Aviation Day!

[Piper_Pilot]

Well today, I went to the tour of the Charlotte Tracon at Charlotte/Douglas Int. airport. We went into the tower at 1:30pm. We first went to the simulator room, which had like 4 scopes in it and the scopes actually had the live time Charlotte traffic on it, so I guess the guy using the Simulator had to "pretend" that they are talking to the traffic. It was really intresting, I mean you go all of the other airport in the area (that are under Charlotte control) on the scopes, you got the TRACON borders, heck it even had Wilgrove on there and we're a non-towered airport. It was really cool. We then went to the TRACON room, which had 3-4 people working several frequencies. One guy was handling 4 frequencies at one time. The room wasn't like completely dark, but you couldn't take a picture without a flash and expect good result. We even saw a radar that showed traffic on the entire eastern side of the USA. The New York Corrider was usually crowded (go figured), and they can actually access any airplane on that screen. The3y even showed the block for an Air France flight leaving KMIA going to France. Also if you squawked 7500, 7600 and 7700 an alarm will go off. We haven't had one go off while we were there but I did ask the question about that. It was just really cool. We then took the elevator up to the 9th floor, and then we climbed the stairs to the 10th floor, and climbed a steeper set of stair into the Tower Cab. Which housed the Ground, and Tower people. Clearence is in the TRACON room. It was an amazing view up there, you could see all of the airport up in the tower. I saw alot of great team work in the Tower and with TRACON. It was just really cool to see. Today the 18R and 23 was used for take off and landing while 18L was only used for take off. They actually do two landings for every depature. So they would let two aircraft land and then have one take off. We even saw an international flight land, which was just freakin awesome. Then after the tour, I stopped at a Mc. Donald to eat lunch, and then I went over to Wilgrove for flight lesson. Well, my instructor apparently wanted to go back to KCLT, so we jumped into the Piper Cherokee 140, and as soon as we hit 2,500 feet, we called up Approach and they vectored us to land. Now because we wanted the General Aviation ramp, they let us land on 18L. I guess they didn't want a small "puddle jumper" going all around the airport that was built for the big jets. lol. We went to tour the General Aviation facuility and saw some nice planes that were being washed, repair, or having a panel update. Then we went back out, followe Taxiway Delta and Alpha to Runway 18L. and we took off behind a Cessna Citation X, I'm not sure though. While we were waiting, we saw this one airplane (probably a GA) lined up for the WRONG runway (18R) and you saw like this sharp turned and fast flying, another sharp turn and somehow he was abled to get his aircraft lined up with 18L. Man ATC was yelling at him, and I would print it here, but ehhh, this is a family forum. So Lesson number #1, try very very hard not to piss off Charlotte Tower. Well after the Citation took off, we taxied off to hold position, and I counted like 6-8 US Airways flight that we were holding up, and I felt kind of bad, it was like they had to wait for a small 4 seater aircraft to take off lol. So we took off and we were vectored back to Wilgrove and landed. I tell ya it was a great day for me.

[apollosmith]

Sounds like an awesome day! And an excellent write-up. I'd love to take a peek into a Tracon some day. Did you get any pics?

Jared "Smitty" Smith

[Piper_Pilot]

>Sounds like an awesome day! And an excellent write-up. I'd
>love to take a peek into a Tracon some day. Did you get any
>pics?
>
>Jared "Smitty" Smith

Nope, I did not bring along my camera because I thought that they wouldn't let me use it.