Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Does ATC ever have a laugh at what they see on radar?

I don’t think controllers have our breadcrumbs.

EGTF, LFTF

Would the radar op even see the track in real time? I mean, they would see the returns but would they see the shape drawn as it was drawn or would it only be evident on the devices already illustrated and things like FR24?

There is a number of radar ATCOs here an maybe one of them can drop in.

I seem to recall from one ATC unit visit there is a facility for displaying some portion of the previous track.

However if you are drawing the said object while squawking 7000 the radar controller will likely not see you anyway.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

In our facility we are not be able to see those “pictures” and I doubt it´s any different elsewhere. We normally see the target returns of the last approximately 30 seconds, which gives you an idea about heading changes. Anything else would be information overload.

Regarding squawk 7000: Of course we do see those targets, although we might choose to display them in a discrete colour, depending on the sector and traffic you´re working. Would be pretty hard to give traffic information without seeing the traffic, wouldn´ it? In most areas we can even see the Mode-S data.

EDFE, EDFZ, KMYF, Germany

dublinpilot wrote:

What were you guys doing with such seemingly random tracks?

Mountain flying, flying into narrow boxes and following terrain (sometimes laterally by about 1-2 wingspans, at least it’s what it looks lie). I think there might be some unwritten rule that the 500ft rule doesn’t apply in the mountain.

What were you guys doing with such seemingly random tracks?

I was taking sunset pics

But also hand flying is fun. You can’t do it on a long distance IFR flight because ATC are watching your every move and will call you up if you go off track even a bit.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

But also hand flying is fun. You can’t do it on a long distance IFR flight because ATC are watching your every move and will call you up if you go off track even a bit.

How much deviation? I’ve done 2h+ legs entirely on manual and didn’t get complaints (was far from perfect flying!)

The Mousquetaire I was flying last couple of days is incredibly stable once set. You can let it for several minutes without touching controls and have near zero altitude / heading change once well trimmed. It’s the instructor’s own plane and is incredibly babied / he cares a lot about mechanics, so I imagine he really tuned it.

Peter wrote:

You can’t do it on a long distance IFR flight because ATC are watching your every move and will call you up if you go off track even a bit.

The errors would have to be getting pretty gross for ATC to even notice or care I would imagine. Last time I visited Ronaldsway Radar, their displays were 20-odd something inch displays showing the whole of their airspace. Normal IFR hand flying competency (which is going to result in some minor deviations due to wind changes, turbulence, etc – of just a few degrees, and with an alert pilot these will be caught soon) will have such small deviations that ATC won’t even be able to notice – the deviations will be below the resolution of their radar display.

Certainly for the FAA instrument rating, if you made deviations during the checkride large enough that ATC would even be able to notice, you would fail your checkride!

Furthermore I don’t think ATC are watching your every move – they have to divide their attention over enough targets that so long as there aren’t gross errors they probably won’t even notice you’re a whole two pixels off the track on their radar display!

I don’t fly IFR in Europe, but certainly in the United States I’ve never had a controller call me up about going off track even a bit – and I’ve never been able to fly equipment fancy enough to have anything better than a wing leveller…

Last Edited by alioth at 06 Dec 16:47
Andreas IOM

Having been to Swanwick a few times, I can confidently say that controllers have a pretty robust sense of humour and take few prisoners!

London area

Josh wrote:

Having been to Swanwick a few times, I can confidently say that controllers have a pretty robust sense of humour and take few prisoners!

That is an understatement in my experience there.

On the issue of going off track. Having once or twice forgotten to go back to NAV mode when previously on a heading (for a waypoint roughly off the nose), we are all so slow that lateral deviations need to be pretty big for them to notice.

Vertical deviations are quite different.

Last Edited by JasonC at 06 Dec 20:06
EGTK Oxford

JasonC wrote:

Vertical deviations are quite different.

I’ve flow in a Cessna 210 where the AP would be quite “wavy”. it would hold the altitude at something like +100/-100 ft (quite slow oscillation, you’d only notice looking at the instruments). ATC never complained. I think that’s the only time I had where the the manual flight was more precise than the AP.

Last Edited by Noe at 06 Dec 20:09
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top