Waypoints

Editor in Chief Thomas B. Haines earned an instrument rating 18 years ago and frequently flies IFR.

As you've probably noticed — particularly if you fly instruments much — the relationship between a pilot and an air traffic controller is a complex one. Most of the time it works well, but sometimes misunderstandings and tension surface, straining the relationship.

We all have our pet peeves. My current one with ATC is their rather recent requirement that anyone coming into our home field at Frederick, Maryland, on an IFR flight plan must be filed over the Westminster VOR, located 19 nm northeast of the field. For years when departing IFR we've had to file Westminster as the first IFR fix — even when headed west. Once climbing out and radar identified, ATC will turn you on course — unless that course happens to be south, in which case you'll go west for quite a ways to get around the Washington, D.C., airspace. The routing to the VOR is necessary, we are told, because of the limited radar coverage at low altitude over the airport. This means only one IFR airplane can be in the airspace at a time until it is radar identified. Similarly, only one airplane at a time can be on the approaches.

But the newer requirement is for the arrivals. I've begun to tack the routing to Westminster onto my filed flight plan just to save the new clearance once I reach Potomac Approach's airspace. The usual route when arriving from the south, west, or north is to the Martinsburg VOR — located 22 nm west of Frederick and then Victor 166 to Westminster, which takes you almost over Frederick, and then back to Frederick.

I often wonder as I'm flying up from the south proceeding northwest around the Washington airspace all the way to Martinsburg — well off any reasonably direct route — — whether the controller who then gives me the new clearance to overfly Frederick and proceed on to Westminster before turning around and coming back has any idea of how silly and inefficient it all sounds. I also wonder how many pilots unfamiliar with the area and flying in from a distant location find themselves uncomfortably short on fuel because of the unexpectedly circuitous routing. When I quizzed a controller about it once, he said, "I just relay to you what the computer spits out for us." What a rewarding job that must be.

More sand in the relationship gears

The availability of satellite weather in the cockpit also is causing occasional friction in the pilot/controller relationship. I've heard other pilots mention that controllers are sometimes not sure how to handle pilots who are attempting to fly using the big-picture capabilities of datalinked weather, especially Nexrad radar. I experienced it myself a couple of times this summer when thunderstorms abounded in the Midwest. AOPA Pilot Editor at Large Tom Horne and I departed New Century Aircenter near Kansas City, headed northeast to Muncie, Indiana, in my Beechcraft Bonanza with XM Weather displayed on the Garmin GNS 530. Shortly after takeoff, we could see on the Nexrad display the predicted thunderstorms growing 200 nm away just north of St. Louis and extending to the northeast. I requested a reroute to the south over St. Louis, mentioning to the Kansas City Departure controller that we were attempting to avoid the weather in our path farther east. The controller told us to continue on our cleared route because he didn't see any weather ahead, and he would get back to us. With a nice tailwind, we were covering a lot of territory while he checked The Weather Channel. After a few minutes he cleared us direct St. Louis and then northeast to Muncie.

As it turned out, the powerful storms expanded to the south as well as the north, and by the time we got there we had to deviate farther south. About 30 minutes after passing near Farmington, Missouri (about 70 miles south of St. Louis), we heard ATC reporting a convective sigmet for Level 5 storms growing in that area with tops to 50,000 feet. We were glad to put that part of the country behind us on that meteorologically dynamic day.

Datalinked weather is a phenomenal addition to the cockpit. I can't think of a technology that has brought more utility to general aviation airplanes. GPS-based moving maps are certainly useful for situational awareness, but they don't necessarily increase the utility of the airplane. With weather in the cockpit, most pilots will feel far more comfortable making flights that otherwise might be canceled. What we don't want is for pilots to believe it is a Teflon shield protecting the airplane from storms. It is not, but knowing where the weather was a few minutes ago brings a great deal of comfort and confidence to the cockpit.

But I know I'm still learning to use it effectively. One new lesson is that we shouldn't discount how dynamic fast-moving weather can be. Flying from Appleton, Wisconsin, back to Frederick this summer, AOPA Flight Training Editor Mike Collins and I were seeing numerous thunderstorms sprouting across Ohio, including a line of storms north to south marching northeast. From 200 miles away — just over an hour's flying time with the tailwinds — I made a decision to fly farther east than my flight-planned route in an effort to stay ahead of the line. The theory was we would fly down over Cleveland and then across the Pittsburgh area rather than down over central Ohio and then southwest of Pittsburgh. As we approached Toledo in northern Ohio, the storms had already moved into that area. Fixated on that eastern route ahead of the weather, I believed we needed to fly almost due east toward Erie, Pennsylvania, before turning south.

Just as a Level 5 storm shut down Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, a helpful controller suggested we fly almost due south of Toledo and then hang a left near Pittsburgh — staying well behind the line of storms, which had now moved into east-central Ohio. We looked at the weather display and saw he was right; the suggested route almost overlaid my originally planned route.

A smaller line of storms in western Ohio was moving east, but we could stay ahead of those by following his advice.

Flying through central Ohio, we occasionally faced an area that showed green or yellow on the Nexrad display, but we could see beneath the clouds that it looked clear and the clouds didn't appear to be terribly ominous. We nosed into a couple of them and found a smooth, rain-free ride. The wet weather had moved east. The time stamp on the Nexrad images averaged six minutes, but if you include the time required to gather the radar images, process them, upload to the satellite, and then deliver to the airplane, they were more like 15 minutes old. A lot can happen in 15 minutes, as I learned that day.

This was one occasion when a controller's offer of a reroute was welcomed and appreciated.

E-mail the author at [email protected].

Links to additional information about flying with datalink weather may be found on AOPA Online.