From: zinser@yikes.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Richard Zinser)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation
Subject: ARSAs and Satellite Airports
Date: 14 Aug 92 17:41:55 GMT
Organization: GE Corporate Research and Development, Schenectady, NY

(taa daa! another lurker comes out to post...)

All this talk about the "friction" between Manchester Approach and Nashua Tower
reminds me of our local situation.  You folks in Nashua are lucky - the tower
will actually coordinate with approach and get you a squawk code on the ground.
Around here, we don't even get that level of service.  Here's some background:
Schenectady (SCH) has a non-federal VFR tower (no remote brite) and is about 8
miles northwest of Albany (ALB - classified by the FAA as a medium-hub airport
with the requisite ARSA).  SCH underlies the 2000 foot floor of the ARSA.
Coordination of VFR arrivals and departures between tower and approach is *nil*.
If you try asking SCH for a VFR squawk code while on the ground you get told
that you have to take off first, get a frequency change, and then make your
request with approach.  If you are coming into SCH, and receiving VFR flight
following, you get the requisite "squawk 1200, frequency change approved"
about 8 miles out; no call from ALB approach -> SCH tower is made, so tower
knows nothing about you.

To complicate matters further, some SCH tower controllers go into "nervous
mode" whenever they are talking to more than 3 aircraft at a time.  Nervous mode
means all arriving aircraft are placed on left downwind (with a 45 degree entry)
no matter which direction they came from.  This makes it real interesting when
runway 22 is in use and you are arriving from the northeast (please excuse my
crude ASCII graphics):

                    SCH       *******
                    rwy 22   *     *                  Approach path
        N                  / /    *                     *
                          / /    *                     *
        ^                / /    *                     *
        |               / /    *                     *
                       / /    *                     *              
                      / /    *                    *              
                            *                   *            
                             *                 *                /
                              *               *               /
                               *            *               /   5 mile
                                *         *               /    ALB ARSA
                                 ********               /      boundary
                                                      /
                                                    /

So you get to fly up the downwind, trying to thread your way around the 3 other
aircraft all squeezed into the same square mile of airspace, while trying not to
violate the ARSA 5 mile ring.  I just *love* it when this happens.  Wouldn't you
think Albany would try to help out this situation with a little coordination and
vectoring, perhaps?  NOT!  Squawk 1200, numerous targets in the vicinity of SCH
airport, good luck, so long.

I went over to meet with the approach people last summer and asked them if there
was anything they could do to improve the situation.  One buckaroo wanted to cover
Schenectady with ARSA airspace down to the surface so all traffic could be "helped."
Aside from that rather draconic solution, they said that nothing could be done to
sequence VFR arrivals.  "How about a brite in SCH tower?", asked I.  Nope, they 
said, SCH doesn't want one, even with <air guard, FAA, I forget just who> offering
to pay for it.  Hmmm.  On another occasion, I asked the SCH airport commisioner
about getting a brite.  "Nope, can't afford one," he said.  Another
source at SCH said something like "Approach dosen't want us to have one anyway."
It's hard to know exactly what the whole story is.  I guess there probably is a
bit of animosity between the Fed controllers at ALB and non-Fed controllers at
SCH.  What a mess.

Funny thing is that the "system" works just fine for IFR departures and arrivals.
Hand-offs, vectoring, coordination, the works.  Oh, well, maybe next year...
(yeh, right...)

Standard disclaimer applies. 
"Information above deemed accurate, but not guaranteed because of foggy memory"

Rick Zinser
GE Corporate Research and Development, Schenectady, NY 12301