Lou

I remember several months ago you writing about the River Approach to KDCA. I figure if you landed at KDCA you must have also done takeoffs. I lived in the Washington area from 64-69 and listened to a lot of ATC from DCA. From ATC I was able to figure out a departure from RWY 18 (now 19) was to maintain runway heading until vectors to Casanova VOR, Linden VOR or Front Royal VOR and then on course. The climbout was what the crew calculated to 1000 feet and then the rate had to be reduced to 500 FPM until something like 3000 feet. Do you recall if this was still in effect when you departed to the south?

Thank you
Michael Cubine

Michael,

The south departure was pretty simple. Straight Out! For noise abatement, you would climb to 1,000 feet at takeoff thrust, then reduce to something like 1.5 or 1.6 EPR and accept the reduced FPM in the climb. In effect you just spread the noise out to more people. The north departure was a lot more fun. You would use takeoff thrust to 1,000 feet just as above, but you would start a left turn and follow the river to the west and north. At 1,000 feet, you reduced thrust to a low EPR and slowly climbed to 3,000 feet while trying to clean up the flaps. At 3,000 feet the thrust was increased and the noise abatement part was over.

Lou