Egress altitude blocks

Hi there, and many thanks for these campaigns!

I'm having trouble with altitude blocks (mainly when leaving the range), and could use a little help in making sense of them.

First, the general briefing tells us FL60-FL70 when going home (southbound in TC OSCAR, Eastbound in TC IRIS). I would argue that's already a problem, as the ground there is around 1500 to 2000ft AGL, so in order to respect the 5000' hard deck limit outside the range, we need to fly at FL70 or above. :smartass: But fine, let's say a precise FL70 makes everyone happy.

Then, the mission briefings (only flown TAC11 & TAC12 so far) mention a "Low, low, low" profile (whatever it means when the hard deck is at 5000'). I just can't match this with the altitude blocks published for inbound and outbound corridors around the range.

Finally, within the missions, exit point Charlie is expected to be crossed at 7800 ft. That's not in the FL60-FL70 block, and that's not "low" as the profile suggests.

Am I missing something, and where should I be to satisfy that grumpy FE? :joystick:

Cheers! ;-)

We learned that A-10 pilots do not set Altimeter pressure and leave it set at 2992 for the duration of their flights.

If you fly to the altitude that is programmed into the waypoint leaving the Altimeter pressure at 2992 then you will remain within the altitude block triggers and it won't be a problem.

When designing the mission we wanted a 5000' Hard Deck to be Above Ground Level (AGL) and we also wanted to deconflict the inbound and outbound traffic by 1000' so the inbound traffic altitude block we set at 6000' to 7000'. Outbound

traffic is further deconflicted by another 1000' so their altitude block is 8000' to 9000'.

The difference in altitude you see at 6000' and showing 7800' is because Vaziani is about ~1800' above sea level. So if we wanted to fly at 6000' AGL we would be at ~7800' QNH Altitude.

If you change your altimeter pressure to register 0 altitude at Vaziani before takeoff then you could fly to 6000' on your altimeter and be within the altitude block because you have already compensated for the ground level elevation.

Here is a diagram that can help explain this:

With respect to the flight profile our research indicated the following:

Under 10,000 is considered LOW

10,000 to 25,000 is considered MEDIUM

and above 25,000 is considered HIGH

So since the ingress, target area and egress altitudes are below 10,000 then we consider it a LOW, LOW, LOW profile.

Does this help?

Thanks, it helps a lot!

The confusion came from

1) Me being a private pilot, and not knowing (nor imagining) that LOW applied until 10k, as I never fly this high. I'm totally fine with the limits you are using, I just didn't know them.

2) When the doc mentions FL60-FL70 (for example), that means flight level 60 to flight level 70. By definition a flight level is always defined QNE (from the 1013.25 hPa isobar, that standard 29.92 setting), not from ground level. I didn't think conventions could different in the campaign, which is fine.

=> In the future I'll just fly whatever my CDU wants me to ;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_level

Cheers!

Yes we should update our Altitude block diagram to use AGL references below FL90 at least for this part of the world. That would help avoid the confusion.