TFR Question

[montana]

I'm a newly licensed PPL and I'm interested in taking a VFR trip from the DFW area to Austin. Naturally, this route takes me over the Crawford metropolis (Bush ranch is there, FYI), where there is TFR area. I'm still pretty unclear about all of this, but what exactly do I have to do to be able to fly through this area? Who do I need to talk to? Will Ft Worth and
Houston get me through there? Maybe I should just go around it, who knows. What do you think?

 

[C650CPT]

First and Foremost, Contact the local Flight Service Station for the current status. They will tell you the lateral dimensions and altitudes associated with it. I don't know if the TFR is inforce just when the President is there or if its all the time, but the bottom line is you can't fly through them VFR. I recommend any time you fly, avail yourself of the services of ATC ie: Flight Following, While its not thier responsibility to keep you clear of TFR's they usually will assist you with recommended headings to stay clear.

 

[Minuteman]

Fundamentally, if you're on a flight plan, squwaking, and talking, you should be OK to within 10 NM of P-49 (when its expanded). If this is part of a multi-leg flight, you should file a separate plan for each leg that passes through the TFR (i.e. if you're doing Dallas to Houston via Austin, file a separate plan for Dallas to Austin). If P-49 is at 3NMR, you don't have to do anything special (but I'd recommend flight following from Waco or ZFW)

Also, stay east of the lake around Temple. There's the Hood MOA and you can earn a Blackhawk escort if you enter that airspace.

I don't mean to make it sound like a treacherous route or anything, it isn't at all. But the important thing is to be talking to a controller. If you're looking for fun places to fly around Austin, I can probably help there as well.

Here's a link to an FAQ from the Austin TRACON.
http://www.geocities.com/aus_natca/faq.html

 

[Alchemy]

I made the flight from AUS to DAL last weekend and would not want to do it nowadays unless I was IFR or getting VFR flight following.

Like the others have said, make sure you ask for a "standard breifing" before your flight and find out what the specific radius and altitudes of P-49 will be during your transition through the area. File a flight plan with the FSS and ask regional approach to let you off freq. for a few seconds as soon as practical so you can open your flight plan with Ft. Worth FSS. Then go back to regional approach and get flight following at least until you pass temple. Regional approach will hand you off to waco approach, then gray approach, then austin approach. If I was VFR going through the area for the first time, I would back up my visual navigation by tuning in the Waco then the Temple VOR and make sure I stayed to the east of both navaids.

If you do all these things you should be fine passing through the expanded 30 NM radius TFR if it's active.