Class D Sucks

"Nimoy Pugh" wrote in message
...
Ha, you got it (silly spell checker, it should know what I mean).

So are there good reference material to learn that, 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.


Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf
Hotel India Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November
Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform
Victor Whiskey X-ray Yankee Zulu


Knowing the alphabet is a very good place to start. Copy this part of this
post, and keep a shortcut on your desktop, and every time you can't remember
a letter real quick, go through the whole thing again.
--
Jim in NC

Nimoy Pugh wrote:

Hmmm, fingers not typing what I'm thinking, "I can make more since out of a
square dance call"

What you just typed doesn't make sense.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

Try this website:

http://www.liveatc.net

you can listen in to ATC from a lot of different airports around the US
and the rest of the world.

Watch out for some of the B and C class feeds however, since you will
be getting the feed from a scanner that is constantly looking for
chatter on up to 10 different frequencies.
For the smaller fields, however, you can get a pretty good idea.

Chris

Try this website:

http://www.liveatc.net

you can listen in to ATC from a lot of different airports around the US
and the rest of the world.

Watch out for some of the B and C class feeds however, since you will
be getting the feed from a scanner that is constantly looking for
chatter on up to 10 different frequencies.
For the smaller fields, however, you can get a pretty good idea.

Chris

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.

Jose wrote:

The hard
part is when transmitting, to know what to say before you key the
mike.

Not always. On my first or second solo XC, one airport along the way was a
class C. I contacted departure outbound, of course, and did what I thought
was my usual call-up. I must have missed something, because he asked me
for my "altitude departing".

I'd never heard that before! I interpreted it to mean the altitude at which
I planned to depart the class C. An interesting conversation followed
laugh.

- Andrew

P.S. It occurs to me that some of my best worst aviation
stories come from my first two solo XC flights. I'm
not exactly sure what this means, given that these are
a number of years back now.

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.

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 15:38:33 -0500, Andrew Gideon
wrote:

Jose wrote:

The hard
part is when transmitting, to know what to say before you key the
mike.

Not always. On my first or second solo XC, one airport along the way was a
class C. I contacted departure outbound, of course, and did what I thought
was my usual call-up. I must have missed something, because he asked me
for my "altitude departing".

Normally, when you are doing your solo flight during training, you
will tell ATC that you are "solo" or something like that. They wil
know you might need more help than normal.

I found a portable intercom that I carry around in the plane with an
audio out and a digital voice recorder is a fantastic investment.
Recording your own flights and reviewing them post flight is a good
tool. It also can help the flight instructor as well. You can hear the
calls you missed or where unclear about in a low work load environment
after the fact and honestly evaluate your performance. A portable T/RX
(or scanner) in conjunction with the comm and recorder also works
well. You can get hours of radio trainning tapes (CD's) for pennys.

Jon Wanzer
CP ASEL / IA
AGI IGI (CFI / CFII soon-to-be)
San Jose,CA