Over & Out, Eye In the Sky and, of course, me ol’ mucker BOAC,
Thank you for your considered answers in aiding my rapid departure to places north of West Sussex. I do appreciate, despite my usual dimness, the fluidity of the situation and that there are no hard and fast rules, but it is nice to know a plan that works a lot of the time, so it’ll be ‘good rate’ for me from now on. I have to admit to completely forgetting about the BIG hold and will examine Mr TCAS in more detail to facilitate the climb. EITS, no, I never, ever thought it was easy, just you guys make it sound that way and your efforts are appreciated, despite the way some of my colleagues sound sometimes.
055166K,
I apologise if my post caused offence. It was meant to be light-hearted, but I obviously need to work harder to ensure my tone is not misconstrued. I have, indeed, taken up the offer of visiting West Drayton in the past and currently have 7 educational tours under my belt. I’m yet to ‘do’ Swanwick, but will endeavour to get there one day and admire the shiny new office. I miss having the ATC chaps/esses on the flight deck for famil flights, as I used to get all my silly questions answered without having to resort to typing and I like to think it helped to break down a lot of the ‘them & us’ barriers that still seem to find there way into our professions. It does puzzle me that more pilots don’t make the effort to even arrange something as simple as a tower visit, which I always considered a very enjoyable and educational way to carry out airport standby at LHR.
Right, I’ll bore you no further and look forward to those early northerly turns. I still reckon 130.92 is the best freq though
