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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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