Use of VRPs by ATC
 

Just seeing that Waltham thread reminded me of something...

Something which has come up a number of times on VFR trips over the years is that ATC sometimes use VRPs which are unpublished.

AIUI, they should use only VRPs which are in the AIP. Those VRPs will then find their way into VFR charts (national, Jepp, etc) and into GPS databases.

But the local ones won't be known other than to locals.

I am suprised as to the extent to which this goes on.

Perhaps ATC are aware of this, and use the local ones only for pilots they know will know about them? A non-local or foreign pilot is going to get a bit of a "cockpit workload increase" otherwise...

Just say "unfamiliar" and they'll give you vectors, or a published VRP, or whatever.

I've had this on a number of occasions and it was never a problem. On the other hand, I've also had (and used) non-published VRPs in airspace where I'm very familiar and it really helps with situational awareness and getting the route you want.

Never mind unpublished VRP's

I have never ever found that VRP to the south of Leeds which is the bottom of a valley next to a cinema and a bend in the river. Closest I have managed to get with radar vectors is 3 miles and I still couldn't see the sodding thing.

Well, yeah, on VFR flights I've also been sent to NDBs, even though my flight plan identifies the aircraft as VO/S.

And then there's the famous story about somebody naming a VRP "big hill", in a mountainous area. That one even confused ATC.

Worst one at Edinburgh was Philipston. Big red bing (slag heap) would have been more appropriate.

There has been a refreshing initiative by ATC at Edinburgh. Last year they invited local airfield club members to give their input to try to cut down on airspace infringements. Our club members offered to fly them over the entry exit lanes to establish what worked best for the pilots and ATC.

We should see an update very soon.

D.O.

What a sensible solution.

Always did wonder why some of these Airspace boundarys were so arbutary. It would have made much more sense for someone to decide how much they needed then went up in a puddle jumper and had a look at the features to see where the sensible boundary would lie between features.

Its like the inveruie lane in ABZ cracking feature to follow. With Inch as the starting point.

VRP's
 

MJ
"that VRP to the south of Leeds"
That's Dewsbury.....I agree, not easy to see, nowt obvious apart from a few bends in the river. :bored:

2 separate issues.

1) Is a VRP in the AIP?

2) Is a VRP visible?

If it is in the AIP then it should appear in the modern GPS databases. I did a VFR/Europe presentation the other week and for that I looked at some current Garmin handhelds (695 etc). All of them showed the official VRPs, as published on the Jepp printed charts for example.

As regards 2) that is an old chestnut - look at the notorious "Nokia Factory" near Farnborough :ugh: Actually, for all I know (not looking it up right now) that might well be an official VRP because IIRC my KMD550 shows it :)

But if you have a GPS which shows VRPs, 90% of the job is done for you.

In the international (Europe) VFR context, ATC will normally send you to a VRP, so you have to be on top of those which you can reasonably expect.

France tends to use 1- and 2-letter VRP names, such that ones to the N of the airport are called N, NA, NB, ones to the east are called E, EA, EB etc.

Some other countries also use single letter names but not based on the compass bearings e.g. LIPQ has VRPs called G or GRADO and V or VICKY to the south of the airport :)

I had it in my CPL test and as soon as I was asked to report it said to the examinor right thats me failed I haven't found that bastard yet. I am going to ask for a IFR recovery to the ILS then visual circuit for the single engine stuff.

He just burst out laughing and said well if you know you won't find it that sounds like a sensible command desicion if you hold an IR like you do. And it wasn't mentioned again. 15 quid approach fee V 6 pounds a min in the twin no brainer.

One of the best things about an IR is that you are never given a VRP again (unless going Z or Y etc).

On my FAA CPL I was asked to find a VRP north of Elstree somewhere... couldn't find it, the instructor couldn't find it, eventually I got the GPS out (with the CAA 1:500k map running on it as a moving map, showing the VRP) and we flew straight to the spot, only to find the VRP had vanished. It was some sort of roundabout which had been dismantled :E

One of that type of it doesn;t excist anymore was my first turning point on my test.

Thankfully someone before hand had given me the sheet which tells you which unused airfields on the chart have had a change of use in the vale of york. The one I had been aiming for had turned into a open prison or pig farm or some such and you couldn't see what it used to be. Knowing that it was fairly easy to give the old three identifiers and saying it used to be there.

Will they give you a description of it to start with? I remember going to Liverpool once and being asked to route via Seaforth - not having a clue what I was looking for, I used the GPS to get me there but i was cleared along the river anyway before I got to it, so didn't really take any notice of it. I looked it up when I got back.

There are loads of VRPs which are unclear from the name, a roundabout, town centre, cement works, dock etc. etc.

Pretty sure I've had one. VRP was something like "cement works", ATC's reply was something like "you're looking for three big white chimneys".

If I were inbound to a new airfield I'd look them up beforehand, but in this case I was just overflying somewhere I'd been before and never before been asked to report a VRP.

Or how about 'Nokia Factory' or 'Jaguar Factory'. If you're asked to use these and then require ATC to give you a description of what said generic large building looks like then it demonstrates a flaw in the system.

Try that on a visiting foreign pilot and wait for the MOR or CHIRP to appear :ugh:

Our local B&Q has kindly painted the name on the roof - makes life a lot simpler!

If you are asked to go somewhere you're not familiar with, tell the controller and/or ask for vectors to get there.

Do so sooner rather than later, as "guessing" might land you in some deep water later on.

You won't get vectors from a non radar airport :)

It would be interesting how many VFR pilots have managed to get vectors in the terminal environment. My recollection from my VFR flights abroad is "never", though I did readily get them when high altitude enroute (also VFR).

Also, in the international context, ATC's expectation (of VFR traffic) is that you can locate a VRP. If you cannot locate a VRP, they don't have to do anything. Remember their ICAO English Proficiency only needs to include the standard phrases :)

Certainly in Europe VRPs are very common and I have to say some of them pretty hard to sort out.

My tactic has always been to use the GPS (:= :ok:), made much easier in that they are often used for routing purposes - which as I recall is not generally supposed to be their purpose at least in the UK!

The higher you are, the better the radar coverage is so greater the chance of being vectored on a good day.

But at the same time the better your view is of the ground below. The view will look like your chart so you can see where the towns are.

This is an issue i have "flown into" in the US, so to speak.

While landing at TJIG (Luis Ribas Dominicci in Puerto Rico) i was asked to report position, so i reported abeam one of the VRP's on the terminal area chart. I immediatly got scolded by atc along the lines of "I don't know where that is, use an official reporting point" except the official reported points aren't actually shown on the TAC, not mentioned in the AF/D and there's no VAC either... then what?

In Europe, you cannot get vectors from a unit which doesn't have official radar and official radar qualified controllers.

Also, the point at which you will normally be asked to report at some VRP is when talking to the airport, not any more to an enroute controller who probably does have radar (except London Info who have radar and can see you but are not allowed to use it to help you).

Denham VRP's
 

Some of the most difficult VRP's I've experienced are the two for Denham. One is a roundabout with a big bush in it, the other a church in a village that looks like several other nearby.

Trouble is you only have so many options I guess when within a breath of the Heathrow Class A :eek:

Google Earth very much your friend for locations like this.

One of the best VRPs I have used was at KTEB. Atc would always ask you to report ABC inbound. At the time there was no marking on the chart. However, on a clear night with good atmospherics you could track to it from the Bahamas! It was 'obviously' the 1000 ft tall 50,000 watt AM antenna for the radio station WABC 770!

Mad Jock and Them Thar Hills

I'm pretty sure that the Dewsbury VRP is also a large orange B&Q which also has 'B&Q' painted on the roof.

If the company were taken over and the building renovated we could have problems.

I'd much rather fly over a B&Q store than go in one though!

Having been using sky demon recently in Europe and this week on a trip to Liverpool I can say its extremely helpful with vrps at non familiar airfields.
En route one uses all the usual Nav aids but as soon as you asked to report at somewhere you have never seen before eg Oulton park the iPad was a big success

The same is true for all the N,NE etc French vrps
I have become a bit on an enthusiast for
SD and my iPad at new fields especially for vrps at access points to controlled airspace.

Many years ago, LAX used to use the 20th Century Fox studios as a VRP. One day ATC asked a British Airways crew to "Gimme a Fox call".

The BA captain responed with "AHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"!

That got things into perspective.

It's excellent for "what does this look like from 2,000' from five miles away", but I haven't found where you put in "in 4k visibility".

Why should I care whether VRPs are identifiable? Either they're in the GPS, then I can get there or they're not, then I won't even bother trying to find them. For me, GPS has made terrestrial navigation kind of a thing of the past.

An IR pilot that gets a direct to a VOR some 100NM away will not complain about not being able to tune that VOR but use his GPS.

I think PocketFMS was the first system to have VFP's included in the database (and for all of Europe). But noadays I think all the major systems have them included.

Having them available onscreen certainly makes life a lot easier.

The trick these days is not so much in having the VRPs in the database (and up to date...which some systems still aren't so good at) but how quickly you can add them to your route without losing your plan, when you're in a busy phase of flight.

dp

It's a bit of a vague memory now but I recollect once being caught out at Blackpool by a VRP that was shown on a quarter mil chart but not on the half mil I had with me... as suggested earlier though it was simply a matter of letting ATC know and they gave me a vector...

Sky Demon for me once I get an iPad I think...

Mike

IME, VRPs tend to be used by the airport ATC by telling the inbound to report at point X, and once you are there, they clear you to join downwind or whatever.

So one rarely gets a whole string of VRPs to fly. One just needs to be able to find the one assigned, and ATC rarely care how VFR traffic gets to that VRP.

In the UK, Cranfield has a horrid habit of telling you to report at Woburn Abbey regardless of where you are coming from, so if from the north you have to fly all the way round (due to flying school traffic in the circuit) to the VRP.

As an ex-controller, perhaps I can offer a slightly different viewpoint. As has been suggested, many VRPs around an airfield are designed to permit easy routing toward downwind or base leg - and thereby keeping VFR traffic away from approach and climb-out paths.

Although it's a good few years since I was operational, I suspect things have not changed greatly but if an aircraft had difficulty finding a VRP, rather than vectoring it I would usually identify it and then monitor its progress toward the field and until it had the field in sight - that is, allowing the pilot to navigate visually which is what was typically going on when flying VFR. The field I worked at had terrain and built up areas pretty much all around it and vectoring a particular aircraft would usually create as many problems as it solved and I tended to do so only if the pilot was having difficulty navigating (rather than simply having trouble finding a VRP).

On another point, using positions or locations that were not notified in some way was normally limited to locally based aircraft with voices that I recognised (usually instructors) and who I could have confidence would know where I was talking about. Maybe it was easier for me than some others because I sometimes flew from the based flying clubs sometimes. If the pilot wasn't familiar with a particular place it was no problem, there was always a plan B that could be used.

Final thought - in my experience VRPs were always selected with half a mind on how easy they were to find and, ideally, based on a big and easily identifiable ground feature. Once again, I doubt that this has changed much in the last few years.

I find that VRPs, especially unexpected ones, are nearly always used at the end of the flight, to get you into the circuit without too much fuss. May I kindly suggest that if you start updating the route in your GPS with the new VRPs, at this stage of the flight, you don't have your priorities straight?

But this is exactly the problem! If you arrive at an unfamiliar airport, look at your charts & GPS and hear other traffic reporting some - to you - unknown VRPs, what do you think that does for situational awareness? It goes out the window, that's what it does. I've had that happen to me several times and it's not a great feeling knowing there's traffic in the vicinity but having no idea whatsoever as to where that traffic might be. Making a radio call doesn't help much either in such a scenario, unless ATC and/or the other traffic can clearly define where they are (or ATC calls 'traffic not a factor', knowing there's no conflict).

To confuse matters a bit further, in some countries (Spain being a prime example here), the locals use a different name for published VRPs than the one on the charts. Great for SA - not.

True. But on the other hand, the locals have local knowledge and sometimes wish to do things outside the published procedures. Me, I'm guilty of that too, on virtually every flight I make from my home base (EHRD).

If we are not to allowed to use "local" VRPs because it might just destroy the SA of non-local traffic, what are we supposed to do?

What's your problem with using the published ones ??

I agree, nothing more distracting than trying to find a VRP that isn't actually on the CAA chart. Especially close to an airfield when you really don't want your eyes inside the cockpit.

They're not in the right place.

A specific example: EHRD has three standard VFR arrivals/departures: Hotel, Mike and Romeo. These are all well-defined, with various compulsory and non-compulsory reporting points, altitudes and such. They're also quite boring and not always convenient for where we want to go.

For a scenic flight we typically do what's informally/locally known as the "Waterweg arrival". It start at Hotel (a formal VRP), then follows the river to enter the CTR "West of Maassluis" (informal/local VRP). Continue to follow the river until the "Euromast" (informal/local VRP), then on to Papa (again a formal VRP).

Likewise, I generally depart "direct Oud-Beijerland", or "along the highway to the west of Zoetermeer".

We might also want to do an orbit "over de Kuip" (which is the Feijenoord soccer stadium) if we have soccer fans on board, or "over de Koopgoot" if we have women on board.

And so on and so forth.

It's not like we're inventing new VRPs literally next to published VRPs, or invent new names for existing VRPs just to set ourselves apart from non-local traffic. It's just that we want to do something, somewhere where there's no formal VRP defined. Through years of experience and habit, pilots and ATCOs develop an additional set of informal/local VRPs which are quite useful in these situations.

I have the impression that its a pain to add new vrps. At my local, traffic from the south will be asked to enter /leave the zone via 2 points - one an official one, the other not depending on runway direction. Both have very clear line features and are linked to "lanes" published to locals although not in the aip.
They have said they are trying to get the unofficial point added but it didn't make the last map refresh so I shouldn't expect it for a few more years. Is the admin hassle a white lie?