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On January 23rd, 2019, my aviation life changed. I asked one of our local controllers who I happen to be in a facebook group with if Dillon and I could possibly bring them lunch or dinner one day. After talking back and forth, he said it was okay for us to do that. Once we got the go ahead from our controller friend, it was go time. Since all of this was planned that day, Dillon and I had to figure out what to bring them. We decided either pizza or even better, Chick-Fil-A. After much thought, we decided to get Chick-Fil-A because who does not like Chick-Fil-A. Once we decided that, we drove to our local Chick-Fil-A and told them about what we wanted to do. They said that catering would be the best for this situation. We talked about what we wanted for a little bit but finally on the medium catering tray of chicken nuggets and a large catering tray of chic-n-minis. After deciding that, we placed our order for it and paid for it. We asked them how long it would take them and they said about twenty minutes. In that twenty minutes, Dillon and I left to go down to the gas station and fill up with gas. That did not take twenty minutes so by the time we got back, we still had to wait about ten minutes which was not a problem at all. After ten minutes, we got our food and got on the road. After receiving our food, we got on the road. The drive to Little Rock National Airport is a quick one, about 40 minutes total. Not much happened driving there expect that I went around the terminal once and realized that there was no entrance to the tower on that side. So, I circled around and when I came back to the stop light, I made a right turn and finally found the road I was suppose to be on. Once I got on that road, it was a short drive to the tower parking lot. Once arriving at the parking lot, we had to be buzzed in. Upon being buzzed into the parking lot, we found a parking spot at the very empty parking lot and got out with the food. Upon reaching the door, we were greeted my two wonderful air traffic controllers from the facility and welcomed us with open arms. They asked what we had brought them and we told them that we had brought some Chick-Fil-A for them. They were in awe and the two controllers that let us in also took us to there breakroom to set down the food. Once we did that, one of the controllers asked if we wanted a tour of the facility. With Dillon and I being av geeks and flying down to Little Rock all the time, we said yes. Our first stop of the tour was the TRACON or radar room. This is where controllers vector airplanes into the airport and make sure the spacing between aircraft are good. When we went in, they were in the middle of a shift change which was cool to see. Little Rock has two main approach frequencies, 119.50 for the traffic coming in from the West and 135.40 for the traffic coming in from the East. At this time however, traffic was light so they had only one person on radar working both frequencies. This is super common for most facilities when traffic is light so resources are not tied up and everyone is more fresh. After watching the shift change and watching the controller work, our tour guide, showed us what everything met on the radar screen. He explained airspace limitations on different part of the map. For example, he explained that Little Rock only has the airspace up to 3,000 feet around Searcy but up to 15,000 feet around the airport. He also explained to us that they can turn on Jet routes, Victor Airways, Final approach paths for instrument approaches, etc. With all that, the most interesting thing was how they control the military planes (mostly C-130s) and how they assign transponder codes. All local non military traffic gets a “02XX” code and all the local military traffic that comes up gets a “01XX” code. After our tour guide showed us that, just talked for a little bit and asked some generic questions. After 45 minutes in the radar room, we were offered a tour of the actual tower. Of course we did not deny that. After accepting the tour of the tower, another member of the air traffic control team took DIllon and I over to the secure elevator and we went up seven stories. After going up seven stories, we took three flights of stairs up to the very top of the tower. Once we got to the top of the tower, we got a little tour of it. Additionally, our controller friend was working the tower position when we came up so it was cool to see him in his natural habitat controlling the various planes on the ground. When he did not have planes on his frequency, he showed us and told us what the various pieces of equipment does in the tower. He also explained to us that Little Rock is a “top-down” facility meaning that they have both radar and local control in the same building, It also means that after a predetermined time, the radar moves upstairs to the tour and radar and local is all controlled upstairs by one person (two people are up in the tower though). Not much happened after that as they rotated shifts every 45 minutes to 1 hour. Dillon and I continued to talk to the amazing people up for another two and a half hours and got to pass flight strips back and forth from the ground controller to the tower controller. Ever wanted to know how a the controllers in the tower communicate? It’s super simple. The controllers in the tower literally just talk to each other like two people having a normal conversation. If the controllers need to talk to the controllers down in the radar room or vice versa, then they just pick up a telephone and call them with what they need. After spending a good two and a half hours there, we left around 8:45 p.m. local time. Nothing much happened as we just drove the short forty minutes home. About a month after this all happened, Dillon and I received a card in the mail for the Little Rock Air Traffic Control Team thanking us for our support for them during that time. All the controllers that work at the LRATCT signed it and it was a cool little gift. This was the blog post about Dillon and I feeding our local air traffic controllers. If you like this one, please let us know so we can continue posting them. Until the next blog post, Blue Skies and A Tailwind.
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Welcome to part three of three of our aviation meet-up in Phoenix, Arizona. Part one was all about the travelling my brother and I did and that days events. If you have not checked out the first two parts yet, please go check that out before reading this.
Day 3: Well, it is day three of the three day trip. We all know what that means, go home day. Go home day was not as bad as I thought it would. Dillon and I got a good night’s sleep that night since we knew that we would be traveling all day that day. We got up around 7:45 am local time to get ready and to leave the hotel by 8 am local. We got up and got dressed and finished packing up the rest of our clothes. Once we got the rest of out clothes packed up, we headed downstair. Once downstairs, we walked out of the hotel, down the sidewalk so we can cross the street and go up to the airtrain that would take us back to terminal four. We finally get to cross the street and we arrive at the at the airtrain station. We wait less than five minutes for the train to arrive and board. It was a quick 5 minutes train ride to terminal four. Once we got to terminal four, we got off the train and went all the way downstairs so we can get our boarding passes. We were flying Southwest on the return leg, so we went to where Southwest is on the bottom floor to get our boarding passes. It was a smooth and easy process as we only had to put in our confirmation code and print our tickets. Once we did that, we went back up to the main floor and went through security. Since our plane departed from the “C” concourse, we elected to go to the “C” concourse security to limit our walking distance. After ten minutes, we finally made it through security. Going through security was easy and smooth and we had no problems. Now that we had made it through security, it was time to find our gate and to get some quick breakfast. Our gate was C7 (Charlie 7) for our flight to Little Rock. Once we found our gate, Dillon sat down and I went across the way to get some water and juice for us. That took all of ten minutes to do and then I went back across the way to sit down with Dillon and enjoy my drink. About an hour later, we started boarding for our flight to Little Rock. On today’s flight, our aircraft was a Boeing 737-700 in the new Southwest Heart Livery. Dillon and I had A boarding slots, numbers 20 and 21. We got the board the aircraft quickly but had to sit at the gate for quite some time because an inbound flight was late and some passengers on that flight needed to connect and be on our flight. After about twenty minute delay, we finally pushed back from the gate. The flight was mostly full with quite a few empty seats. Once pushed back from the gate, we taxied to runway 7L for our departure. Since we were on the east side of the airport our taxi took some time. Not only did the taxi take some time but actually taking off took some time. Phoenix is a busy airport with a lot of traffic so naturally, we had to wait our turn in line. It was only a short, probably around five minutes, but after that we lined up on the runway and took off into the somewhat cloudy Phoenix sky. Once airborne, we hit some clouds and had some very light chop. Shortly thereafter, we climbed above the clouds and could see the bright and sunny sky. Within 20 minutes, we were at our cruising altitude of 39,00 feet or FL390. Nothing much happened throughout the flight as I had a water and we were served both crackers and cookies. The seat belts continued to stay on as the ride did not get any smoother for the two hour and ten minute flight. After an hour and a half of an uneventful flight, Dillon noticed two younger boys sitting across from us. We got talking and after a very short conversation, we decided to give them some JetBlue pins that Brett Smith, one of the guys that was at the main event and works for JetBlue. Upon reaching this agreement, we picked some wings out for them and I asked them if they would want them. They accepted them with great smiles and said thank you. I am glad Dillon and I did this because I always want to spread aviation as best as I can. I believe that that memory will be with them forever and ever. After that little priceless moment, nothing happened for the rest of the hour flight in cruise. About twenty minutes left in the flight, we started our descent into Little Rock. Shortly thereafter, we made a firm, not hard, landing on runway 22L. I am not sure why 22L because that is the furthest runway from where Southwest parks. It didn’t matter as we still made it to the gate ten minutes early. We parked at gate ten and two or three minutes later we started to deplane the aircraft. Since Dillon and I were near the front, we were one of the first people off of the airplane. Once we got off the airplane, we headed straight for the bathroom before we headed home. After using the bathroom, we walked out of the terminal and down some stairs to the main part of the lobby. We walked all the way around to the other side of the terminal to some escalators and went up those and across a walkway into the parking garage. We walked down the row of cars and finally found our car in spot 25. After finding our car, not much happened as we put our luggage away and drove home. This concludes part three of three of the Blue Skies and A Tailwind meetup blog posts. If you have not read parts one and two, please read those before reading this part. We hope you enjoyed this blog series of our trip. Be on the lookout for another blog soon. |
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August 2020
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