IFR enroute frequencies

[Johnm]

I get them spelt and don't tolerate being vectored all over the sky by London. ATC are there for pilots not the other way round! I expect to follow the planned route or a shorter one!

The French controllers I talked to yesterday all seemed to want to help and gave me nice straight lines unlike the CFMU!

[Contacttower]

The French controllers I talked to yesterday all seemed to want to help and gave me nice straight lines unlike the CFMU!

Agreed the French controllers are very nice and generally long DCTs across the country are the norm.

However in my experience crossing the London TMA at FL100 at 140kts as I was a while ago going from Brussels back up north or indeed going into Biggin from the north is less a case of "not tolerating" being vectored around and more that as a slow piece of traffic you simply have to be moved around a bit sometimes and that often ATC will make reference to waypoints that are not on your flight plan or call radio aids by their full name rather than their ID and that unless you know the area well, which to be honest even now I don't really know that well in IFR terms at least, it is very useful to have a diagram of the area you are crossing in front of you; whether that be a physical chart or if you are lucky enough to have an IFR GPS that can display airways. I mean it helps for example because you can see at a glance what ATC is trying to do with you and ascertain whether it is acceptable or not.

If you can get London Control to give you your filed route or shorter every time you are a better man than me sir!

Plus there is other info like Grid Safety altitudes that will be clearly presented should the need arise to use it...

[mutt]

JeppFD on the iPad. Neither contain frequencies.

Yes it does, look at the I symbol at airspace boundaries and you will find them in a pop up window.
We carry 2 IPAD's onboard with JeppFD, but we also have 3 sets of enroute charts.
Is flying without paper enroute charts permissible by SAFA?

Mutt

[Contacttower]

By SAFA do you mean the Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft Programme? Not sure on that one...

I just find paper charts useful. I think with private pilots one just needs to find a system that works for you, and at the moment paper charts are still part of my system. As PPRuNe reminds us everyday there is more than one way to skin a cat though...

[achimha]

Yes it does, look at the I symbol at airspace boundaries and you will find them in a pop up window.

As I said, it gives you a list of all frequencies, not telling you which is which. Just tried it at the EDMM FIR border -- I get 19 frequencies for RADAR. Pretty useless.

The average UK clearance doesn't have any waypoints in it at all! Its not like in the US when they give them all to you at the start. I have flown the length of the UK loads of times IFR and never had the same route twice...ATC make it up as they go along. Also in the London TMA if you started to ask for a waypoint spelling every time ATC decided to alter their plans and send you off it in a different direction the controllers would get very tired of you I think.

If you don't get waypoints in your clearance, what do you get then? The idea behind IFR is that a sufficiently trained pilot can fly in all ICAO countries without requiring special training for each specific country. Of course 95% of all IFR traffic is the scheduled airline service and the pilots there know every possible move of ATC by heart. As GA traffic unfamiliar with the area, I have no problem insisting on every waypoint to be spelled out. If ATC don't like that, they can assign headings. If an ATC calls his VORs/NDBs by full name with a pilot that is not familiar with the area, that is just unprofessional.

[peterh337]

You do get a clearance to a waypoint initially.

After you are in CAS, they know your filed route (in Europe, in the Eurocontrol enroute system) and your onward clearance is implicit. ATC just gives you various instructions; typically the next waypoint or two, or a heading.

If an ATC calls his VORs/NDBs by full name with a pilot that is not familiar with the area, that is just unprofessional.

Yes, but all ATC units do that. Together with less than recognisable place names, that's why one has to be ready to ask them to spell it.

[mutt]

Achima, you havent stated what type of aircraft you are operating and the registration, so you may/may not be subject to EASA SAFA (Safety Audit Foreign Aircraft), which states...

A6-I-6.2.3c An aeroplane shall carry: c) current and suitable charts to cover the route of the proposed flight and any route along which it is reasonable to expect that the flight may be diverted.

I know that you are using the JeppFD, but do you have a letter of authorisation for doing so, and a back up?

As for the list of frequencies, it comes in handy if you didnt understand if you were told to change to .625 or .655

Mutt

[Contacttower]

If you don't get waypoints in your clearance, what do you get then? The idea behind IFR is that a sufficiently trained pilot can fly in all ICAO countries without requiring special training for each specific country.

Yes you are quite right that an IR rating pilot should be able to fly worldwide, however the there is no doubt the UK system has a lot of quirks that a foreign pilot might not understand. An interesting thread on here a little while ago revealed that if one hasn't flown IFR in the UK before there are a number of surprises in store even for an experienced pilot.

I don't really like the UK system either, I think it would be better if we went over to a system like in the US and France where most airspace is E rather than a watertight class A system like we have at the moment but it is what it is...one advantage though of having lots of class G is that one can do tactical bits of IMC here and there without needing a clearance, which can be useful sometimes as well...

As Peter said the clearance is implicit after the first waypoint or SID in the departure clearance because when you file a valid Eurocontrol routing that is de facto your clearance. The idea being that if ATC need to deviate you they will tell you so either just before departure or during the flight.

I forgot that the US is not like this the last time I went there and trying to get a clearance from the Philadelphia area to Boston I wasn't really ready when the clearance controller gave me a completely different route to my filed one...queue start again please and say everything very slowly! The US controller was very patient I have to say...

[achimha]

I know that you are using the JeppFD, but do you have a letter of authorisation for doing so, and a back up?

I fly an EASA reg SEP < 2t, non commercial. Why would I need a letter of authorization? I have a GNS430 and a Garmin 695, both have current IFR maps and JeppFD as well. What "current and suitable" and "reasonable to expect" mean would be subject to a court ruling which I assume to be in my favor. Note that the word "backup" isn't mentioned anywhere.

As Peter said the clearance is implicit after the first waypoint or SID in the departure clearance because when you file a valid Eurocontrol routing that is de facto your clearance. The idea being that if ATC need to deviate you they will tell you so either just before departure or during the flight.

Right, just like in the rest of Europe. And when talking to ATC, you never need airway names. While you file something like "RINEX Y732 ABGAP...", an ATC unit would never tell you "next waypoint RINEX, follow Y732", at least not in my experience. If I did need airway names, it would be more complicated because the GNS Garmins don't know them and in JeppFD one cannot search for airway names.

[Contacttower]

Yes they generally won't use airway names in the UK either.

How do you find using the Gamin 695 for IFR flying? Do you use the airways overlay for the map? I carry one but would usually only switch it on if I lost the panel.

Also does JeppFD show your position on the chart or is it just for displaying the charts?

Just curious to know what other pilots are using for IFR flying...

[achimha]

How do you find using the Gamin 695 for IFR flying? Do you use the airways overlay for the map? I carry one but would usually only switch it on if I lost the panel.

In one word: fantastic. The Garmin 695 is a great piece of hardware. It contains both VFR and IFR low/high enroute maps. I have it mounted on my yoke so it's my primary tool. The aircraft is obviously controlled by the certified GNS430 but for situational awareness I love the 695. Here's what it does for me on IFR trips:

• Checklists. I have all checklists on the datacard and use the 695 exclusively for that purpose.
• Nearest information for airports, VORs, etc. to be prepared for emergencies
• Voltage display, this allows me to monitor the alternator.
• GPS altitude display. This lets me monitor whether the current QNH is a sensible one. I once had a clogged static port on one side of the aircraft and in a heavy crosswind situation my altimeter read 400ft higher. Dangerous situation!
• The track line in front of the aircraft helps me fly holdings because I can just twist the heading knob so that the track line points to the fix. With its 5 minute marks, I also know when I will be where.
• I get traffic information through a PowerFLARM unit connected to the 695.
• It constantly shows the MSA and has a great vertical altitude view.
• The large screen and the nice scrolling/panning/zooming feature allow me to examine the airspace and suggest shortcuts to ATC. In my experience, asking for a specific shortcut often works better than just asking for a shortcut.
• Great track log and flight timer functionality.

Also does JeppFD show your position on the chart or is it just for displaying the charts?

Yes, it does show the position. The app is kind of unreliable with frequent crashes and hangs. Depending on your aircraft, you might need an external bluetooth GPS as the iPad GPS is rather poor.

[Contacttower]

In one word: fantastic. The Garmin 695 is a great piece of hardware.

Yes it sounds like I should be making more use of it! It's just such a shame that we don't get XM weather in Europe..

[peterh337]

I know that you are using the JeppFD, but do you have a letter of authorisation for doing so, and a back up?

No reg in Europe or the USA specifies paper charts must be carried. This has been done to death here many times.

I fly with all planned stuff on paper (my next trip is 1" of printouts in total, down to Turkey) for obvious backup reasons, and I would never fly with say an Ipad as the only place where stuff is, but no reg requires paper charts.

The only scenario where the way you operate is specifies is commercial (AOC) ops. Not private flight.

The stuff about FAA approval of Ipads etc is a load of bollox in this context. They have no power to approve portable equipment like this. That stuff is applicable only to admissibility for AOC ops manuals.

And when talking to ATC, you never need airway names.

You do sometimes, very rarely. I've had airway names from London Control, and from Spanish ATC.

How do you find using the Gamin 695 for IFR flying?

For Eurocontrol IFR you need a BRNAV approved installation. A handheld does not comply with that. You can use it, of course, in reality because no reg specifies how exactly you must navigate. I have a G496 which is on the yoke and could be used as a "DCT box" in case of a power failure.

[Contacttower]

For Eurocontrol IFR you need a BRNAV approved installation.

Oh yes I know that, I wouldn't dream of taking off with just the handheld, I just meant as a general tool for assisting an orderly and efficient flight.

[peterh337]

It depends on how you like to fly.

I use the panel mounted GPS for primary nav at all times, but like to supplement it with a different map presentation.

For VFR hacking and low-level IFR around the UK, I run the "actual printed" CAA charts, under Oziexplorer. They are easily "found" in both Ozi and QCT formats.

For high altitude IFR I run a mixture of VFR charts, again under Ozi, or when crossing mountains above an overcast I run a topo map produced from Google Terrain - about 100GB of tiles for the Alps and the Pyrenees. These presentations are intended for emergency use, because an emergency (when you are going to go down) is really VFR

[Fuji Abound]

because an emergency (when you are going to go down) is really VFR

Well, hopefully, anyway!

[500 above]

As GA traffic unfamiliar with the area, I have no problem insisting on every waypoint to be spelled out. If ATC don't like that, they can assign headings

Coming from a 'pilot' who self admits he never checks the flaps on his C182 ths is not a surprising attitude. The area controllers must love you. A real ambassador for GA!

[achimha]

For high altitude IFR I run a mixture of VFR charts, again under Ozi, or when crossing mountains above an overcast I run a topo map produced from Google Terrain - about 100GB of tiles for the Alps and the Pyrenees. These presentations are intended for emergency use, because an emergency (when you are going to go down) is really VFR

The Garmin 495/695 also contain topography. Do you use the Google data to get more detailed information?

[achimha]

Coming from a 'pilot' who self admits he never checks the flaps on his C182 ths is not a surprising attitude. The area controllers must love you. A real ambassador for GA!

I never have trouble with ATC. The 5 letter identifiers are designed to be easy to pronounce and understand. Most of the time, it is possible to get an unknown waypoint right the first time. If not, ask. Familiarity with airspace is definitely not a requirement for IFR. When ATC are in a rush, I've observed several times instructions like "direct ABCDE, that is approximately heading 095" to get the aircraft on course while they are searching their FMS. Usually not required for slow SEPs.

[Dan the weegie]

Is flying without paper enroute charts permissible by SAFA?

Ramp checked last week, went over the whole aircraft and we scored no points no requirement on the form for paper charts other than relevant approach plates.