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Old 29th Mar 2014, 20:56
  #11 (permalink)  
jmmoric
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Way north
Age: 47
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Here we have a MSA of 5300 ft, and a SID that only says something in line of "track extended centreline until 5300ft", we expect pilots to add for cold weather if they want to fly it. The SID is a little straight forward since some companies didn't want to fly out in poor weather unless they had a SID, so we invented/described what everyone have been doing for the past 40+ years.

It's usually not a problem, since when the radar is working the minimum vectoring altitude in the departure area is merely 4000ft.

What we do is add up for wind and temperature to the 4000ft, and advise the pilots of the MVA in the area. That usually is good enough for the pilots, but in the event they want to keep climbing towards 5300ft, and we need them to turn we use the phrase "under radarcontrol turn...." after we verified their altitude readout.

When the RADAR is out of service, the lowest is just 5300ft (MSA), and when using that we add a little "not temperature corrected", then pilots will more often than not advice what altitude they use (or we will simply ask if needed).

The temperature can drop below minus 40 degrees celcius in wintertime, and with the mountains we take both wind and temperature into account when calculating minimumm vectoring altitudes.

But seing pilots climbing to 5300ft before starting their turn on course on a sunny warm summerday, always makes me cry a little inside. Must be way more dangerous to fly IFR in sunny conditions than VFR?
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