Dickies and Commercial Air Traffic

[eggzkitz]

Most of us that have flown near Dickies are familiar with the traffic in the area. So... after sitting on Dickies launch on Saturday watching the commercial traffic come overhead Dickies about 2k over, one after the the other (including an Osprey!), and flying XC from Dickies on Sunday with a couple other PGs and HGs and hearing calls like "just saw another 737 fly underneath me", I figured it was worth trying to see if there was a way to make flying at Dickies a little safer... With a LOT of help from my Dad (retired pilot) this is what we came up with.

For those unfamiliar with Dickies, it is a special site in many ways. Mostly, it is rare to be able to fly in a National Park, and Shenandoah is one of the few parks that allows us to do so provided we have a special permit. But secondly, it is one of the only sites I have flown that is practically sitting atop a commercial aviation navigation aid. About 100 yards behind launch is the "Linden VORTAC", which is short for a FAA radio facility that is a VOR co-located with TACAN.

For anyone without their air charts handy, a neat website has them online: http://skyvector.com/. Click on global/Baltimore-Washington and you can peruse the area and find the Linden VORTAC near Front Royal. There are 'buttons' on the top of the page which allow you to change between the various charts for the area. "DC Area" is the clearest. BTW- for iPhone users, there is also a neat app called 'skychart' which does the same basic thing.

Note that the IFR charts show a published holding pattern at the VOR. Also note that the IR 720 low level training route (used by military aircraft) passes only 2 miles east of the VOR and directly over the town of Front Royal. This probably explains the V-22 I saw on Saturday...

The local Front Royal airport is marked on the chart as a gliderport, but there is no marking for ultralights/hanggliders in our area. So... to make things a bit safer, my father recommends that we do what other areas do: call the FAA control facility responsible for this area. For us, this is the Shenandoah Sector of Potomac Approach Control. Ideally they might then notify each and every IFR arrival into Dulles passing over the Linden VOR.

He suggested that we could instead be asked to file a temporary or permanent NOTAM (Notice to Airmen). This is the FAA way of getting the word out on out-of-the-ordinary events. A NOTAM discussion may be necessary (particularly from the FAA point of view), but he cautioned against it, as it won't pay off anywhere near as well as the procedure of the paragraph above.

So... next time I fly there I am going to try it. I've got all the phone numbers for anyone else interested in this. Or if anyone has suggestions on this approach, fire away.

In the meantime, know the air routes in your planned flying area, keep your eyes on the horizon, stay out of the clouds, and think through what you'll do if you do sight traffic headed your way (putting the wing broadside to the horizon, turning tightly, is the usual recommendation).

Aloha,
Jeff

[mcelrah]

Standard operating procedure at the sailplane club in Front Royal is to call Air Traffic Control on the the morning of every operations day and state that there will be glider operations up to x thousand feet (cloudbase). I think they may actually try to vector aircraft away from a known site of glider operations - of course there is nothing to prevent a guy flying VFR (visual flight rules) in a Cessna from dialing in the Linden VOR (variable omni range) and flying straight to it - the thing still puts out a signal and people still have the receivers. Moreover, it is probably convenient to select Linden as a pre-loaded waypoint in a GPS unit - sort of like putting the superhighway where the Indian trail used to run. There is nothing to prevent us calling ATC and I think they would appreciate it. I'll get the number and publish it.

I've only flown twice at Dickey's and had only one soaring flight there, but would like to keep open the excellent cross-country potential there. My proposed personal plan for dealing with a nose-on/co-altitude airplane is to throw the glider into a spiral dive, hoping that the motion and color will attract the airplane driver's attention away from the electronic gizmos in the cockpit, while I lose altitude as fast as possible (1000-1400 fpm?). There do exist little warning receivers (~$500) that will alert you to approaching transponder equipped aircraft and give you a quadrant to look in. We might also consider carrying aviation-band radios and tuning to the approach frequency - you could talk directly to ATC and update your position and altitude periodically. In addition to warning aircraft and vectoring them away, ATC could warn you of approaching aircraft who are not communicating with ATC. A good callsign would be "Paraglider [USHPA number]". There's no license required for aviation band and as long as we used the frequency only for ATC comms (no glider to glider comms) I don't think anyone would object. There are separate established frequencies for air-to-air comms that could be used by 2 or more PGs going XC together. Comm only (no Nav - that's the receiver for the self-same VOR) radios run as low as $180 and have all sorts of nifty features - including flip-flop one touch switching between two freqs (for going back and forth between air-to-air and ATC) or monitoring two freqs but speaking only on one.

Also, I actually went out and bought fresh sectional and Terminal Area charts: given the south component in a likely Dickey's day, seems to me we are better off trying to shift north as we approach the class B - we avoid the embedded, hard Flight Restricted Zone and do have the possibility of going under the class B below 4500, then 2500 feet - if we are dribbling out the last few miles. In addition to loading the rings into your mapping GPS, I plan to carry the paper chart folded in a plastic sleeve velcroed to my arm - there are many such products available.

- Hugh

[mcelrah]

Did some more research: it's PCAS, not TCAS - Portable Collision Avoidance System. This is a sensor to alert you , the paraglider pilot , of approaching transponder-equipped traffic. It does NOT make you visible to them. The model that gives direction is too big for hang- and paragliders, but there is a tiny one that runs on 2 AA batteries that gives digital range and altitude. www.zaon.aero


Also, I talked with one of the sailplane gurus and he said there is no guarantee that approach control will provide any help. If I am ever so privileged as to get stinkin' high at Dickey's, I'll try calling on the aviation radio and see what I get... Since the sailplane club makes the call every weekend day and occasionally on a weekday, we are getting whatever benefit would accrue to making our own phone call. It would be more important to call if you are out there on a weekday... I'll get the exact wording - hopefully they won't be able to tell the difference between us and the sailplane club. Important to sound confident like this is the most routine thing in the world...

- Hugh

[Joe Schad]

I posted two comments to the Hang Glider list relating to this subject.

Joe