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Fly out To Princeton
AFSS
It was a beautiful Saturday morning in October
when seven people in three Flywell aircraft took a short hop to tour the
Princeton Flight Service Station (now operated by Lockheed-Martin); two
additional members drove up. Joe Morgan, the manager of the station warmly
welcomed us as we parked the planes in front of the building at the south end of
the runway. Joe has worked for over thirty years at flight service stations
around the country and had a wealth of knowledge and stories to tell us. He has
seen it all, from teletypes to satellites; he has grown with the system, with
all its various technology and knowledge dissemination methods.
The flight service station is an
industrial-like building at the south end of the airport. The
southern-most taxiway takes you to the apron the FSS shares with
the Life Link helicopter operation in the adjacent hangar. Joe
reminded us that walk-in briefings are still available for those
who wish to stop by.
Before seeing the actual room
where phone calls to Princeton are answered, we gathered in a
conference room to hear background information about how the
system works (there were many surprises!). After many hours
designing the system using pilot and user input and requests, we
have the current Lockheed-Martin system. Though there are still
bugs to be worked out (both hardware and software) due to the
immense complexity, it is amazing to see the results of this
synthesis of technology.
The room where phone calls to the
facility are answered was a dimly lit room with briefers at
computer workstations. Each briefer has three monitors and a
keyboard. Each has the ability to look at multiple sources of
information simultaneously (from the proprietary L-M software,
the U.S. government and the Internet). All briefers have a
headset and they either type your information into a flight form
or pick it from drop-down boxes on the form itself. Hint: if you
have ever had to fill out a form on a web page, you know how
tedious it can be. If you talk at a normal or slower speed, the
briefer will be better able to get your information into the
form with better accuracy. Better yet, establish a profile to
cut down on the data entry for the briefer and speed up flight
plan filing for you (more on that below).
When you call for a briefing and
to file, you can speed up the connection to Princeton by dialing
1661 after the initial phone call is answered by the system.
This puts you directly in the PNM cue. If your call is not
answered within 20 seconds (due to call volume), it is routed to
another facility with a briefing specialist knowledgeable about
the upper Midwest. That means that your call would be first
routed to the Dallas-Fort Worth facility and if that is busy, to
the Washington, D.C. facility. Be aware that all briefers have
access to the same information, whether or not they are located
at PNM. If you have a really heavy Midwest accent, you may have
to talk slower so those other folks in the south can understand
you. Be aware that, statistically, the heaviest call volume at
PNM occurs on Fridays, followed by Saturdays and Sundays. On the
other hand, Joe reminded us that it is perfectly proper to ask a
briefer to slow down. After giving their umpteenth weather
report, briefers may get into a rhythm that is too fast for us
to understand or copy. They have been trained to slow down when
reminded, so don’t be afraid to speak up.
Be Specific, Be Specific, Be
Specific
Another key to a good briefing is
to be specific with your information, especially when speaking
to a briefer at other than PNM. That means spelling out
(phonetically) your departure airport, route of flight
waypoints, and destination. Imagine yourself trying to copy
route information from a pilot who is at a small airport in
Louisiana going to Alabama. You may not be familiar with the
abbreviations for the waypoints and that is the rub with a
system that was designed to be able to connect within twenty
seconds. The only way to do this is to have calls forwarded to
other facilities when the one you want is busy. I don’t think
most folks mind spelling things out, anyway. It gives us GA
pilots practice with the phonetic alphabet and only takes a few
seconds longer. Don’t forget that you may know that you want to
go to Springfield (Minnesota) but the briefer may not know which
of the ten or so Springfield's in the lower 48 you want to go
to. If you are specific, you’ll end up saving time and
confusion.
Another hint about being specific
relates to radio work. Did you know that all radio calls to FSS
are handled by the folks in the Dallas facility? Yes, even if
you are calling Princeton Radio from somewhere over the top of
Leech Lake, your voice is relayed to Dallas. This is another
reason to be specific when calling them up. I wonder how many
folks in the Dallas facility have ever heard of Brainerd or
Bemidji (much less know how to spell them or know their
identifier). You’ll have much better success if you help the
folks out on the other end of the line with specifics (e.g.
Princeton Radio, Skyhawk 1989 Echo, at Brainerd, Kilo Bravo
Romeo Delta transmitting and receiving 123.65).
Set Up A Profile
A real timesaver that we were told
about is setting up profiles. By calling a briefer and asking
them to set up a profile for you, many of the FAA flight form
boxes are automatically filled out by the FSS computer. That
saves time and improves accuracy. Yes, you can even have a
different profile for each of the club planes you fly. Profiles
are tied to phone numbers. Thanks to caller ID, the FSS computer
will recognize your phone number and when you specify the
aircraft you are flying, the rest of the boxes will
automatically be filled in (e.g. TAS, your name, address,
contact phone number, home base, etc.). All you have to do is
tell the briefer the variable information, such as route of
flight, destination, fuel, etc. Now that’s a time saver. By the
way, feel free to list more than one phone number in flight form
box number 14. That is a trick Joe taught us because it may help
speed rescue efforts if the FAA can get in contact with someone
should you be overdue or contact you should you forget to close
your flight plan. We were reminded that costs for search and
rescue missions can be passed along to pilots.
The last tip Joe gave us was to go
to the flight service website at
www.afss.com. You can find a whole lot of information there,
including pilot tips. Check it out some time when you are
wishing you were up there but are down on the ground.
The trip up to the flight
service station was fun and informative. This trip is highly
recommended to anyone interested in seeing the behind-the-scenes
action at our local flight service. Many thanks to Joe Morgan,
too, for coming in on his day off to show us the facility. -
Article Written by Rick Okada |
