I Stump Flight Service
For those unfamiliar with the maze of regulations affecting even the simplest aviation activities, “Flight Service” is the former FAA element (privatized without much fanfare last September) that is the link to the aviation public for getting official forecasts and filing flight plans. The routine, for VFR flight, is to call a Flight Service Station (FSS) a little ahead of your departure time and get a specialized forecast that includes expected conditions all along your route of flight, including any restrictions. Temporary Flight Restrictions (“TFR’s”) have become common since Sept. 11, 2001, and if the pilot isn’t aware of a new one he could end up being intercepted by a fighter. I believe all fighter pilots are inherently trigger-happy or they wouldn’t be able to succeed at their craft, so I, like most pilots, want to avoid the dreaded F-16 interception, as well as the possible legal action that could follow it.
The FSS will also accept a VFR or IFR flight plan, but very few pilots use the former. They are not required in the US and they are clumsy to open and close, requiring an extra radio or phone call at departure and arrival, which if you don’t make it correctly would result in either no flight plan or the rescue troops looking for you an hour after you landed safely.
The FSS personnel are not air traffic controllers, although sometimes they have 2-way radio capability at their facility and the pilot can call them up while airborne. Near Leesburg, Virginia, for example, a pilot who comes up on the correct frequency and calls, “Leesburg Radio” will get the FSS. If he calls “Leesburg Traffic” or “Leesburg Unicom” he’ll get the coordination frequency where other pilots in the vicinity are reporting their locations to avoid collisions or the commercial services on the field, respectively. The FSS’s are all tied in to a nation-wide network of “Flight Watch” radio stations on VHF frequency 122.0 MHz. This would be what you would call when airborne to get a real time update on weather if it seems to be going bad while in flight.
Well, on Friday, January 13, I made a short training flight starting at 4 PM. I knew I would be airborne past sunset. Another quirk in the system is that the rules on how you can log your flight are complex. A night landing is only valid after “evening civil twilight” is over, which is considerably after sunset. (In most of Alaska, in summer, there is no time that qualifies as “night” for landing currency). The number of minutes after sunset varies with latitude, and can be found on the US Naval Observatory Web site and, I’m sure, in other places. It is OK to log flight time as “night” if it’s after sunset (if I remember right – I’m going to look this up to make sure). A landing can’t be a “night” landing unless it’s also after evening civil twilight, and furthermore, unless you’ve made at least 3 landings at night in the last 90 days, you aren’t allowed to carry passengers at night.
So, I wanted to know if my last landing of the evening would be a bona fide night landing. I asked the weather briefer. He informed me that sunset would be shortly after 5 PM (as I expected) and then put me on hold, where I waited…and waited…and waited, for almost 15 minutes. He came back on the line and apologized as I was walking out to the airplane with my cellular phone still pressed to my ear.
“Where did you get this information before?” he asked. “I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it.”
“A Flight Service briefer looked it up. But I think you can get it on the Naval Observatory’s Web site…” I was beginning to realize that in this matter I knew more than the briefer. This is not a good feeling for a pilot to have. I was quite certain the FSS computers store that information and he could have called it up with just a couple of keystrokes, but it was clearly hopeless to wait for him to do the necessary research. I signed off, intending to ask the flight instructor.
The flight instructor said we would be landing a few minutes after sunset and therefore was quite sure the landings would all count as “Day.” The mystery remains. I’m open to suggestions.
The FSS will also accept a VFR or IFR flight plan, but very few pilots use the former. They are not required in the US and they are clumsy to open and close, requiring an extra radio or phone call at departure and arrival, which if you don’t make it correctly would result in either no flight plan or the rescue troops looking for you an hour after you landed safely.
The FSS personnel are not air traffic controllers, although sometimes they have 2-way radio capability at their facility and the pilot can call them up while airborne. Near Leesburg, Virginia, for example, a pilot who comes up on the correct frequency and calls, “Leesburg Radio” will get the FSS. If he calls “Leesburg Traffic” or “Leesburg Unicom” he’ll get the coordination frequency where other pilots in the vicinity are reporting their locations to avoid collisions or the commercial services on the field, respectively. The FSS’s are all tied in to a nation-wide network of “Flight Watch” radio stations on VHF frequency 122.0 MHz. This would be what you would call when airborne to get a real time update on weather if it seems to be going bad while in flight.
Well, on Friday, January 13, I made a short training flight starting at 4 PM. I knew I would be airborne past sunset. Another quirk in the system is that the rules on how you can log your flight are complex. A night landing is only valid after “evening civil twilight” is over, which is considerably after sunset. (In most of Alaska, in summer, there is no time that qualifies as “night” for landing currency). The number of minutes after sunset varies with latitude, and can be found on the US Naval Observatory Web site and, I’m sure, in other places. It is OK to log flight time as “night” if it’s after sunset (if I remember right – I’m going to look this up to make sure). A landing can’t be a “night” landing unless it’s also after evening civil twilight, and furthermore, unless you’ve made at least 3 landings at night in the last 90 days, you aren’t allowed to carry passengers at night.
So, I wanted to know if my last landing of the evening would be a bona fide night landing. I asked the weather briefer. He informed me that sunset would be shortly after 5 PM (as I expected) and then put me on hold, where I waited…and waited…and waited, for almost 15 minutes. He came back on the line and apologized as I was walking out to the airplane with my cellular phone still pressed to my ear.
“Where did you get this information before?” he asked. “I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it.”
“A Flight Service briefer looked it up. But I think you can get it on the Naval Observatory’s Web site…” I was beginning to realize that in this matter I knew more than the briefer. This is not a good feeling for a pilot to have. I was quite certain the FSS computers store that information and he could have called it up with just a couple of keystrokes, but it was clearly hopeless to wait for him to do the necessary research. I signed off, intending to ask the flight instructor.
The flight instructor said we would be landing a few minutes after sunset and therefore was quite sure the landings would all count as “Day.” The mystery remains. I’m open to suggestions.
posted by SToby at 14:11
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