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JMR

VFR in mountainous terrain.

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Trying to do a VFR flight from KPSP to KSAN but clearance is vectoring me straight towards the mountains after take off. I routed my first waypoint to the KPSP VOR but that didn't help any. Do I have to make an IFR flightplan with a SID to avoid the mountains even though I want VFR?

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You can request a departure to any compass direction, for the flight you are attempting ask for an East or Southeast departure and see if that makes a difference. Unfortunately VoxATC does not take obstructions into account with its vectoring at this time. You could also try a West departure and hope for getting vectored into the valley where Banning lies. I flew that route back in 1986 in a Cessna 152, there was so much thermal activity on takeoff I thought I was in a helicopter! My instructor for the first time kept telling me to keep my nose UP cause when we got out of the thermal activity it took forevvvvvveeeeeeerrrrrrrr to get to our cruising altitude. Let us know if it works.Zane


Dr Zane Gard

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Sr Staff Reviewer AVSIM

Private Pilot ASEL since 1986 IFR 2010

AOPA 00915027

American Mensa 100314888

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I wasn't aware I could ask for a different direction but how do I go about doing that? At the clerance prompt I hit 0 to see if there were other options avalable but there wasn't anything. I also tried asking for an east direction (even though the prompter was indicating that I should ask for a southwest departure) but ATC still replied to fly a heading of 270 which takes me straight to the mountains.

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Hi whatever your name is :)I have been able to get VoxATC to respond to requests for other departure directions in the past. You will see a thread further down where there was difficulty with a departure out of San Jose area. This particular one though I have tried requesting every direction and I am always given a heading of 270 after takeoff and soon you find yourself being vectored into the mountain... frustrating :-mad . I am going to try planning the flight with a fix first to the Southeast, then West toward Banning and see if I can find a way to make it work. I think the development team at VoxATC should look into allowing an additional setup menu for VFR flights where you can at least specify some kind of directions to fly a certain heading or a to a waypoint for departures and arrivals into these mountaineous strips... yeah, that would be a good fix :)I'll keep looking for a solution,Zane


Dr Zane Gard

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Sr Staff Reviewer AVSIM

Private Pilot ASEL since 1986 IFR 2010

AOPA 00915027

American Mensa 100314888

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Hey thanks for responding, I appreciate it.Lemme know how your planning works out for next attempt. I guess if it doesn't work out with VFR planning an IFR with a SID would do the trick. edit: I suppose another way would be to start Vox ATC after takeoff, 6nm away from PSP."If you start VoxATC with the aircraft further than 6 nm from the flight plan departure airport, VoxATC will assume you are enroute. This is useful if you want to start a flight somewhere along your planned route or if you want to practice arrivals and approaches.After starting VoxATC you will be prompted to tune to and contact an enroute facility (Approach or Center). After making contact the flight plan may be continued as if started from the departure airport. "

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Hi again,I haven't flown these plans on the sim with VoxATC yet but I looked over the Lo alt enroute and Sectional for this flight and you would have two usable options for flight. These avoid MOA's and restricted airspace and bring you in to San Diego airspace more like you would do in real life.Coastal routing flown at 10,500: KPSP, DEWAY, HDF, VISTA, CARIF, VPSMS (Mt Soledad), KSANMountain routing taking you East then South at 8,500: KPSP, PSP, TRM, HENOM, JLI, HAILE, KSANFlying light aircraft VFR it would be more suitable to land at KMYF than KSAN. San Diego Int'l is a single runway airport with dense commercial traffic, they'll let a 152 land but they aren't going to be happy about it.BTW, KMYF is where I originally trained and got my pilots license back in 1986 :).One of my dual cross countries was flown to KPSP via the mountain routing and the return flight was via the coastal routing after a landing at Corona. The flight in I didn't go as far East (direct JLI to BALDI), we came in over the mountain and then made a pretty steep descent minding not to overfly the private golf course to the East of the airport. I already commented on the flight back out and the thermals. That was also just a day after an earthquake that left one of the taxiways closed due to large cracks!Have fun flying,ZanePS: AEU6 will give you taxiway cracks ;)


Dr Zane Gard

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Sr Staff Reviewer AVSIM

Private Pilot ASEL since 1986 IFR 2010

AOPA 00915027

American Mensa 100314888

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Boy JMR...Of all the flights I have done with VoxATC this particular one just wants to give trouble. I just flew the coastal routing and despite an initial heading of 170 it still tried to vector me into Mt. Jacinto... I ignored the request to turn right and turned left instead, it eventually requested me to continue my left turn but again tried to vector me into the mountain! I continued direct to the fix, rest of the enroute phase went fine. On approach I flew into Montgomery (KMYF) via Mt. Soledad approach but couldn't get VoxATC to accept my request for landing runway 28L, it was stuck on having me land runway 5 which I only used for crosswind training, never, ever had it assigned in all the years I flew out of Montgomery. I got so fed up I just ignored VoxATC and flew the visual approach as you would in real life. I think what happened on approach is VoxATC wanted to fire approach instructions so fast that I couldn't get my request in early enough and by the time it would let me get a word in it was too late and the program was stuck on me landing at an innappropriate runway using an inappropriate routing. If you were to fly what the program wanted you would have been busted big time.Zane


Dr Zane Gard

Posted Image

Sr Staff Reviewer AVSIM

Private Pilot ASEL since 1986 IFR 2010

AOPA 00915027

American Mensa 100314888

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