Leo Tolstoy and VCA
C-change, your post is good and gives the ATC viewpoint. Now I’d like to give you a pilot’s perspective borne of about 2,000 take-offs and landings within the YSRI and YSNW CTA space, over a long period of time.
However, before we start, can we first agree that we will always separate facts from bureaucracy. For example, a fact is say, a regular joy flight hot air balloon taking paying passengers at the northern edge of the entire Sydney basin. A bureaucracy is for example, the need to scramble 2xF-18’s or the police Squirrels or Citation to intercept this “fast” moving balloon during APEC.
Let’s begin with 3 small examples so I don’t infringe on your Leo Tolstoy concerns with posts.
On a CAVOK day when a Sea King (Very slow, large, ugly and easily spottable from the air) helicopter is practicing IFR at YSNW with NO OTHER Mil traffic (because I phoned them and asked), why do they have to activate ALL R airspace in excess of 25-40 miles away from the airstrip? In fact, I know that whenever YSNW is active ALL R space is active regardless of traffic or whether bona fide mil spook exercises are going on. Why? Who gives them this right?
On a YSRI CAVOK day (when there are NO other traffic), when an oil drenched Caribou or a Globe Master is 15nm west and landing on runway 10 why is traffic which is 13 miles east and wanting to land at 11 miles east kept holding? What kind of aircraft needs a 28-mile separation for safety? Remember my earlier posts where pilots regularly fly under A380 and B747 at 500 AGL on V1 regardless of duty runway dir at YSSY with no communications to TOWER, Approach or Syd Terminal. The laws of physics is the same – uniform or no uniform. To add insult to injury, look at their own military spec’d 10nm arc for their extended centreline for NDB final approach course. I fly in the USA and point out to you that B-52's and C-5 Galaxies take less real estate than what our uniforms need.
Lastly, a dead soldier is flown from one of our battlefields in Afghanistan or Iraq into YSRI on a weekend. The only traffic is the funeral plane landing (I know this because YSRI told me). Why is R space activated along with CTA? Remember, in this discussion, I ask for a separation of facts versus bureaucracy.
C-change, if a police patrol car follows you for 500 miles on the road there’s a good chance you will get a traffic infringement ticket. When CTA and R space is so big, a low time pilot or visitor will one day run into it. Pure and simple. We need a discipline to control size of Mil CTA and their practice of grabbing unreasonably R space. For this to work we need civilian control over our uniforms.
Oh oh, I’ve gone into Anna Karenina as well as finishing War and Peace – but they are both worthwhile readings – especially your last post.