AES wrote in news:siegman-
:

Can anyone tell me what might have been the detailed route for our
RNO-SJC flight today, Mon 28 July, 1:00 to 1:55 pm (in terms of common
geographic waypoints or GPS coordinates)?

I'd always had the impression these flights departed RNO heading more or
less straight west and passing well to the north of Lake Tahoe and even
Donner Lake, then angling southwest toward San Jose; and it seemed to me
that was what we were doing today, though with the fairly severe haze
and smoke currently in the Tahoe area, I couldn't pick out any Tahoe
landmarks (looking across the Lake this morning, one couldn't see the
far shore even in the narrow direction).

About half or a third of the way into today's flight, however, from
23,000 feet we saw an obviously large fire zone area (no visible fires,
but large area of heavy smoke) almost under our flight path on the left
side of the plane, and easily visible in the middle distance was what
sure looked like Half Dome.

I kept thinking we really wouldn't have departed that far east and south
of a straight-line path from Reno to SJC, and that this must have been
one of the less publicized fires in the region NW of Highway 80; but on
the other hand we ended up (with minimal banking and turning that I
could sense) coming up into SJC up along what I took to be Highway 101
from the south.

Would our route really have passed that close to Yosemite?


I can only take a guess as to the exact departure/arrival routes they would
have used, but, since I learned to fly at SJC, I do know that the prevalent
winds favor using RWY 30L for turbojet arrivals about 85% of the time.
This routing takes you pretty much SSW from RNO to slightly south of due
east of Mariposa, then west to just south of Merced, past the San Luis
Resevoir to Gilroy and then straight in to SJC.

The "flow" into the San Franciso Bay area is rather complex. (You can see
the flow diagrams by downloading the MS Word file at
http://www.mtc.ca.gov/planning/air_p...ty-delay/3.doc The diagrams are
figures 3-7 and 3-8. The approach into SJC is brings you in about 35 miles
SSE of the airport and then straight in on a 303 degree magnetic heading.

Using this, I ran a DUAT flight plan and came up with routing that,
regardless of what departure from RNO would take you as follows:

(Note, I'm using the aviation VOR (3 letter) and intersection (5 letter)
names, followed by lat/lon, and then the nearest place name I found on the
San Francisco sectional chart. All distances are NM - nautical miles.)

FMG (N39:31:52 W119:46:06) - The Mustang (FMG) VOR is in the town of
Sparks, Nevada and very close to the (in)famous Mustang Ranch brothel. It
is about 6 NM ENE of RNO

ELCAP (N37:41:09 W119:46:06) - You should be able, if clear, to see El
Capitan out the left window as well as Half Dome. ELCAP is 111 NM south
from FMG.

HYP (N37:13:09 W120:24:00) - The El Nido (HYP) VOR is 7 NM SSE of Merced.

TORCH (N36:58:46 W121:29:33) - This is 32 NM from SJC and between Gilroy
and Hollister.

Note that this turbojet route is 53% longer than a direct great circle
route.

Now, if you are not in a turbo jet, but in a small plane like I fly, the
routing would me a lot more direct (5% longer than a great circle route):

HUYJO (N39:14:56 W119:50:56) - NNE of Lake Tahoe about 5 NM east of Incline
Village.

SPOOK (N38:37:57 W120:15:51) - From HUYJO, you cross Lake Tahoe just north
of Glenbrook and exit just west of Camp Richardson. SPOOK is in the middle
of nowhere.

LIN (N38:04:28 W121:10:16) - You've passed Mokelumne Hill and LIN is about
15 miles NE of Stockton.

ECA (N37:50:01 W121:10:16) - About 7 NM SSE of Stockton

SUNOL (N37:36:19 W121:48:37) - You pass over the Altamont Hills wind farm,
south of Livermore, and are over the Sunol golf course.

Hope this helps.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)