iflyabeech

Guys,

First off, I am not here to flame. I am a huge supporter of you guys and the rest of our military. Frankly, I am jealous, I wish I would have taken your route to the skies!

Tonight as we were loading my plane for our regularly scheduled route in South Texas, there was an Air Force T-1 which started up in front of me. The guys sit right there on the ramp at what seems like a high idle speed for 10-15 minutes. I suppose running checklists, etc. Positioned behind them on the ramp, my ground crew and I couldn't communicate due to the noise and the exhaust fumes made my ground crew and I nauseous. I have had this happen numerous times. When I used to fly air ambulance, I was parked behind another T-1 which started as I stopped. I had a very sick baby who we could not unload into the hot, windy, and noxious exhaust. I walked around and tried motioning to the guys flying to cut the engine, and finally had to call ground to get them to cut off the engines so we could unload the kiddo.

I have seen Navy aircraft from Corpus and Kingsville do this as well, so I suppose it is standard practice on military bases. Given that civilian fields are different than military fields, I think you guys may not realize that your jet blast interferes with civilian operations when you sit on the ramp for extended periods of time.

Would it be possible to move to an area other than a ramp to run the checklists? Or another any other solution. . . .

I only write this friendly post here because I don't know who to call and discuss it with.


Thanks!

CGFLYER

Must be a Jet Jock thing, when I flew King Airs out of Corpus we didn't run checklists on the ramp for 10-15 minutes. We always did a run-up, but that was usually down by the approach end.

Even in the Herc 10-15 minutes is a little excessive for sitting with the engines running. Who knows, there must be a bunch of checklists/training items to complete in the T-1.

But I can imagine sitting on the ramp and listening to that racket for a while would get old pretty quick.

scrapdog

Sounds like this is a trend towards T-1 guys. It is certainly not standard practice on all military aircraft. In the F-15 and the F-22 we never go above "idle" speed (I don't have a clue what you mean about 'high' idle) unless obviously we push the power up to taxi. In the F-16, we pushed up the power for about 15" to check the Secondary Engine Control and the Emergency Power Unit, then went right back to idle unless taxiing.

If you have issues with a particular airframe, I suggest you take it up with them instead of write a general lambasting against USAF/USN flyers in general on a web-board. If you look on www.af.mil you can find plenty of data on where the T-1's are out of and their particular base phone #'s. Randolph, Laughlin, Columbus, and Vance are four bases that come mind. Sorry for the inconvience they gave you.

iflyabeech

I am not lambasting anyone. I have the utmost respect for our military and military aviators. I just think maybe these guys could use a lesson in ramp courtesy.

It was a T-1 from Laughlin. I forgot to post that I suppose. I have also seen T-45's from Kingsville and T-34's from Corpus. Its probably a slow student training thing. I looked on the Laughlin page back when I had the problem flying air ambulance, but I could not an appropriate phone number.

Regarding Idle speed: It seems they were idling higher than the JT-15's that I have flown.

J

dannolars

Yeah, I would say it is probably a combination of slow students and checklists being run having flown it before. I just talked to a buddy who flew them as an instructor at his previous assignment and he said that is most likely the case.

blastoff

The engines are in Idle, there is no run-up in the checklist...however, you may have had this misfortune to be following slow students. Some IP's were extra slow too (i.e .liked to watch students go slow and excruciatingly methodical)...so if you get a slow student and an IP who likes slow students, you might be there a while.

Also, the ATIS also could have just changed and he was making the student do manual Take-off data with the spaghetti charts. In general, if you see a jet with a Laughlin tail taking a while, "Learning is happening."

2JRTs

Or maybe a quick student who breezed through checklists and preflight only to have to wait for a low level slot entry time...lots of reasons why a UPT jet might sit on the ramp an extended time.

I agree the IP/pilots should exercise more ramp consideration if jet blast and noise is a potential problem for others out there.

iflyabeech

Thanks guys. I don't want to gripe. I just think that maybe they don't realize where their jet blast is going. I thought maybe someone here new an IP and could maybe talk to them about it.

I can definitely appreciate slow students! But it seems moving from a busy part of the ramp to run all of these checks would make more friends on the ramp.

Thanks for your responses.

Diesel1030

having just got done with T1s a few months back from Laughliln what you were probably witnessing was the trim check. Can be rather lengthy with new students..but really no longer than a few minutes otherwise. With our manual TOLD etc it can be a few minutes before we get rolling but nothing excessive and we always have the power in idle. As for the parking thing..I hear what you are saying but it would take a lot of coordination to get all the birds to do that every flight. All of our checklists are to take place in the chocks before taxi.. What airport did this take place..midland? Again, sorry about the situation..I know that definitely is a nuisance!

iflyabeech

Thx.....last night was Harlingen. The air ambulance incident was in Corpus, as have been most of my encounters with this.