On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 00:41:29 GMT, Jose
wrote:


You'll learn to understand the stuff quickly enough, don't let it
intimidate you. Anybody who does square dancing can do ATC. The hard
part is when transmitting, to know what to say before you key the
mike. ("Danbury tower, Piper three four seven Alpha Charlie, eight
miles northeast, inbound for landing with Whiskey", rather than
"Danbury tower, uh, let's see, we're a Piper, yeah... we're
landing.... um... oh, it's three four seven Charlie... I mean three
four seven Alpha Charlie... we're to the south... No, we're heading
south - we're north by a lake, well, we just passed the lake, most of
it anyway. We're at 2000 feet, our heading is two five zero... um,
what's the weather. And we're landing. Is that ok?"

That's just practice. But practice the first method, not the second
one.

Jose


You can also pick up a programmable scanner from Radio
Shack for probably less than $100. Then you can listen all you want.
If you live close enough to the airport, you could listen from home,
and/or just listen to the approach and center frequencies. This is how
I learned about communication when I was a kid, and had several years
of listening that helped me considerably when I finally got my
license.