Hi, I'm Jon from fly8MA.com, and I'll be your flight instructor today, taking you from the
Sarasota International Class Charlie airport down to the Venice airport which is a Class
G, or pilot-controlled airport, about 20 miles south of here.
We're going to go ahead and get the ATC, call up clearance delivery, talk to ground control,
and eventually talk to the tower, and then go ahead and talk to departure after we depart
the airport and get VFR following back to Venice.
First things first, let's go ahead and pull up our taxiway diagram and frequencies on
our cellphone here, or tablet.
If you have paper charts that works great too.
And so we're right here at Dolphin off of taxiway Alpha at Sarasota International.
We're going to go ahead and get the ATC for Sarasota International.
That's 124.375.
We'll go ahead and write down this information-- everything that's pertinent to us.
Alright, we have information Alpha, we have our altimeter set, all that information written
down on our tablet here, or basically our cellphone, you could use your tablet, cellphone
to write down or copy down that information, or you could just go ahead and use a pen and
paper, that works great too.
So information Alpha-- that's important that we have that.
Now we're going to go ahead and call up Clearance Delivery and remember, we heard clearance
delivery combined on Ground Control 121.9.
So, those are all combined on the same frequency.
Ground Control and Clearance Delivery on 121.9.
Someone is getting their clearance right now, we'll wait for that to finish up there.
He's going to go ahead and read it back.
So what we're going to go ahead and do is call up Clearance Delivery, basically Ground,
and we'll say "Sarasota Ground," who we're calling, who we are, "Cherokee 9907W," where
we are, "at Dolphin with Alpha," and what we want to do, "We want to go VFR to Venice
at 1,600 feet.
We'll go ahead and make that call and then they'll have a clearance for us.
"Sarasota Ground, Cherokee 9907W, at Dolphin with Alpha, VFR to Venice at 1600."
"Cherokee 9907W, Sarasota Ground, after departure, fly out of runway 240, maintain VFR at or
below 1600, after departure frequency is 119.65, Squawker 0122."
"On departure fly heading 240, maintain VFR at or below 1600, Tampa Departure on 119.65,
0122 in the box, 07W."
"07W, Readback correct, Roger to taxi."
We completed our checklist, we're ready to taxi so we can go ahead and let them know
that we're ready to taxi and then we'll get our taxi clearance.
Make sure you got your diagram ready.
We're in a non-movement area.
We could taxi all of the way up to the taxiway before calling and still move around here
without a clearance, but we want to stay where we are until we get our clearance, and then
taxi out to the taxi way."
"Sarasota Ground, 07W is ready to taxi."
"9907W, Sarasota Ground, the current wind is 010 to 10 gust 114 except runway 32, 5050
feet available.
"07W would like a full length on 32."
"07W Roger, Runway 32 full-length taxi via Alpha, Hold short of Runway 4."
"Runway 32 full length, taxi via Alpha, hold short of 4, 07W."
And so we were told to taxi via Alpha here, all the way, full length to runway 32.
Why didn't we take the other departure, that's 5000 feet, that's better than what we normally
fly out of.
We normally fly out of 3000 foot strips and 5000 foot strips, and he said that we have
over 5000 feet available.
5500 and change."
"07W Change of plans, we've got an opposite direction coming in runway 14, runway 04,
taxi via Alpha Delta."
"Runway 04, taxi via Alpha Delta, 07W."
Alright, he just changed our plans, now he's sending us to runway 04.
And runway 04 is shorter, it's only 5000 feet or so, but why do we want a full length?
Because we want to stack the deck in our favor.
We don't want to set ourselves up for failure when we could just taxi a little further and
have all that extra runway in front of us.
What if we had an engine failure shortly after takeoff?
Wouldn't you rather have some runway in front of you to land on, rather than take that intersection
departure and end up in the trees at the end of the runwsay?
Set yourself up for success, and stack the deck in your favor.
Do everything you possibly can do, that's in your control, to control it and set it
up for a successful flight.
Put in a little bit more time, a litle bit more effort, go the extra mile, and make sure
you're not going to have a problem.
So as we come up here, we're turning right on Delta as he instructed us.
If we were unsure we could stop, as for progressive taxi instructions, we could check our taxiway
diagram, it's okay to stop when you're taxiing, and check your diagram.
You don't want to stop for 10 minutes, but it's okay to stop and double check yourself
rather than making a wrong turn and having a runway incursion or cutting off another
aircraft.
Alright, so as we come down the taxiway here, we're veering off to the right, and then we're
going to angle ourselves off to the left.
We don't really have the option of turning our aircraft into the wind to do a run-up
today, but we can turn our aircraft slightly so that our prop wash does not hit all the
other airplanes behind us, should there be anyone else lined up behind us waiting for
departure.
We also make sure we get out of the way of that guy's prop wash, so he's not going to
hit us with his.
We're going to go ahead and complete our run-up checklist.
Make sure all of our before takeoff checklist is completed, and then we'll go ahead and
program our frequencies-- we can do that now actually.
120.1 for our tower frequency, and 119.65 for our departure frequency, so that's all
configured and all set up ready to go for us right now.
We've got 120.1 for the tower, 119.65 ready to go on takeoff, all we've got to do is hit
this flip-flop key right there and we'll be all set.
We're squawked in the right code, 240 on departure and we're going to go ahead and complete our
run-up and before-takeoff checklist.
We've double checked everything, we're all set, we've got one airplane in front of us,
so we're going to go ahead and call up the tower, let them know we're ready for departure
on runway 4, in sequence.
So there's one aircraft in front of us.
We could sneak past them, but let's not risk it, we're not going to try to taxi past them.
"Sarasota Tower, Cherokee 9907W, Ready for departure, Runway 04, in sequence."
"Cherokee9907W, Sarasota Tower, Roger, are you number 2 with the Skyhawk ahead of you?"
"07W Affirmed."
"07W Roger."
And so we let her know that we're ready to go so as soon as she can get that Skyhawk
out, we'll be ready to go right behind them, and we don't want to wait here forever.
Obviously, we need good separation between aircraft, but the meter's running, it's costing
us money, so we'd really like to get out of here sooner rather than later.
As we sit here and we've got time to waste, we're just going to run through our checklist
again, make sure we didn't miss anything.
Stack the deck in our favor.
Would you rather sit here and do nothing, or would you rather pull out a checklist and
make sure you did everything very thoroughly and perfectly, and not have an issue on take
off, like leaving your fuel pump off or having the flaps not set to the proper indication,
not having your trim set where you want it, having a door unlatched at the top.
Run through it again, take your time, make use of the time you've got to sit here and
twiddle your thumbs.
Oh and by the way, welcome to a Class Charlie airport.
It's going to cost you a lot just to taxi and take off.
And if you think that's a lot, wait until you come into land and it takes you 15 minutes
of getting vectored around to land here.
Soon you will appreciate the value of pilot-controlled airports, where we control the airspace ourselves,
and we make it work out a lot better than Air Traffic Controllers do.
We can see this Skyhawk in front of us is actually doing a run-up now, and they must
be a student, they're taking an extra long time to finish up, so we can go ahead and
call up, and let them know that we can squeeze by, and get out in front of them if they have
a spot available for us to take off.
"Sarasota Tower, Cherokee9907W, We do have room to squeeze by that Skyhawk if you can
fit us out."
"Cherokee07W, hold short, on runway 04."
"Holding short, runway 04, 07W."
So, we always read back hold short clearances even though we're already holding short ar
runway 4 we always read back "hold short runway 4," just to confirm that we are holding short.
That's really to accentuate runway incursion avoidance.
Special emphasis there on your private pilot checkride and commercial pilot checkride,
and any checkride.
Special emphasis there: runway incursion avoidance.
How are you going to avoid it?
One of those ways is to read back hold short instructions.
"Cherokee 07W, Runway 04, Line up and wait."
"Line up and wait, runway 04, 07W."
Alright, so we're going to squeeze by this Skyhawk here.
He's a high wing and we're a low wing.
We could come over here and our wings could go underneath each other, and we want to be
very careful doing this-- hand on the brake ready to stop if we need to.
And we're clear.
We're going to go ahead and line up and wait on runway 04.
That's our clearance.
Taxi out, line up and wait.
You're lining up and waiting for a takeoff clearance.
You're not clear to take off.
And we're going to go ahead and taxi all the way to the back here.
We're using all available runway, we're stacking the deck in our favor.
We want all the available runway in front of us.
"07W Traffic on the upwind departure and making right close traffic, turn left heading 240,
runway 04, clear for takeoff."
"Clear for takeoff left heading 240, 07W."
Alright, we're clear for takeoff, everything checked, let's apply full power here.
Everything's in the green, applying full power.
We've got our crosswind correction in there, airspeed's alive looking good, look down that
runway, controlling direction with runway input, going ahead and easing back our rotation
speed.
We're flying, lowering the nose for 85 VOI, clear all our obstacles, and we're going to
go ahead and retract our flaps once we hit at least 200 feet-- 200 feet or better until
we can retract flaps.
Looking for traffic here, we're going to lower our nose a little bit, we could make a little
S-turns left and right.
Coming up on 500 feet here, we're going to go ahead and make our left turn 240.
And we're not touching our flaps just yet.
We've got our fuel pump on.
"07W Flying 240, contact Tampa departure."
"240, over to Tampa departure, 07W."
Alright, we're wings level, we're going over to departure.
We're going to go ahead and set our flaps to zero, we can go ahead and get rid of our
fuel pump at this point.
We're at 1000 feet.
And we're climbing for 1600 on a 240 heading.And I'll try to get a word in edgewise here.
Checking for traffic.
"Tampa departure, Cherokee 9907W, leaving 1,400 for 1,600."
"Number 9907W, Tampa departure, ride in for me."
"07W."
Alright, leveling off at 1600.
That was the altitude restriction that was given to us on our clearance before we took
off.
"Number 9907W, radar contact a mile west of the Sarasota airport, you're just headed to
Venice today?"
"That's affirmative, 07W."
"Number 9907W can turn left on course for Venice, maintain 1600, I'll have lower for
you shortly."
"Left on course to Venice, maintain 1600, 07W."
And he said he would lower us shortly.
We're turning on course to Venice, "lower for us shortly" simply means he's going to
have a lower altitude assigned to us shortly, but he must have some kind of traffic passing
below us that he wants to keep us above.
So as we're cruising along here, we have our landing light turned on.
That is another special emphasis area: collision avoidance technique, or collision avoidance
procedures.
What are you going to do to avoid a collision mid-air?
Leave your landing light on for the whole flight.
That's a good answer.
As a renter, more than likely you don't pay for that light bulb even turned on.
Constantly scanning the sky for collision avoidance.
Looking around us, scanning in ten-degree sections with our eyes, looking for any relative
movement in our peripherals.
And as we're flying along here to Venice there are a couple different things we can do to
get over to the Venice CTAF and get ready to approach, and our flight frequency.
We could request, simply, to have a frequency change.
We could just let them know that we have the Venice airport in sight and that may cue them
up to say, "alright, squawk VFR frequency change approved, see you later."
And that would allow us to put in 1200 in our squawk code, and change our frequency
over to Venice AWOL so we could get the Venice weather, and then switch over, after we have
the weather, to the Venice CTAF.
If our radios permitted-- if we had the right kind of radios-- we could monitor the Venice
CTAF as we fly out here.
"07W, VFR descent approved, use discretion, advise do you have the Venice airport in sight?"
"VFR descent approved, my discretion, will advise the Venice airport in sight, 07W."
And so we're going to go ahead and descend down over the water here.
VFR descent is approved at our discretion, and we will advise the Venice airport in sight.
And we can go ahead and report that we have the Venice airport in sight.
"Looking for traffic, 07W, we have the Venice airport in sight."
And so normally he would hand us off at that point, but because there is traffic that could
be a factor for us.
He's going to go ahead and hold onto us for a little bit longer, just as a courtesy, keeping
us advised of that traffic that we don't see.
He said 1 o'clock, 2 miles at 2000 feet, so slightly above us.
We're looking for that traffic.
Still, don't have them.
"9907W, traffic east of you, radar services are terminated, squawk VFR, the frequency
change is approved."
"Radar services terminated, squawk VFR, frequency change approved, 07W."
We'll go ahead and get the AWOL so we're at Venice now.
We'll also program in 1200 for our squawk code, so we're squawking VFR, we're flying
visually, VFR visual flight rules, we've got the Venice CTAF dialed in there, we'll go
ahead and dial the Venice AWOL.
Unfortunately today it's out of service, and we can't get the weather, so we plan to fly
the field at 1500 feet, 500 feet above traffic pattern altitude.
Look down for the windsock, identify what it's doing, maybe talk to the airplanes in
the pattern, see what runway they're using, and then go ahead and enter the traffic pattern
for that.
We'll go ahead and monitor the CTAF from here on out.
And so, the rest of the way into Venice here, we're going to go ahead and fly down the coast
overfly the field 500 feet above traffic pattern altitude at 1500, look down, figure out what
the windsock's doing.
It looks like it's going to favor Runway 23 here.
And then we're going to go ahead and depart the traffic pattern, wrap back around and
enter the traffic pattern at left downwind, and a 45-degree angle, and then go ahead and
make our full stop landing.
This is what it ultimately looks like.
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