Airport briefing for newbee

[Olendirk]

hey,

next week my first flights to the airports

oslo,minsk,birmingham and bilbao, also frankfurt and manchester.

if someboy has some experience with thos airports, could he give me some infos please? like vectoring, arrivals, speeds,rwy in use etc?


Thanks so much!!

OD

[Doug E Style]

Can only help out with Manchester. Nothing too much to get excited about. Landing runway 06R/24R, take off runway 24L/06L except for a spell of single runway ops (24R/06L) in the middle of the day. If landing on 24R there is a hump at the touchdown zone after which the runway slopes away, which takes a bit of getting used to. When departing, Tower like you to tell them which SID you've been cleared for on first contact. As far as I know, this requirement is not written down anywhere. One other thing; be careful taxying around the holding points for 24L. There's been at least one incident in recent times of a wingtip collision. I wish I could help out with the others but someone else will have to. Good luck.

[mad_jock]

Man other points.

Carefull with the RT. The ATCO's are cracking there and arn't prone to hesterics over the RT if you go wrong. If you are unsure just say so they won't mind. On the ground and in the air it can be quite fast and clinical.

You have to give a manditory read back for holding short of 24R/06L. They have to make sure you give it.

It has 2 freq for ATIS an arrival and a departure.

Make sure you have your taxi map handy as soon as your off the runway, there are some nippy junctions with taxiways kinking through them and the straight ahead one is not the one you want. There is one or two that will fire off "first right, then left, right again, then left stand 16" don't get flustered by it. In my experence they would rather you question than muck it up. A tower visit is extremely recommended at MAN. Standing behined the controllers at work gives huge insights into what, when, how and why. They make you extremely welcome and really appreciate you have made the effort to come for a visit.

Hold points on the concrete. They have a few hold points which are flat (no vertical markers next to them) and in the middle of heaps of concrete. Very easy to go past.

The airport road traffic can cause a sense of unease and can back up especially in the JF, JE area. It always seems to sort its self out though but does occasional cause you think "I wonder if they have seen me".

You always need stand guidance otherwise they will MOR you. If you don't have it and need a marshaler its not all bad especially in summer. There is a attractive lady that wears vesty tops with huge baps, its worth while taxing very slowly onto stand as she is quite vigorus with her arm movements.

Always wear a high viz their a bit anal about that and hand out fines.

As you can tell almost all the gotchas are on the ground. In the air the area and approach controllers are great. A few characters, none in a bad way, some with quite a dry sense of humour but very competent. And they are not in any way adverse to giving you a visual if the situation allows.

BHX

If you are coming in from the North it is very easy to get hot and high for a direct arrival through chase onto 15. I have seen very competent operators been caught completely by suprise with the profile even after being warned.

Both ends can get extremely lumpy below 1500ft. 15 gets heaps off the factorys and 33 gets some quite nasty rotar off the hangers to the south.
The runway is bloody marverlous now compared to what it used to be as are the taxiways which used to be a cross country nav-ex around steel plates.

Departure the major gotcha is if its a low QNH all the sid's stop at a FL. Especially with the "wanky sid" to the North off 15 it is very easy to get focused at performing the aerobatics required for it and bust your level.

There is an automatic freq change off tower onto radar. So don't expect a call.

ATC are pretty decent. But a word of warning don't mess with the female ATCO's on the RT. Just agree and deal with it later, they would put an army SNCO to shame with the ease which they can bring you down to size and rip you an new arseh*le. And flirting doesn't work. And being polite and pleasant just annoys them (some of us do it for fun). Saying that though don't think they are not competent, they are, they just don't take any ****.

I hope this helps