Hi Hand solo,
As one of the poor sods who does TC Midlands, your problems are caused by the volume of traffic generated by the Welin sector.
There are many problems with DTY departures and I will try to list them and explain them here as best I can.
1. We get TMA outbounds climbing to FL90 (NX), FL120 (SS and GW), FL140 (WU, LL, LC) and FL190 (KK). You come to us at FL60 which means straight away you are below the job lot.
2. The airspace may be 20 miles wide, however when you consider we may have 3 or more outbounds we are positioning for AC DTY (ie getting Ireland traffic West of Scotland traffic etc) and are running them parallel and have NX inbounds and BB inbounds not to mention overflights and you can see that often we simply have nowhere to vector you. (This is also why sometimes you will get a lot of vectors on a DTY SID as we are trying to knit you into gaps to keep you climbing).
3. In the old days before TC Capital AC DTY used to work fast climbing DTY departures and it was easier to expedite you through other traffic to get you up and away.
Now DTY are far less likely to work you and that means you get stuck at FL210 for ages anyway, which then causes us problems because we have to give KK LAM deps to DTY at FL210.
4. Military traffic......If the DTY corridor is in use you are likely to be stuck at FL90 or 100 for some time. Sometimes we are just too busy to whizz you all over the sky and bust you through the Tornados etc. If the workload is high I'm afraid the easiest option is to level you off and wait for the cross.
5. NX inbounds. BB seems to have an annoying habit of launching DTY deps when there are NX inbounds. We have to get them to FL100 by SAPCO, which again limits our options with giving you climb. As Manchester often have crossers at FL110 in the Lichfield corridor 100 by SAPCO is not a good one to miss to high.
6. When we get you from Brum has a large effect. If they pick a good initial heading and hand you over early we can often get you going.
If they hand onto you and you level at 60 for a while you are more likely to get stuck under outbounds. Also as the inbound route is WELIN-HON the DTY SID track places you nicely under the inbounds (hence the occassional 080 heading). As the inbounds will often be talking to Brum at FL80, we are stuck in giving you climb until you are clear of the inbounds.
7. Aircraft performances. Other TMA departures are often 146s, Dornier 328s, A340s, 747 Classics etc. As they come over to us already much higher than you are, if we cannot vector you clear then sadly you are going to be stuck, it just isn't possible most of the time to jump you over them. To give you an example a 146 off Gatwick can often pass abeam DTY at FL210. We also get a wide range of traffic from ATP's cruising at 140, Jetsreams at 180 and training flights at 70, 80 or 90. All these often conspire to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
8. The SID is pretty much unanimously hated by Midlands controllers, it causes us loads of grief, as basiccally you are teeth on into outbounds and inbounds. We are very aware of the climb performance of the minibus and I personally try whenver possible to get you up and away. I know what you can do (infact more than once a ROC of 6-7000fpm has solved many a problem for me !) and we do try, sadly our hands are often tied by circumstances outside our control.
I hope this has helped you understand some of our problems, please do feel free to make a visit whenever you can.
Cheers
XD