Andy Hawkins wrote in
:

Hi,

In article ,
Bertie the wrote:
I'm more of a frying pan than a kettle.



And you'll notice i have not excluded americans in this thread.

Glad to hear it!

I can't remember precisely what he said, but the jist of the
conversation is there and it's pretty much the way it happened. I
don;'t even know the format off th etop of my head, but he probabyl
did it right.

The format for a PAN is the same as for a Mayday. The book I have uses
NAAN IPPA as the reminder:

Name of station addresses
Aircraft callsign
Aircraft type
Nature of emergency

Intentions
Position (alitude, heading etc.)
Pilot qualifications (bit pointless if you ask me, but I guess it
might be useful to know you've got no Instrument rating)
Any other info

Pretty slim. I've never even used the Mayday and I've had several
emerencies and just declared an emergency and got everything I
needed. I think I'd ony use a Mayday to cut through heavy radio
traffic if it was neccesary.

As I understand it that's the primary reason for a standardised word,
that it enables you to cut through all the other traffic and everyone
else knows to shut up.


And a PAN just doesn't in most of the world.

Also, you're standard format is only after you have th e controller's
attention. He couldn't get that, that's the problem, and he wasted
minutes with a sick pax trying to push the correct format down this guys
throat. A Mayday or "I'm declaring an emergency" would have done that.
Most of the other sutff in that is pretty useless as its part of normal
comms anyway. What you need to do is simplay say "mayday and you're call
sign. the guy you're talking to already knows who he is and chances are
good you've forgotten anyway if you're that excited. Then you quickly
tell him what you're problem is and what you are going to do and what
you want from him and he will give it to you. There's no extra charge
for making a Mayday call as opposed to a Pan. I did a BA course years
ago and they were advocating downgrading your mayday to a Pan in the
case of, say, an engine fire. Once you have the fire out, you're not in
a Mayday situation anymore since the airplane is not in any immediate
danger. Screw that. If I've had an engine fire and I think it's out I'm
still going to want to put the airplane down ASAP and I'm not going to
be too concerned with ATC's problems. They're big boys and can apportion
attention between my airplane and the others in the area.
I wouldn't be thanked at the subsequent inquiry for not taking advantage
of everything at my disposal.


Bertie