With an ILS straight-in approach, beit backcourse or standard ILS approach, I assume the aircraft in question must be 10 nm or closer on runway centreline to be handed off to the aeorodome/tower, correct?
Generally in a radar environment, with approach control, they hand you off to Tower at or approaching the final approach fix (4 to 6 miles final). Operating in a non radar environment, Center will generally switch you to the aerodrome frequency (FSS/CARS) once you have been cleared for the approach or outside of controlled airspace, this could be quite a distance from the airport (25 to 35 miles).
And is the ILS altitude limit supposed to 10 000 feet or lower to intercept ILS?
I've never heard of any published maximum altitude limit here in Canada. Normal coverage of an ILS extends to 18 nautical miles, also typical glide path installations generate a side lobe that can produce a false glide path angle at 3 times the set angle. For this reason ATC and published procedures maintain aircraft at an altitude providing a normal rate of descent and suitable position to capture the glide path (according to the A.I.P., no actual limits are given).
In my experience you will normally be given vectors to capture the glide patch between 4000 and 2000 feet, normally around 3000 feet 10 miles final. The other day going into YYZ they cleared us to intercept the localizer at around 20 miles final and the glide path from 5000 feet (~ 4500 agl).
I subscribe to DX Tuners which gives me the chance to remotely tune a radio reciever in Moosonee.I hear a lot of interesting traffic on a vhf freq 118.975. getting aircraft over a wide area..sometimes as far out as Goose Bay.. They.can be heard on to Montreal Centre..getting both the atc ground station as well as the aircraft. There must be a powerfuf relay vhf station up there. I was wondering do you know anything about the set up Cheers M50
I'm a DX Tuner as well and have listened to Montreal at Moosonee on occasion, also fly through that airspace quite a bit. From what I can tell they split the sectors up depending on the traffic volume which is primarily influenced by the position of the daily NAT tracks. When the tracks are north the Montreal Northern sectors seem to be split up into about 4 or 5 individual sectors. When traffic is light, usually around after 0200 UTC, you can hear one controller working all the northern sectors (via relay) at once. This is a huge chunk of airspace extending all the way up to Iqaluit in Baffin Island. That late you can usually hear the eastbound NAT traffic from the west coast getting their oceanic clearances and being handed off to Gander on HF.
DJ