Picture yourself at the skinny end of a funnel. You have to decide how much of what went in the fat end gets to come out the skinny end, and in what order. Now imagine that airplanes are what went in the other end. All kinds of airplanes. From cabin-class twins to tiny single-seat experimentals. Some of them are paying attention to you and doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. Others seem to have their own plan. Controllers can have nightmares like this after eating spicy foods right before bed. That’s what it’s like to work at Fisk.
Fisk is a temporary ATC facility located in a house trailer about eight miles southwest of OSH. Four controllers with nerves of steel and great spotting skills use a radio and binoculars to sequence the airplanes into a single-file line that initially follows the flashing strobes to Fisk, then follows the railroad tracks east to land on whichever runways are active at OSH. Chicago and Atlanta may battle it out 364 days a year, but it’s hard to imagine a busier bunch of controllers than the team at Fisk on the day before OSH opens. Fisk sequenced 52 airplanes from 0700 to 0800 Tuesday morning. It was just about twice that busy from 0800-0900, with 101 airplanes passing over the strobes. At that pace, the Fisk controllers have enough time to route the showplanes to a left base for 36, which saves a lot of taxiing at OSH – something they won’t have time to do when they hit their peak later in the day.
Sometimes airplanes arrive at Fisk already having formed a nicely spaced single-file line from Ripon. More often they arrive in random clusters and Fisk has to bring some order to the group. Pilots monitor the Fisk frequency and every single airplane gets talked to and given a preceding airplane to follow. The controllers at Fisk keep up a nonstop litany of instructions and pilots acknowledge with a rock of the wings. If standard AIM radio phraseology were used, the flow would be cut at least in half. It’s the way things have been done at Oshkosh since almost forever, and it works great as long as the surrounding area is at least a thousand and three.
The Team Concept
The Fisk team consists of a rookie, a two-year vet, a three-year vet and a four-year vet. Tuesday morning’s team leader was Jan Bennell from Minneapolis, Minn., a four-year veteran. Jan’s not a pilot but her father and two brothers fly. She’s a particularly good spotter. “I’ve been around airplanes all my life,” she says. She’s also great on the radio. In one breath, she can say, “Inbound from Ripon we need you in single file no side by sides no over and unders make sure your gear is down your lights are on and your transponder is off keep your speed up plan to fly over the strobes and keep your downwind well inside the blue water tower.”
Bob Hissom from Pontiac, Mich., a three-year veteran, graduated from Western Michigan University in 1982 with his eyes on an career as an airline pilot. “It wasn’t a good time to apply to the airlines, so I talked to the Air Force. I had blown out my knee in college, so the Air Force told me I could have a desk job but I couldn’t fly. So I joined the FAA and that’s been the smartest thing I ever did.” He’s had offers to move to Detroit but likes the mix of bizjets and biplanes that Pontiac offers. Bob has about a thousand hours in various aircraft.
This is Mike “Couch” Davenport’s second year at Fisk. He’s a controller from Terre Haute, Ind., and is also a pilot. He explained the NORDO (inoperative radio) procedure. (There’s a completely separate arrival procedure for airplanes without radios.) “We give a head-up to the OSH tower. Some of them really have an inoperative radio, and some just aren’t following the arrival procedure properly. In either case, if they’re not talking to somebody, there’s a very good chance they’ll land on the first runway they see, which is 9. That’s a bad thing with a stream of traffic landing on 27.”
This year’s rookie is Terry Kennedy from Fargo, N.D. The team works the shift from 0630 to 1300, then a new team of four takes over. They travel on the Friday before the show and train on Saturday. Training mostly consists of learning the traffic patterns and the special reduced-separation rules.
The team of four rotates positions to keep everybody alert. First the approach spotter calls out the color and type of the approaching airplane. Next the radio person gives the traffic instructions. Then another spotter verifies the wing-rock acknowledgment as the airplane passes over Fisk. Each job requires a different talent. The first spotter needs good airplane identification skills. The radio person needs good lungs and a strong voice. The departure spotter has two jobs: verifying the wing rock and reporting NORDOs to Oshkosh tower. “Couch” says that Decathlon pilots give the best wing rocks. “They just love to do that.”
Second Prize Is Two Weeks At Fisk
You might think that sending controllers into this lion’s den is some sort of penance for having committed some awful sin against the FAA. Nope, it’s actually a coveted job. Every November the Great Lakes region of the FAA sends out 320 bids for working the extra traffic of EAA’s AirVenture Oshkosh. Sixty-three lucky souls are chosen from the pool, plus the controller of the year from this year’s Sun ‘n Fun. (This year’s controller of the year from AirVenture Oshkosh automatically wins a spot on the Sun ‘n Fun team for next year.) Because it’s such a unique, challenging experience for the controllers, each of them wants as much time running the gauntlet as they can handle.
Operating out of a trailer can make the job interesting, too. Fisk veterans remember the squall line that passed through in 1995, nearly wiping Fisk off the map. But, like the pilots who camp at OSH, they just hunkered down in the trailer and sequenced the few intrepid souls who were still willing to fly in that weather. So if you’re west of OSH and you’re on your way to AirVenture ’99 , or if you’re planning for a trip next year, remember the hard-working folks in the hot pink shirts at Fisk as you pass over those strobes. When they ask for the wing rock, rock ’em like you mean it.
