SID and STAR names

Aviation General Aviation
1

Hello,

Is there a way to find out (I’ve tried Google) what some of the SID’s and STAR’s refer to (if anything) for certain areas?

Take St. Louis, MO where I live for example.

I can pretty well figure that CARDS EIGHT refers to the St. Louis Cardinals (8th revision? ) and BLUES THREE is for the St. Louis Blues (3rd revision? )

However, for others, like QBALL NINE, BOOSH ONE, PLESS TWO, TRAKE NINE among others seem to be ones that I cannot figure out.

QBALL, is St. Louis related to pool, It’s also related to the Apollo spacecraft, but, I do not think St. Louis has a connection to that…

Thanks in advance.

2

Sometimes there will be no connection to anything, and you are working too hard to imagine a meaning, or the meaning is so mundane as to be not interesting. Or, the fix refers to a local place name and had to be stretched to death with the advent of the 5 letter fix idea, and the source of the name becomes disconnected and lost to time.

San Pedro, an intersection in Southern California, (near San Pedro, of course) changed to the unrecognizable “PADDR”. These changes happened many years ago, and as time goes by people forget the basis for the name. WILMA is another one in Socal. And, what exactly does the ROMEN outer marker refer to near LAX? People forget, corporate memory declines.

Also, if the names were chosen by the local facility admin, then they might have named it for family members or their dog’s name or whatever. (Yes, it happens). Some of these fix names are quite old, and again, the basis for the names gets lost.

3

I bet he was a LA Rams fan and Romen would be for Romen Gabriel.

4

That is good!

I just looked at the approaches at LAX, and apparently Romen has disappeared.

But the reference was to the Fabulous Forum (Roman Forum, get it?)

I wonder if there is a FRSME or Grier out there somewhere…

5

For the BOOSH1, think about beer.

All of the brands by Anheuser Busch (Budweiser, Shock Top, Michelob, Busch, etc), are all owned by Anheuser Busch, which is based in St. Louis.

Not sure about the others, though.

BL.

6

Way back LAX had only 2 ILS approaches, 25L and 24R. The final approach fixes even farther back were beacons “L” for 25L and “R” for 24R, obviously called Lima and Romeo. The beacons were eventually de-commissioned and only Marker beacons along with corresponding intersections used. More recently the marker beacons were removed, with LIMMA intersection being the only remaining vestage of the original system.

7

Wasn’t there a famous pool player from St. Louis? QBALL?

8

That is what I mean about corporate memory…mine only goes back to the 80’s, so I (we) always linked Romen with the Forum,…

9

I might be “overthinking” this like was suggested, but, I think I have figured out one of the ones I was wondering about.

The QBALL NINE in KSTL.

It might be a play on the POCKET CITY VORTAC that is one of the points in this chart.

Many of the fixes seem to be BILLIARDS terms:

QBALL, SNOKR, CHIKN, SCRCH, BREAK…

All can be related to pool. ESSAR and FATSS and VISQA do not seem to relate, but, the rest do.

At least that one is solved to my satisfaction.

10

FATSS does, google Minnesota Fats one of the best pool players ever. The others might be former players.

11

Right on cue: Tomorrow morning on Turner Classic Movies:

(The time is PDT)

The Hustler
TCMHD - 256 Sun, 7/26, 10:30 AM 2 hrs 30 min
1961, Drama, Sports, Adaptation, Classic, Recreational Sports, Billiards
A talented, arrogant and amateur pool shark connects with a successful gambler who teaches him how to play high-stakes pool, and the hustler decides to challenge a legendary billiards champion to a single, high-stakes match.
Credits: Paul Newman (Actor), Jackie Gleason (Actor), Piper Laurie (Actor), George C. Scott (Actor), Myron McCormick (Actor), Murray Hamilton (Actor)