Jay Honeck wrote:

So why do we read it back?

My argument for reading it back would be that it lets the controller
know that the correct aircraft is responding. Imagine two planes
talking to the same controller: 2948Q (my club's Archer) and 6468Q (one
of the 152's that I flew for my primary training) (based at the same
field, so very likely to be flying at the same time). The controller
calls to me in the Archer to squawk 1234: "48Q squawk 1234 and ident".
My four year old is asking "what's that for" (referring to who knows
what), so I'm distracted and miss the call. Meanwhile, the student
pilot leaving for his long cross country had requested flight following,
so he's expecting a squawk code. He squawks 1234 and idents. No one
read back the request, but now the controller sees 1234 light up on his
radar and thinks it's me.

Similarly, I will always respond to a request to ident with "48Q
identing" so if something is wrong and I don't show up on the screen,
the controller at least knows that I tried. So instead of spending
another couple of minutes trying to get me to ident, we can deal with
the problem (whatever it may be).

Basically, my philosophy about talking with controllers is this:
they're there to help me, so I'm going to make sure that we on the same
page so they can do their job to keep my butt safe. I read back every
request and don't hesitate to ask a controller to repeat a request if I
am at all unsure. To me it just makes sense. It's not like it requires
a lot of extra effort. Even on a busy frequency, you can read back a
squawk code in less than 2 seconds.


-m
--
## Mark T. Dame
## VP, Product Development
## MFM Software, Inc. (http://www.mfm.com/)
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