower / the runways) operations.

The airport wasn't super busy but a number of flights arrived and departed while we were up there. One of the controllers also recorded an updated ATIS broadcast. Right before we left, the visibility improved and the airport went VFR; I heard the other controller call Columbus Approach and let them know. Both Sean and the controllers on duty answered questions and pointed things out to everyone in the group.

Eventually we had to come back downstairs and we finished with a final Q&A and a couple entertaining ATC stories from Sean. It was really interesting to look out on the airport from the controller's perspective. It was also quite interesting to see all the technology they have in place - radar, windshear detection, even a link into the national NEXRAD system that can track dust particles in the air to report winds aloft anywhere they desire. Pretty cool stuff.

If you ever have a chance to take a tower tour yourself, I highly recommend it!

Operation Raincheck at Cleveland Center

I have to put up a short post about the event I attended tonight at Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) in Oberlin, Ohio. Reason being it's probably the best little seminar I've attended in my two-ish years of attending such things. Not only was it extremely well organized but I also gained some amazing insight into the life behind the radar scope. Plus, I met up with blogging pilto friend Dave who was also there for the tour.

In today's security climate you don't often have the opportunity to go inside an ATC facility so I was quite fortunate to be able to do so. Ever since September 11th, visitor access to ATC locations has been severely limited at best. However, many ARTCCs throughout the country are beginning to revive programs aimed at teaching pilots about the Center environment - collectively, they're known as Operation Raincheck.

We started out with an hour-long presentation about the history of ATC and the specific breakdown of Cleveland's airspace. Then we split into three groups (four people each, with a controller escort) and toured the different areas inside the building. My group first went to the simulator room, then to the Traffic Management area, spoke with the meterologist, and finished up in the actual radar room listening in and watching controllers work live traffic.

Speaking with the Traffic Management folks really cleared up the whole reasoning behind how they coordinate with other ARTCCs to sequence traffic into the arrivals to major airports. We were able to view all the traffic across the country on monitors and see breakdowns of how they were being set up to flow perfectly into the arrival sequences. Even though this is an area I really don't deal with as a simple VFR pilot, it was really interesting to me.

Perhaps my favorite moment was seeing how the large display in Area 8 (the Southeast corner of Cleveland's airspace) was set up to color-code air traffic into major airports on the East coast. You may be as amused as we all were to learn they went by the colors of the local NFL teams - Philly was green, Dulles and Reagan were maroon and yellow, Baltimore was purple, etc. Good to see they find ways to keep things light in an environment that can be quite stressful. It goes without saying that this was an awesome experience and gave me a whole new perspective of the voices on the other side of the microphone!

Check the event listings on FAASafety.gov to see if your local ARTCC is scheduling any Operation Raincheck events. They tend to fill up quickly (at Cleveland they only have 15 slots on any given date) so be sure to check often if you're interested.

Heading to Tampa

Sorry for the recent lack of updates on here - I haven't flown in a couple weeks for a multitude of reasons. The weather hasn't been great, I've been out of town on the weekends, and now this past week and a half I've been working obscene hours due to a critical project. Needless to say, it's been a perfect storm that's kept me on the ground. I do at least have a 150 reserved this coming Sunday so I hope the weather cooperates!

Anyway, I just wanted to give a quick update since I'm headed down to Tampa tomorrow for the AOPA Summit. I've really been looking forward to it for months now, mainly to attend a bunch of the seminars and meet up with fellow pilots. For those of you I know through the blog or the AOPA Forums, let me know if you'll be at the Summit! Send me an email (steve [dot] dilullo [at] gmail [dot] com) or call me on my cell and hopefully we're able to meet up at some point. I'll be in town for the whole event, Thursday thru Saturday.

I also should mention that the Indianapolis ARTCC Town Hall I attended a couple weeks ago was a great session. Not only did I pick up some useful tidbits of information, I also had a great discussion with a controller after the formal program ended. You all should take advantage of the opportunity to meet and interact with ATC folks if there are sessions in your area. Check out FAASafety.gov for event listings near you.

One last thing and that's a comment and question to you readers about the state of the blog in general. First I want to mention that I've got some posts in mind for the upcoming months when I'll likely be on the ground more often. My plan is to write about books/courses/materials I've used and recommend, review some more items I've picked up over the past year, and create a section for new readers. Second is an open call to all of you who read the blog... is there anything you want me to write about? Do you have any general comments, questions, or concerns? Please send in everything and anything that comes to mind - either as a comment to this post or via email. Thanks in advance for the feedback, I appreciate every bit of it!

AOPA Summit, seminars, and the like

In lieu of actual flying tales, this is a quick post with some information I've been meaning to share for a while. As I've mentioned many times before on here, one of the greatest things about the blog is all the people and pilots it's enabled me to meet from across the world. Sometimes our only correspondence is via email or Facebook but I've also been fortunate to meet some of you in person - from as far away as Australia! So it should be without any surprise that I wanted to share some upcoming plans and extend my hand in hopes I'll be able to say hello to a few more of you over the next couple of months.

AOPA Summit (Tampa, FL)

What used to be known as the annual AOPA Expo has been badged the AOPA Summit this year. This will be a first-time trip for me; in fact, it will be my first trip to any large-scale aviation gathering not counting airshows. Yes, I know I really need to get to Oshkosh still - planning on next summer, but I digress.

Anyway, I'll be in town from November 4th all the way through the end of the Summit on November 7th. Personally, it's all the seminars that I'm looking forward to - they're honestly the main reason I'm headed down to Tampa. There's quite a few folks from the AOPA Forums that I know are attending and I'm really excited not only to meet them, but also for all the things the Summit has to offer.

Operation Rain Check (ARTCC Tours)

What appears to be a nationwide education program hosted by our Air Route Traffic Control Centers is, at the very least, up and running around this area. I'm planning on attending events at both Indianapolis Center (ZID) and Cleveland Center (ZOB) in October and November. The events in Cleveland include a tour, simulation lab, and live monitoring session. Indy's is a different approach, more of a town-hall (not at the actual ARTCC facility) discussion with controllers and experts.

One of the things I've wanted to do since I first started ground school back in 2007 was visit an Air Traffic Control facility. Needless to say, I'm really excited about the opportunity to tour Cleveland. Similarly, any time you can learn from controllers helps build confidence in radio use and procedures so I expect the Indy event to be just as educational. I'll be in Cleveland on November 19th and over at Indy on October 22nd. By clicking the links in that last sentence, you can access the registration pages for each event.

ASF "What Went Wrong?" Seminar

The AOPA Air Safety Foundation hosts countless seminars throughout the country every year. Looking at my events page on the FAASafety site, there's probably five of these seminars in various locations between now and December. They're all set up to discuss accidents with investigators so that we can all learn from past mistakes. Sure sounds like a smart thing to learn more about to me. The closest event from my house is in Columbus on October 7th so that's where you'll find me. If you'd like more information (no registration is required) click either here or here.

Update 10/7 - I'm not going to be able to make it this evening. Thankfully the ASF schedules these fairly regularly, so I hope to make it to another one nearby soon.

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If you'd like any more information on the WINGS Program, check out the end of my last blog entry. There's a bunch of useful links if you want to join or learn more about it. Both the ARTCC events and the ASF seminar are eligible for WINGS credit so be sure you are enrolled in the program if you'll be attending.

As far as actual flying goes, a few things are in the pipeline. This coming Thursday I'm planning on making the short hop up to Wapakoneta to visit Marty, who I happen to know from the aforementioned AOPA Forums, and enjoy a BBQ dinner. Then there's a decent chance Gina and I will fly up to the Akron area to visit family and/or to Kalamazoo for some WMU football (Go Broncos!) during what I hope to be beautiful October weekends. It's a wonderful time of year to be flying!