Author Topic: ZOA - Oakland Center now has a feed  (Read 10471 times)

Offline inigo88

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ZOA - Oakland Center now has a feed
« on: May 12, 2007, 04:16:18 AM »
Hey guys,

I just wanted to announce our Oakland Center feed, located at the Prop Stops Here pilot shop at the Petaluma Municipal Airport (O69) just got listed. It covers the following frequencies:

127.80 - ZOA Sector 40 (Surface to 8000)
125.85 - ZOA Sector 41 (9000 to FL230)
122.35 - Oakland AIFSS Mt Tamalpias RCO
118.70 - Napa County Airport Tower (KAPC)

The first 3 frequencies are located at a radio site on Mt Tamalpias in Marin County, CA, which has better line of site with the feed location than Napa Tower (so the tower will be noticably quieter, but still readable). I wanted to illustrate the intense VFR "flavor" of the northern half of the San Francisco bay area, which necessitates part time staffing of Sector 40 as an "Ultra-Low" Center sector.

The lateral dimensions of sectors 40/41 (since they're only seperated by altitude and are combined some of the time) are basically illustrated in this thread. It is bordered by NORCAL TRACON - Area D to the south (to FL190) right around the SAU VOR, to the west by ZOA Sector 35, continues east almost to Concord airport (KCCR) where it is bordered by Travis AFB RAPCON (to 10000) and NORCAL TRACON - Area E (to FL230) east of Lake Beryessa, and continues all the way to the north just north of ENI VOR where it's bordered by ZOA Sector 42.

Sector 40 serves two Class D airports, Sonoma County Airport (KSTS) and Napa County Airport (KAPC). It also serves the uncontrolled Petaluma (O69) and Ukiah Municipal (KUKI) airports which get some IFR traffic and a lot of VFR traffic, as well as Schellvillle/Sonoma Valley (0Q3), Sonoma Skypark (0Q9), Healdsburg (O31) and Cloverdale (O60), which has an active drop zone. Also, Santa Rosa/Sonoma County airport (KSTS) and Ukiah Municipal (KUKI) both have active CDF Tanker Bases so Sector 40 gets quite busy with tanker traffic during fire season. It's safe to say that most of the time this sector has a long que of VFR flight following requests waiting.

Sector 41 serves the GOLDEN GATE 4 Arrival (GOLDN4) into San Francisco Int'l airport (you'll hear "Cross LOZIT at 11000") an San Jose Int'l airport (you'll hear "Cross DUXBY at 12000"), and the RAIDR2 arrival to Oakland Int'l airport (you'll hear "Cross RAIDR at 7000" or "Cross 10 miles north of Sausalito at 7000"), all of which are from the north. Therefore all arrivals to the San Francisco Bay Area from points north such as Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and most international arrivals from Europe and East Asia all pass through this sector. Additionally, Sector 41 serves all northbound Bay Area departures (either thru the RBL VOR, or offshore for international departures bound for asia via the MOLEN3 DP from SFO), and east/west overflights for some arrivals and departures to and from the Sacramento Int'l airport (KSMF) and Travis AFB (KSUU).

Oakland Flight Service is in there to add to the local VFR flavor...

...As is Napa County Tower. You'll occasionally hear some thick asian accents on this freq, as Napa County airport has a flightschool for JAL airlines based on the field (flying bonanzas and seminoles I believe).


It's definitely something different than Boston John's ribbits and hasta la vistas or JFK Arnie yelling at some other unsuspecting international pilot, but the local pilots and controllers have just as much character, and I hope you enjoy the feed as much as we enjoyed setting it up, and as much as I enjoy flying the airspace.  :-)

Inigo