For those who don’t fly, have you ever listened to pilots talking to Air Traffic Control on the radio? If you have, you know it sounds like gibberish. You can listen to it at http://www.liveatc.net
Flying out of a controlled airport intimidated me for sure. I’m not sure if I can understand that gibberish. A few lessons in and I STILL had no clue what they are saying. When my instructor said next lesson I would be working the radio, I was prepared to sound like an idiot. Not only would I do the radio but the pre-flight and then be ready for power on and power off stalls and ground reference maneuvers! That’s a lot of work. So obviously, radio work slipped out of my mind and I forgot to study. Oops. No excuse though and I felt extremely guilty. So you bet your butt I went home that night and memorized all the radio frequencies and the “radio script” for the lesson the next day.
The lesson I forgot to study for was the Touch and Go lesson so having to work landings and the pattern for the first time I was overwhelmed enough without the radio work, so my instructor took over most of it. I just had to listen more and say when she should call them. I understood some of it but definitely not enough to do it on my own.
The next day, I was feeling more prepared. I called them up before taxing to the runway and my instructor prepped me for what they would probably say back so I wouldn’t have to worry about catching it the first time. I probably sounded only a bit like an idiot because I wasn’t sure if I needed to repeat “Cessna” again with the last 3 digits of the tail number when confirming what to do.
I talked to ATC again before taking off and it wasn’t a catastrophe! The only thing I didn’t talk to them was getting a squawk number when in the practice space. Heading back is when I finally felt confident. I called them “Republic Tower, Cessna ####, at Twinspan Bridge with information kilo,” I don’t remember exactly what they said back to me but I confirmed my instructions “Straight in to 32, ###” BAM! I felt like a boss.
My hope is that my next lesson I can do all the radio work. Out of the two lessons I had getting a handle on the radio work is the thing I did the best and didn’t get me down on the other problems I had with maneuvers and landings. There are still a lot of things to learn so getting on this early will make me feel better.
You know what worked for me? This might sound silly, but when I pull out of my driveway in the morning, I do “radio calls” on the way to work. Really the name of the game is building the muscle memory in your brain – getting it used to having those thoughts. And you really can’t do that in 1 hour a week or month or whatever.
“Sydney tower, Rover 42-Romeo, received (charlie), request engine start for departure to work”
“Parramatta traffic, Rover 42-Romeo, approx 3 nautical miles east of Windsor road, inbound, joining downwind at James Ruse drive”….. and so on.
Of course if you take a bus/train you might have to do it under your breath or just think it through. Practice the phonetic alphabet by reading back licence plates you see. Really it all boils down to – who are you addressing, who you are, what are your intentions/request, and any other pertinent info.
Surprisingly effective! And just remember, honestly everyone is in the same boat and if you listen long enough, you will find quite a range of techniques in this area, but as long as you get the main requirements out, it is not rocket science. And don’t “under-communicate” just because you want to sound all “pilot like”… we all need to know where you are and what you are doing! 🙂
enjoy the journey, keep up the great work!
Good idea. It is a little tougher since I take public transportation everywhere. I’ve been working on the phonetic alphabet for awhile now just for fun but have been buckling down to get it second nature. It helps at work I call cues with letters so I just say what the letter is first in my head before calling it out.
I’ll try under my breath on the subway though. I realize I can’t just completely memorize the script since I’ll be actually be INTERACTING with someone. They make that part difficult! Thanks for the advice and reading!
Believe it or not, Flight Simulator X helped get me past radio communication blocks. It wasn’t until I started instrument training that I had to talk to controllers regularly so sitting at home doing practice approaches and verbalizing what I need to be saying to the controller helped a lot. That’s a cheaper (but not as fun) way to get past the mental blocks when speaking to controllers.
Ken
I didn’t even think about Flight Simulator, we have it at home. Thanks for that idea. I believe that’ll help me to understand what I need to be saying when. I’m all for the cheaper way even if it isn’t as fun.