Class D Sucks

Thanks, I'll be working out of CMI and only live a few miles from the field.
I can pick up all the transmissions from home, I'll have to give it a
listen.

Also thanks for breaking it down, seems so much more involved than just
managing the aircraft.Good it'll come in little chucks.



"Jose" wrote in message
m...
So are there good reference material to learn [ATCspeak], I'm thinking
I'm going
to have enough fun watching my air speed, rate of descent, keeping on
the
center line, slipping and crabbing, etc. And I'm going to choke when I
hear
the ATC going on like that. I'd like to get a head start on knowing what
to
expect and what it means.

As a student pilot there's a lot you won't have to worry about (IFR
clearances, vectors and altitude assignments, stuff like that) and the
stuff you do need you'll get to gradually (flight following for
example does involve vectors and altitudes). One of the best things
you can do is to take a tape recorder out to the field and record a
few hours (or have a friend record a few hours) of the chatter on the
control tower frequency (I assume you'll be training at a tower
airport, since you're posting in the Class D thread) and the ground
frequency. Listen to ground tower first. Aircraft contact the tower
inbound asking for landing clearance, and outbound when they reach the
runway and are ready to take off. You'll hear "left traffic", "right
traffic", "straight in", "right base"... over and over. They refer to
the path an airplane flies when ready to land (essentially it flies
parallel to the runway and makes a u-turn - left traffic means make
the turns to the left... etc).

Then listen to ground for a while. Most of the chatter there concerns
getting to the runway (which taxiways to take, sometimes which runways
to use). They use the phonetic alphabet (ABC... is Alpha Bravo
Charlie...) to name taxiways and such; you'll get used to it. You'll
also hear IFR clerances. Don't worry about them for now. ("Victor
Tango Charlie is cleared to Santa Rosa via radar vectors to Awnie,
Victor 12, Victor 3, Madison, direct. Maintain three thousand, expect
five in ten...")

Listen to the ATIS for a bit too. That's easy, it keeps repeating.
It's just weather and runway in use, mostly.

Once you take your first or second lesson, so much more will be clear
because you'll actually be =doing= stuff and you'll have an instructor
to ask questions of.

There are books and such about good ATC communications; and the AIM is
an essential handbook for pilots anyway (it has a chapter on it). I
don't have any reccomendations (so why am I posting?) on specific
books; see what your library has, drop in on the flight school and
thumb through some of their books.

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
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.