Its a two way street

I happened to be at MHR yesterday for a visit off airport. When I returned to the FBO I saw two buses parked outside. I thought to myself, wow I wonder if this is some special group departing from the FBO. Maybe some sports team or maybe even the latest music group that I would have no clue about. As I was walking into the FBO it was crowded with a group of mostly older men dressed in non-descript work clothes. Then I caught a glimpse of a logo, PG&E. These 100 workers were being staged to go back to help with restorations of the aftermath of the devastation from Sandy. Walking out to the ramp I saw at least 5 news trucks all capturing this news worthy event. Shortly thereafter I was headed out taxing to the runway when it was overheard the ground controllers wondering what all the activity was about. My right seat heard the talk and communicated back that all the commotion was for the PG&E workers flying out to help out in the aftermath of the Hurricane. It was interesting to note that often times I think the controllers know everything that is going on but in this case they had no clue… so it is indeed a two way street.. pilots know things that the controllers don’t and we should never assume that the controllers are these all knowing voices in our heads.

GBT What?

A new NOTAM showed up for SQL that I hadn't seen before.

Navigation NOTAMs

San Carlos CA [SQL]: October NOTAM #6

Navigation GBT out of service

The flight briefer wasn't able to explain it, essentially saying it isn't anything I needed to be concerned about. I asked the tower and they said they really didn't know the details but it wasn't anything that impacted their approaches (e.g. GPS).

The Pilot/Controller Glossary gives some insight:

GROUND-BASED TRANSCEIVER (GBT)- The ground-based transmitter/receiver (transceiver) receives automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast messages, which are forwarded to an air traffic control facility for processing and display with other radar targets on the plan position indicator (radar display).

Looks like it is related to ADS-B.

So that's how they do it!

Has this happened to you? You are planning a flight and calculating the W&B and determined how much fuel you can carry to be within the W&B limits. You get to the plane and find out that there happens to be more fuel than what you can carry or need. You can always tell your passengers that one or more of them can't go or consider other options (reduce the baggage carried) to accommodate for the extra fuel. Another option is to drain fuel. Recently I saw how this can be done. Another member was taking a trip in a 182 with 4 passengers and needed to have the fuel at 50 gallons or less. The plane had about 63 gallons. They requested WVFC MX to drain the fuel. To do that, they cut the safety wire holding the wing fuel drain valve, then unscrewed that drain valve while standing ready with a funnel, attached to tubing that drained the fuel into a fuel container. Once the appropriate amount of fuel was drained the fuel drain valve was quickly screwed back in to stop the flow of fuel. Then the safety wire was reattached with a special tool that puts a nice twist on the wire.


What happens to the fuel that was drained? It doesn't go back into a plane but can be used in some vehicles.
Who pays for the fuel drained? As near as I can tell, the owner eats the cost of the drained fuel.

Destination Rogers field O05

I have this desire to visit airports near water. Airports like Shelter Cove, Catalina, Bryant field, Spaulding, Trinity, and Rogers all have been on my wish list. As usual, I have had a couple of "plans" to get to one of these airports but conditions dictated otherwise in previous attempts. Fortunately I did make it to Rogers field recently and I have to admit the expectations were met. WX conditions, schedule, passengers and plane all came together.

A couple of cool things about Rogers field:
1. They have "free" bikes so once you get to the airport you can go into town... they do have a donation fund for bike maintenance
2. The airport is pretty close to the town of Chester
3. There is the "Pine Shack Frosty" in town where you can get a great burger and a shake - they have lots of flavors.
4. Mountain air ... you know what I mean?

One route to get to Rogers field is to fly to Oroville airport, OVE, and then depart on a heading of 015 which follows feather river and the Feather River highway (highway 70). You will shortly see Butt Valley Reservoir just prior to reaching Lake Almanor.

I will definetley add this to the places for a return trip and maybe plan to stay overnight.

I didn't make this up

This was a PIREP from today.

TRK UA /OV RNO-TRK/TM 2019/FL085/TP C180/TB MOD/RM WOMEN ON BOARD WOULD SAY ITS SEVERE


I wonder how that was called in.

9/11 Arrival Procedure

I always wondered about how the folks that create the FAA arrival procedure come up with the names for the waypoints. Some seem to have special meaning like the waypoints around the Charles Schultz airport (STS). For 9/11, a new arrival procedure was published for Regan National airport. It was called FRDMN ONE. It has some meaningful waypoints.

AIM 2013 Updates

The new FAR/AIM 2013 has been published. There are not a lot of changes but one caught my eye. A slight update to 4-1-20, Transponder Operations and in particular paragraph 3. The change states that the transponder should be turned "on or normal altitude reporting position prior to moving on the airport surface". The interesting thing about this is that the G1000 doesn't go into altitude reporting position until the aircraft is airborne. I wonder how this will change the procedures for G1000 equipped planes. Should the transponder be set to ALT as part of the taxi checklist? Will Garmin update its G1000 to change the default behavior of the transponder?