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BOAT : Every flight .
RAIN : Save it on your iPad , get a hard copy of it . Again , it can be helpful if you ’ re not familiar with it . Kind of wrapping up the intercept procedures , I do want to pick your brain real quick because I was a big safety guy and I would go around talking about military airspace . So you can go through a MOA , you can go through certain different airspace . Flight planning and knowing that . And there ’ s a difference between what ’ s legal and what ’ s smart . And I would go around and I would talk to a lot of pilots about military airspace .
So in South Carolina , the eastern seaboard , it ’ s just slammed with aircraft . The bulldog MOA in Georgia , you got Marines , you got Navy , you got Air Force , multiple units using this airspace . I ’ ve told the story as a young guy going on a solo cross country bebopping around Georgia , landing at an airport , getting the signature in my log book that hey , I did my cross country and bebopping back . Fast forward 15 years , I ’ m now in an F16 doing 500 knots at 500 feet and I look down , I ’ m a red air , I ’ m trying to wreck someone ’ s day and I look down as I rolled the wing and I ’ m over that exact same airport . So I ’ m like , there ’ s a 17-year-old me somewhere around here that has no idea what ’ s going on .
BOAT : Yeah , I ’ ve thought about that too .
RAIN : So realize that military airspace is kind of busy and just tell me a little bit about what an average day is , and what might be happening inside a MOA outside a military base .
BOAT : Sure , typically Monday through Friday , quite a bit . It ’ s going to be very busy and you don ’ t know when or where those aircraft are going to be . And obviously , if it ’ s a MOA or some kind of military training airspace , their primary focus is training and so they don ’ t want to have to deal with you . Now the real world , yeah . There ’ s other aircraft and things are flying around and everything like that . So they will deconflict and everything . But just realize that while that is available for you to use , it ’ s probably not the smart choice .
RAIN : Legal versus smart .
BOAT : Exactly right . Yeah . So you ’ re totally legal VFR , flying through a MOA , you don ’ t even need to really talk to anybody . But I would highly recommend you probably do . And yeah , we ’ re moving fast , we ’ re doing other things , we ’ re shooting fake missiles and whatever else . But yeah , not ideal space to be in , but you ’ re totally legal to do it .
Just think about it . Is it necessary ? Can you afford to take a little bit of a more circuitous route around the airspace or can you delay or find a gap in there ? And if you go in all the foreflight information or whatever , you can pull up the owner of the airspace and call them up and say , hey , when is a good time to go through where there should not be any military activity as well . So there are ways to deconflict .
RAIN : Yeah . Because at a minimum , if you are talking to someone and you ’ re going through that , the fight that ’ s happening , the training that ’ s going on might come to a pause and you ’ re pausing 12 jets at the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars per hour . So tax money is being wasted and a training opportunity is lost which is really critical in today ’ s age , especially if we ’ re worried about our national offense or worst case scenario , if you ’ re not talking , what ’ s going on in that training , that fight , you got guys going 400 knots , you got a young wingman or even the flight lead who ’ s worried about the tactics and the flow of what they ’ re doing .
And you might be going slow enough that your plane is chaffed to the radar and it gets filtered out . So you think they see you , but they don ’ t really see you . So again , I go back to what ’ s legal and what ’ s smart . Really think about it before you go out there and do it .
BOAT : Take a moment .
RAIN : Easy to do . Boat , I really appreciate you taking the time to join me . This is great to get this information out there because it ’ s not a matter of if , it ’ s a matter of when the next one will happen , but be prepared and do your WANTs check . Weather , Activate , NOTAMs , Toll . Go through that . Keep yourself safe . Hazard patterns .
BOAT : Absolutely . RAIN : Awesome . Thanks , Boat . BOAT : Yeah . Appreciate it . RAIN : Thanks .
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