Man, it was bad again today in Vancouver-Fraser Valley area. Complete saturation, with everyone west of Mission Bridge on 122.72(5) MHz.

What's a good strategy for dealing with a congested practice-area frequency, and what advise would you give students/instructors?

Turn your radio off.

Go into terminal or go elsewhere

Go up on windy, turbulent, cold days.

Less traffic.

More quiet.

Adding to the congestion is the Arlington CTAF sharing 122.725.

Does anyone know where the concept of practice areas came from?

It seems a bit counter productive to safety to concentrate all traffic in a small area.

digits_ wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 9:20 pm Does anyone know where the concept of practice areas came from?

It seems a bit counter productive to safety to concentrate all traffic in a small area.

Designating airspace as CYA(T) informs other airspace users of where they can expect to find traffic doing maneuvers expected of the flight training variety.

It also limits entry by aircraft operating under IFR.

The reality is that flight training traffic concentrates in CYA(T)'s, but (someone correct me if I'm wrong) there is nothing stopping one from doing their training somewhere else.

Go to Pitt Lake, it's always quiet over there - and you can head up the lake for upper air work. People seem to think you have to be in Glenn Valley to do bloody forced/precautionary landings; there's a road and a dyke on the South end of the lake, use it. Generally, other than float training, Pitt is deserted.

When it comes to the Lower Mainland, there aren't a lot of options for practice areas, because of the airspace - so GV gets overloaded; and FTUs from Langley and all points West don't have much interest in going East of GV unless it's to go to Chilliwack for a XC.

It was the first sunny day in a while, in a winter that's been absolutely brutal for flying. Everything was a gong show, from apron, to fuel pumps to practice areas. There's just a lot of planes and training taking place in what is, for training purposes, a walled in area. This doesn't help you any, it's just how it is when you're training, once you are licensed you can choose to fly elsewhere and it's all good.

Here in Kamloops we don't have any (T) airspace, but the unofficial practice area is the west end of Kamloops Lake around Copper Creek. Stay north as much as possible, away from the extended centreline of 09/27. Stay on YKA's frequency. Nav Canada know about it: the first time I told FSS I was departing on a local flight to the west they asked if I was doing upper air work. As a matter of fact, yes...

...laura

More-rudder! wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 7:23 pm Man, it was bad again today in Vancouver-Fraser Valley area. Complete saturation, with everyone west of Mission Bridge on 122.72(5) MHz.

What's a good strategy for dealing with a congested practice-area frequency, and what advise would you give students/instructors?

Turn off the radio and use your eyeballs.

MattW wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 3:49 pm It was the first sunny day in a while, in a winter that's been absolutely brutal for flying. Everything was a gong show, from apron, to fuel pumps to practice areas.

Imagine that. Shocking anyone else wanted to fly that day.

rookiepilot wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:51 pm

MattW wrote: ↑Thu Feb 04, 2021 3:49 pm It was the first sunny day in a while, in a winter that's been absolutely brutal for flying. Everything was a gong show, from apron, to fuel pumps to practice areas.

Imagine that. Shocking anyone else wanted to fly that day.

That was my point, yes. Obviously there will be a lot of people wanting to enjoy some flying, take it in stride. Everyone has a right to be out there having some fun.
My post was in response to the original post that started the thread.