TRSAs... The "big solo XC" coming up and several of them...

jbrinker

jbrinker

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Aug 28, 2015
Messages
307
Location
Auburn, NY
Display Name
Display name:
Jbrinker
I will cover this with my instructor too, but since this is "Pilot Training Forum" I thought it might be good to discuss on here.

I will be making my big solo XC soon, basically as soon as my schedule and a good weather day collide. The plan as of now is one of two routes around upstate NY. Both routes have me flying through at least two TRSAs.

Route one: KSYR (class C), KELM (TRSA), KBGM (TRSA)
Route two: KSYR, KBGM (TRSA), KRME (TRSA)

From what I understand and have read, basically treat a TRSA as "optional class c". In my case I would call up when nearing the TRSA area, and expect similar treatment to a class c, and to be handed off to tower around the inner class D airspace.

I guess the primary difference is a pilot can say "TRSA negative" and essentially opt-out of the system if they want (until class D space).

Q: I'll be just landing at these places, and for the XC it has to be full stop. I intend to do just a taxi back and take off. Anything else I need to know? (I don't want to pay the $30 landing fee at KELM or KBMG). I may actually add another small airport after KBNG to have a rest break.

Thoughts and comments appreciated.
 
There's no good reason not to participate, so you might as well treat it exactly as a class C as far as procedure goes. If you weren't looking at a chart, you couldn't tell the difference between the two.
 
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't opt out. But I guess perhaps someone local who just wanted to depart to the north and fly up the fingerlakes might figure why bother. Seems like kind of a weird artifact left over from another time...
 
Won't cost ya anything. Always good to participate and have another set of 'eyes'. Don't get complacent, and keep your scan going.
 
jbrinker said:
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't opt out. But I guess perhaps someone local who just wanted to depart to the north and fly up the fingerlakes might figure why bother. Seems like kind of a weird artifact left over from another time...
Click to expand...
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, TRSAs didn't fit into the new airspace classifications when the US changed to the ICAO standard airspace conventions that we know today. The rings of TRSA airspace is not part 71 airspace subject to rulemaking, so the classification didn't change it from being class E airspace.

Some TRSAs have become class C airspace. I don't recall any TRSAs just going away. Nowadays, if the FAA wants radar service that is optional for VFR traffic they just draft an LOA with the facilities and update the frequencies on the charts and publications. There are plenty of class D airports that operate like a TRSA (or even a C for that matter), such as Reading PA, Scranton Wilkes-Barre PA, White Plains NY, etc.
 
If you're on flight following, won't it be basically transparent anyway? Whoever you're on with will hand you off when it's time. Right?
 
Brad Z said:
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, TRSAs didn't fit into the new airspace classifications when the US changed to the ICAO standard airspace conventions that we know today. The rings of TRSA airspace is not part 71 airspace subject to rulemaking, so the classification didn't change it from being class E airspace.

Some TRSAs have become class C airspace. I don't recall any TRSAs just going away. Nowadays, if the FAA wants radar service that is optional for VFR traffic they just draft an LOA with the facilities and update the frequencies on the charts and publications. There are plenty of class D airports that operate like a TRSA (or even a C for that matter), such as Reading PA, Scranton Wilkes-Barre PA, White Plains NY, etc.
Click to expand...
I believe there was a time frame where many TRSA's became ARSA's, then class C.
 
Kritchlow said:
I believe there was a time frame where many TRSA's became ARSA's, then class C.
Click to expand...
Yep, before the airspace reclassification. I first started flying in '93 after the new classification was in effect, so I don't go that far back.
 
I kinda wonder why you'd bother with the hassle of a TRSA or class C or even D instead of picking smaller uncontrolled fields for your destinations on a student XC. Less to worry about.
 
Brad Z said:
Yep, before the airspace reclassification. I first started flying in '93 after the new classification was in effect, so I don't go that far back.
Click to expand...
Damn.... the reclassification was that far back?? I remember as a CFI teaching the old airspace to a ground school. I feel old.
 
If you're getting flight following, you're going to be "participating" by default. Also SYR ain't upstate ;)

Sounds like you got a good brio on it, have fun!
 
James331 said:
If you're getting flight following, you're going to be "participating" by default. Also SYR ain't upstate ;)

Sounds like you got a good brio on it, have fun!
Click to expand...
Shucks.... anything north of the city is considered upstate.
 
Most everything south of Watertown, there're all considered cityidiots or commies

NY would be vastly better off without ALB and NYC, SYR isn't too bad, still lots of city folk and knuckle heads though.
 
James331 said:
Most everything south of Watertown, there're all considered cityidiots or commies

NY would be vastly better off without ALB and NYC, SYR isn't too bad, still lots of city folk and knuckle heads though.
Click to expand...
Well I agree with most of what you say, but.... my wife is from the Albany area. Not everyone is a commie!!! (But yes, most are).
 
Heheh.... OK the upstate debate :)

"downstaters" think everything north/west of Poughkeepsie is "upstate". I tend to just go with that - i.e. not NYC. But yeah, technically I live in Central NY (Auburn, closer to ROC than SYR) or "the fingerlakes". Everything west of here is "Western NY". Plus the whole Adirondack region and the southern tier... Ugh. Can't we all just get along ;)

The "commie attitude" is really not much in CNY compared to downstate. Other than Ithaca that is...

As for airport choices - This is what my instructor reccomended. I'm pretty used to flying in and out of KSYR (every lesson) so not a big deal. But I am considering changing it up and using Painted Post (7N1) instead of KELM. I've flown in there before, no landing fee, small FBO. I could reverse the order of the route and make that my second stop, and take a break and meet my Mom and Dad for lunch or something.

Speaking of that - (I will discuss with instructor) - If I want to stop for more than a few minutes someplace, I'd need to close the flightplan. Can I then re-open the same plan when I depart, or do I need to file a new one for the remaining leg? I have not done a whole lot with actual flight plans yet (just the two dual XCs I've been on, and we didn't stop)
 
jbrinker said:
Speaking of that - (I will discuss with instructor) - If I want to stop for more than a few minutes someplace, I'd need to close the flightplan. Can I then re-open the same plan when I depart, or do I need to file a new one for the remaining leg? I have not done a whole lot with actual flight plans yet (just the two dual XCs I've been on, and we didn't stop)
Click to expand...

I suggest you ask your CFI about that.
 
Dana said:
I kinda wonder why you'd bother with the hassle of a TRSA or class C or even D instead of picking smaller uncontrolled fields for your destinations on a student XC. Less to worry about.
Click to expand...

Because it is a training flight?

-Skip
 
mscard88 said:
I suggest you ask your CFI about that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I plan to. We have only discussed this in an overview. Even for the short ones we got into a ton of detail about everything in the planning. I was actually hoping to do it today, perfect day, but I can't get the day off from work. Going to be a while now with the snowstorm and rain predicted for this weekend...

[edit] Since I was curious, and since this is the pilot training forum, I looked up what the accepted procedure for a stop-over flight plan is at http://www.cfinotebook.net/notebook/navigation-and-flight-planning/vfr-and-ifr-flight-plans
(thats a great site by the way)

It says "It is recommended that with a stop over flight plan, you file a separate flight plan for each "leg" when the stop is expected to be longer than an hour"

So, that pretty much was what I thought. If I plan to stopover longer than an hour (lunch would be more than that for certain) then I would file a plan for say KSYR->KBGM->7N1. Then a second plan from 7N1->KSYR.

Of course I will discuss this with my instructor too.
 
Last edited:
jbrinker said:
Yeah, I plan to. We have only discussed this in an overview. Even for the short ones we got into a ton of detail about everything in the planning. I was actually hoping to do it today, perfect day, but I can't get the day off from work. Going to be a while now with the snowstorm and rain predicted for this weekend...

[edit] Since I was curious, and since this is the pilot training forum, I looked up what the accepted procedure for a stop-over flight plan is at http://www.cfinotebook.net/notebook/navigation-and-flight-planning/vfr-and-ifr-flight-plans
(thats a great site by the way)

It says "It is recommended that with a stop over flight plan, you file a separate flight plan for each "leg" when the stop is expected to be longer than an hour"

So, that pretty much was what I thought. If I plan to stopover longer than an hour (lunch would be more than that for certain) then I would file a plan for say KSYR->KBGM->7N1. Then a second plan from 7N1->KSYR.

Of course I will discuss this with my instructor too.
Click to expand...
I just used 3 separate flight plans on my long xc, each leg was about 100nm. First stop was just long enough to get my log book signed. 2nd stop I had lunch. Have fun!
 
Dana said:
I kinda wonder why you'd bother with the hassle of a TRSA or class C or even D instead of picking smaller uncontrolled fields for your destinations on a student XC. Less to worry about.
Click to expand...
Maybe he wants to challenge himself?
 
Yes, there are a few reasons why these airports are chosen - 1) I've flown to Elmira/Painted Post before (Dual, a while ago), 2) I want to make this more realistic- dealing with ATC is a fact of life, and I've gotten pretty used to working with them at KSYR. The more I work with them the more comfortable I become. The only reason I want to choose Painted Post over ELM is because I know ELM charges a hefty landing fee. I want to be able to park and get out, grab a bite, see my parents, and then head back.

Now, here's another question - exncsurfer - you are not the first person I've heard say they "had to get their logbook signed" when doing XC. My instructor has not mentioned that, and I don't see it in the requirements anyplace. Is that a requirement, and who would be signing your logbook at a strange airport?
 
jbrinker said:
Now, here's another question - exncsurfer - you are not the first person I've heard say they "had to get their logbook signed" when doing XC. My instructor has not mentioned that, and I don't see it in the requirements anyplace. Is that a requirement, and who would be signing your logbook at a strange airport?
Click to expand...

Pardon me for answering your question. It is not required. I've been a CFI for 38 years and have never told my students to do that. I trust them to safely fly solo and I trust that they'll fly where they're supposed to. If they don't, that's on them. I don't know the reason for it. I never had to do it as a student. It may be from the old days or something. That's my take. Now back to your regular scheduled broadcast.
 
mscard88 said:
Pardon me for answering your question. It is not required. I've been a CFI for 38 years and have never told my students to do that. I trust them to safely fly solo and I trust that they'll fly where they're supposed to. If they don't, that's on them. I don't know the reason for it. I never had to do it as a student. It may be from the old days or something. That's my take. Now back to your regular scheduled broadcast.
Click to expand...
Yea, I don't know, just following orders. :) Maybe its an excuse to get you out of the plane and back in to practice parking/shutdown/startup at an unfamiliar airport. The guy at the desk also asked me if I wanted a passport stamped, I didn't know what he was talking about, I guess there is a thing where if you go to every airport in the state you get something. ??
 
jbrinker said:
...
Now, here's another question - exncsurfer - you are not the first person I've heard say they "had to get their logbook signed" when doing XC. My instructor has not mentioned that, and I don't see it in the requirements anyplace. Is that a requirement, and who would be signing your logbook at a strange airport?
Click to expand...

Hazing ritual? I can't imagine anyone would question whether you flew what you say you did but I guess proof never hurts. I just had whoever I could find sign it, FBO desk typically. One time I had a line guy fueling a plane sign it, I just wrote a note in some unused space on the row 'arrived KXYZ: __________' had the volunteer autograph it.

When I was in the Boy Scouts, my scoutmaster sent me to all the other camp sites in search of a 'left handed smoke bender'. I'm sure they got a laugh out of that.
 
jbrinker said:
Yeah, I plan to. We have only discussed this in an overview. Even for the short ones we got into a ton of detail about everything in the planning. I was actually hoping to do it today, perfect day, but I can't get the day off from work. Going to be a while now with the snowstorm and rain predicted for this weekend...

[edit] Since I was curious, and since this is the pilot training forum, I looked up what the accepted procedure for a stop-over flight plan is at http://www.cfinotebook.net/notebook/navigation-and-flight-planning/vfr-and-ifr-flight-plans
(thats a great site by the way)

It says "It is recommended that with a stop over flight plan, you file a separate flight plan for each "leg" when the stop is expected to be longer than an hour"

So, that pretty much was what I thought. If I plan to stopover longer than an hour (lunch would be more than that for certain) then I would file a plan for say KSYR->KBGM->7N1. Then a second plan from 7N1->KSYR.

Of course I will discuss this with my instructor too.
Click to expand...

AIM 6-2-6 does not make this distinction.

Bob Gardner
 
It's been said already, but I think nail is hit on the head with just going with flight following. You'll get the switch from them at the appropriate time. The only thing that was out of the ordinary the first time I went to a TRSA airport was that they'll give you a squawk when you call ground to leave...kinda (exactly) like a Class C. You're doing great.
 
exncsurfer said:
Hazing ritual? I can't imagine anyone would question whether you flew what you say you did but I guess proof never hurts. I just had whoever I could find sign it, FBO desk typically. One time I had a line guy fueling a plane sign it, I just wrote a note in some unused space on the row 'arrived KXYZ: __________' had the volunteer autograph it.

When I was in the Boy Scouts, my scoutmaster sent me to all the other camp sites in search of a 'left handed smoke bender'. I'm sure they got a laugh out of that.
Click to expand...

Your CFI thought you to be a liar? I'd also think if he required proof he could just ask for you to show the fuel receipts or call the tower. Never required that of any of my students, never had anyone require that of me during my initial training ether.
Some of the airports my old students would fly to didn't even have anyone there to sign/stamp/whatever.

But...
Wasn't there a thing about landing at all the airports in some state and getting a sweet jacket?

That'd be sweet if that type of this existed in NY, well minus I'd probably want to carry if I was going to fly into the city, ether way, I'd dig up my old paper log to get some stamps, sounds kinda interesting.


NKTFlyer said:
It's been said already, but I think nail is hit on the head with just going with flight following. You'll get the switch from them at the appropriate time. The only thing that was out of the ordinary the first time I went to a TRSA airport was that they'll give you a squawk when you call ground to leave...kinda (exactly) like a Class C. You're doing great.
Click to expand...

That, in my career I think I could count on one hand the number of times I've filed a VFR flight plan, and a few of those were just because I was crossing a international boarder VFR.

I'd just get FF, have your nav log in your lap and everything, but no need to file.
 
Last edited:
Instructor said he definitely wants me to file a flight plan, get a full briefing etc. And I'm good with that - its all good practice and helps me become familiar with all the moving pieces of the FAA. We filed VFR flight plans for both our dual XCs as well, not a big deal and again good practice.
 
jbrinker said:
Instructor said he definitely wants me to file a flight plan, get a full briefing etc. And I'm good with that - its all good practice and helps me become familiar with all the moving pieces of the FAA. We filed VFR flight plans for both our dual XCs as well, not a big deal and again good practice.
Click to expand...

For sure, doesn't hurt at all.

Just curious, does your CFI have experience outside from CFIing?
 
jbrinker said:
Now, here's another question - exncsurfer - you are not the first person I've heard say they "had to get their logbook signed" when doing XC. My instructor has not mentioned that, and I don't see it in the requirements anyplace. Is that a requirement, and who would be signing your logbook at a strange airport?
Click to expand...

It was a requirement years ago, I had to get my logbook signed at each stop on my student cross countries. It didn't matter who, the girl in the FBO, the kid pumping gas, or the geezer sitting on the bench. I don't know when the requirement was dropped.

My question on "why the TRSA" was from the idea that there's already enough stress on a student XC, why deal with ATC? But if you're already comfortable with that (and you must be, flying out of SYR), go for it. My own preference is for small grass strips where the fun planes hang out, though I used to rent from SAIR Aviation at SYR when I was a student at SU.
 
James331 said:
Your CFI thought you to be a liar? I'd also think if he required proof he could just ask for you to show the fuel receipts or call the tower. Never required that of any of my students, never had anyone require that of me during my initial training ether.
Some of the airports my old students would fly to didn't even have anyone there to sign/stamp/whatever.

But...
Wasn't there a thing about landing at all the airports in some state and getting a sweet jacket?

That'd be sweet if that type of this existed in NY, well minus I'd probably want to carry if I was going to fly into the city, ether way, I'd dig up my old paper log to get some stamps, sounds kinda interesting.




That, in my career I think I could count on one hand the number of times I've filed a VFR flight plan, and a few of those were just because I was crossing a international boarder VFR.

I'd just get FF, have your nav log in your lap and everything, but no need to file.
Click to expand...
No, he didn't think I was a liar. He didn't even look at it.
 
Huh

Maybe it was just a thing for you to do, like a aviation scavenger hunt?
 
James331 said:
For sure, doesn't hurt at all.

Just curious, does your CFI have experience outside from CFIing?
Click to expand...

Yes, he's a CFI, CFII, AP, AP-IA, and worked ATC for many years. He's got over 9K hours in a variety of types. The specifics I do not know. He's been a good mix of hard-ass and "let him learn the hard way". He has also wanted to make sure I understand how to actually do things with my PPL, like not being scared of ATC, or filing a flight plan. Sure, zipping around a small local airport sightseeing on a fall evening is a blast (Just got to do that last weekend in a gyroplane - super cool!) but for this stuff I want to learn all I can.
 
jbrinker, you're doing fine. Your CFI is preparing you to use every resource available in the NAS. In real life we don't do a whole lot of VFR flight plan filing, but you still should know how to do it.

For example, in a few hours I'm going on a cross country with a student. Nobody is in my office today, and we have nobody expecting us at the destination. On top of that, there is no guarantee that radar service will be available to us en-route. Therefore we are filing and activating a flight plan for both legs today. If we can get radar flight following to our destination, that will be great. If we drop out of radar coverage, we'll still have a record of where we planned to go on file with Flight Service.

One additional thing you can do to reduce your workload is activate your flight plan prior to departure. Call 1-800-WX-BRIEF, press 1 for briefer, and 0 for any state, and tell the FSS specialist you'd like to activate your flight plan with an assumed departure time of [5 minutes from now]. That way, once you're airborne, you can focus on flying and talking to ATC rather than worrying about activating your flight plan.
 
Harold Rutila said:
jbrinker, you're doing fine. Your CFI is preparing you to use every resource available in the NAS. In real life we don't do a whole lot of VFR flight plan filing, but you still should know how to do it.

For example, in a few hours I'm going on a cross country with a student. Nobody is in my office today, and we have nobody expecting us at the destination. On top of that, there is no guarantee that radar service will be available to us en-route. Therefore we are filing and activating a flight plan for both legs today. If we can get radar flight following to our destination, that will be great. If we drop out of radar coverage, we'll still have a record of where we planned to go on file with Flight Service.

One additional thing you can do to reduce your workload is activate your flight plan prior to departure. Call 1-800-WX-BRIEF, press 1 for briefer, and 0 for any state, and tell the FSS specialist you'd like to activate your flight plan with an assumed departure time of [5 minutes from now]. That way, once you're airborne, you can focus on flying and talking to ATC rather than worrying about activating your flight plan.
Click to expand...
I'll have to try that 1, 0 trick. Sucks when its noisy trying to talk to the computer, 'briefer', 'i'm sorry we didn't understand blah blah, say briefer for a ....', 'briefer', 'i'm sorry...'
 
exncsurfer said:
I'll have to try that 1, 0 trick. Sucks when its noisy trying to talk to the computer, 'briefer', 'i'm sorry we didn't understand blah blah, say briefer for a ....', 'briefer', 'i'm sorry...'
Click to expand...

Or just fltplan.com for all of it
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top