Calls on the radio

"Pascal" wrote in message
...
I apologize, it was "A/FD" that I meant.

The purpose of my question was actually more based on something that
happened to me the other day.
I should have given a better example

Boy, I'll say. Seems like we all pretty much figured you were asking
about towered airports.

[...]
If the AWOS doesn't work ( it has happened at that airport ), how would I
figure out that I should call "Bedford traffic" instead of "Grissom
traffic". There's usually noone at the Unicom on the ground to answer
calls.

Especially for uncontrolled airports, there really is no good answer. At
least when there's a tower to address, you can ask them what they'd like to
be called. But there are no rules for non-towered airports. Furthermore,
just as with controlled airports, an uncontrolled airport may have more than
one name. For example, one uncontrolled airport I frequent around here goes
by "Pierce County Airport" as well as "Thun Field". Traffic is almost
always called out as "Pierce County" but one needs to be alert for either
that or "Thun" (but not, oddly enough , "Puyallup"...the municipality that
the airport serves).

In the case of your Grissom airport, I think that for long-term operational
knowledge, you just listen to what's going on. But even though using
"Grissom" would turn out to be the wrong guess, it's not a bad guess and
people operating in the vicinity ought to know that "Grissom" is the same as
"Bedford".

Of course, all of this is not a big deal and choosing one or the other
from the airport directory shouldn't make much difference usually but I
was just wondering how I could do the thing right at first.

Well, I think we've answered it for controlled airports. For uncontrolled,
I think that there just is not any one true answer. For any rule you might
think of, other than simply listening to hear what is the local standard,
there are going to be exceptions. I think it's best to start with the
information from the A/FD (airport name, specifically) and then modify as
needed once you hear what the other pilots in the area use. If you use the
airport name, they will still know what you're talking about.

Based on the multiple posts on this thread there doesn't seem to really be
a rule of thumb, so I guess and will try to choose the easier one to
pronounce until I hear something different from somone else.

Heh...I guess that's one way to make the choice. Just as always using
the airport name, or always using the municipality, will not cause any
serious problems, I think you'll be just fine using the name that's easiest
to pronounce.

Pete