Light Up America

Hello Pilots!

For the first time ever, the VATUSA Staff and including ARTCC's will be hosting a country wide event for nine hours straight! The goal of the event is to light up america just as in the real world. The ARTCC's within the eastern time zone will sign on, and traffic flow will begin over the eastern country as the sun passes by. An hour later, the central time zone will light up, as the sun moves on. As morning begins in mountain time, those ARTCC's will staff up, etc. Thus not every ARTCC will be on for eight to nine hours, but America will be! VATUSA has a slot system for pilots to sign up on, this guarantees air traffic control along the route.

Below is the link to the very popular video, Flight Patterns by Aaron Koblin.

http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/work/faa/Documentationl2.html, More of his work may be found Here.

Quick Reference

• Who? VATUSA
• What? Light Up America
• Where? America!
• When? 12:00PM PDT - 8:00 - 9:00 PM PDT on May 30th, 2009. (1900z - 0300 - 0400z on May 30th - 31st, 2009

Charting

Please view AirNav for information on airports and further charting as this event will not take place at a specific airport, but rather the entire airspace.

FedEx Virtual Cargo

Hello FedEx Virtual Cargo Members and Staff, below is a list of information for Oakland about this event.

Metropolitan Oakland International Airport Charting

Operations

West Ops (Normal Ops) is the most common operations that we use at Oakland. In West Ops we use runways 29, 27L/R, and 33. Our SOP says that when SFO is in Normal Ops, Oakland is in Normal Ops, when SFO is in East Ops, Oakland is also. We do this because the airports are so close together, if they do not follow the same operations it would be very hard to separate aircraft on approach or departure from the field, thus they would all be on head on collisions.

I am not going to get into to much detail about the operations and how to determine them because we'd have to go over the SFO operations, etc. A great rule of thumb is to look at the METAR and TAF for Oakland. If the wind is coming from the NORTH (Roughly 240 - 340) we are in West or Normal Ops, if the wind is coming from the SOUTH (Roughly 070 - 170) are are in East Ops. In East Ops we use runways runways 11, 9L/R, and 15.

Preferred Arrival and Departure Procedures

Departures

• South - Southeast = COAST FIVE DEPARTURE (WEST OPS), SKYLINE THREE DEPARTURE (WEST AND EAST OPS), and NUEVO FIVE DEPARTURE (WEST OPS)
• Southwest - West - Northwest - North - Northeast - East = OAKLAND FIVE DEPARTURE (WEST OPS), MARINA FOUR DEPARTUER (EAST OPS), and SILENT SEVEN DEPARTURE (NOISE ABATEMENT)

• South - Southeast = HADLY TWO ARRIVAL (EAST OPS), COMMO ONE ARRIVAL (EAST OPS), MARVN ONE ARRIVAL (WEST OPS), and PANOCHE TWO ARRIVAL (WEST OPS)
• East - Northeast = LOCKE ONE ARRIVAL (EAST OPS), MADWIN FOUR ARRIVAL (WEST OPS), and MANTECA ONE ARRIVAL (EAST OPS)
• North - Northeast = RAIDR TWO ARRIVAL (WEST AND EAST OPS, RNAV)

Please keep in mind I did not include all of the Arrivals or Departures, just a select few that I recommend you using for your arrivals or departures into Oakland. I also HIGHLY recommend clicking here (Flight Aware) to see the real world flight plans arriving or departing Oakland as they usually have the correct departure or arrival procedures.

Notes

Please keep in mind that ZOA will be staffed throughout the entire event, roughly four hours. If some of you are doing long haul flights into Oakland the operation of the field may change, thus the controller will most likely clear you via a different departure, according to East or West Ops, I highly recommend having all the charts onboard for Oakland, or at least the charts onboard for your direction of arrival or departure.