A Bell Jet Ranger pilot demonstrates how to request clearance through Class D airspace near Elkhart. The video shows a sample radio call to the tower, explains when you can skirt the airspace instead, and stresses staying on frequency and keeping your eyes open while transiting.
Flight to south bend airspace. Stay on track. Should miss it. All right.
Right when you're. And so when you're. When you're out here tooling around, Class Delta won't show up till you zoom in farther. So your course goes right through the corner of Elkhart's airspace. So to get that. To get that to come up, you just got to zoom in a little bit. Okay. And now you can see the class Delta. So your course is going to take you right past the right side or the east edge of the Class Delta. So either you talk to or you just skirt to the right and go around it. So but yeah, you got to like, you know, you go out right there. It only shows that class Charlie doesn't show the Delta.
Plymouth traffic.
Yeah. Is about four miles to the west.
We're heading eastbound on the pipeline, only.
Passing just north of the airfield.
So now you just have to ring it. So it shows up.
Right. Just zoom it in in order for it to come.
We're gonna go over a bunch of towns here now all of a sudden.
Yep. Cherokee niner, five, four niner, final one one. Elkhart.
So we gotta get over to the other side of Elkhart. Otherwise we gotta talk to him.
Right. Or we go through and talk to him for the practice.
Oh, okay. And we would tell them what we're. We need to pass through your airspace. Yeah, we'll do it.
And I'll do the. And I'll else 1. I think they're 119.5.
You take the controls and I'll double check. You have the controls?
I have the controls.
Where's our little helicopter here? Goa.
We got to be west of that El car 119.5. Should be good. We should be out. Probably close enough to talk to, weren't we?
Yep.
Yeah, we're right there. It says we're right there. According to helicopter on a man.
Okay, so we go back to, you know, I think through before I do it. Who we are, where we are, what we want to do. We are south west transitioning northeast. Yep. He's going to want to know our altitude, so I'm going to make the first call just to get his attention. I'm going to say Elkhart tower, helicopter November five three Romeo Whiskey. Wait for him to come back. I'm going to guess approximately 7 south west, transitioning northeast at 1,800. He'll come back and give me whatever response, whatever he wants me to do. Elkhart tower, helicopter November 53 Romeo whiskey.
Helicopter 53 Romeo whiskey.
Helicopter 53 romeo whiskey, approximately seven to the southwest, transitioning northeast 1,800 helicopter.
53 romeo whiskey, flight three space is approved. The alpine altimeter three zero two niner.
Flight through the class D approved. We have deer five three romeo whiskey, and that's it. So now we just listen for him to give us any advisories for anybody that's coming or going. We know from Elkhart is normally pretty quiet, but he may come on and tell us, turn left, turn right, descend, climb.
So we're gonna fly just to the. We're gonna be on the east side airport. Keep on this track. Which is okay.
Yep. Which, you know, we could opt to fly right over the field, but that takes us a little off of our course.
No sense doing that.
It's, you know, not that busy of airspace. Just staying on our course is probably just fine.
This is where Chris keeps his. Is it Chris? Yeah, Chris keeps his airplane.
Yeah, his airplane's there.
Like they're doing some work down there.
So, you know, I think about it when I'm talking, when I'm gonna talk to any of these different airspace classes.
Airport's straight ahead now. Yep.
And I'm used to having a compass up here, so when I'm getting ready to make my radio call, I always glance at the compass because I have it right there. So in the event when I go to talk, when I start forgetting, you know, because I'm trying to spit the words out, I can easily glance at the compass. And I know the bottom is where I'm coming from and the top is where I'm going. So it's easy to glance at the compass and report I'm 7 Southwest, transitioning Northeast. And I use the compass to correlate. Correlate exactly what I'm doing.
It is really slow, so we should be looking for traffic coming from. They're going to be landing.
I mean, coming this way, they're taking off.
They mean going that way. If they're landing, they're up behind us.
Right. But still, the duty is still for us to see and avoid other traffic. I mean, he might give us an advisory, but it's still our job to make sure that we don't get in somebody else's path.
So we're crossing the toll road.
Yeah, I'm flying along that subroutine. I should have cleared with him, and I still can. He could probably hear. I could hurt him.
Okay, and how close do they watch that? People leaving their airspace, do they keep track of?
Usually they'll say usually, if you don't say something, they'll come on and say, frey, change approved. See you later. Blah, blah, blah. So sometimes they'll say it if you don't. Cartel helicopter 53 Romeo, whiskey, clear northeast. Thanks for your help.
You have a good day.
Oh, that easy. Just, you know, it's just. It's what we should do, you know.
Communicate more.
Exactly. You know, and I don't get in a big hurry to get off the frequency because, like, right now, it'd be nice to call him if we needed to. You know, if we had a problem, we had an emergency. Hey, we still got him up. We know we can talk to him. You know, ultimately, we could call for help.
