Saying 2.5 instead of 2500, etc?
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James331
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James331
I don't need to sound like a pilot, I also don't care to wear epaulets, fact of the matter is I AM a pilot lol I care about getting and giving the info even in busy airspace quick.
Also if you fly enough you'll notice that ATC will address and handle some traffic differently based on how they sound on the radio, heck sometimes you can even hear it in the controllers tone.
So yeah, my semi formal radio work seems to work very well for me with ATC as well as my bi yearly check rides.
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midlifeflyer
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You betcha. If you don't know how, you can't when needed. It's kind of like the Star Trek "Mirror, Mirror" episode when an evil duplicate of Kirk and some other crew gets switched. Later asked by Kirk how Spock recognized them for what they were, he says, "It was far easier for you as civilized man to act as barbarians, than for them as barbarians to act like civilized men."
Example of your environment comment: I was at my old, busy home base on a beautiful Saturday. Everyone was flying. Probably 3/4 of the combined fleets of the 4-5 flight schools were in the air and transients were coming from miles around asking for touch & goes. The radio chatter was constant.
"Umm... Centennial Tower, This is Skyhawk ####. We're about, um, 7 miles to the west of the airport....," although quite proper, got a "Aircraft calling Centennial Tower. Remain clear of Class Delta. Try us again in a half hour" as soon as they got it all out.
"Tower. Skyhawk ####. 7 west. Landing. Kilo," although a bit more clipped than standard, got pattern entry instructions for landing.
"Tower. Skyhawk ####. 7 west. Landing. Kilo," although a bit more clipped than standard, got pattern entry instructions for landing.
Kritchlow
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I think those are examples of poor judgement more than poor communication.
Larry in TN
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To avoid any confusion, you quoted my link to the Avianca accident then showed text from the Flying Tiger's accident.
The Avianca accident highlights the miscommunication caused when the crew failed to use the proper phraseology to describe the urgency of the fuel situation (Pan-pan) and later their emergency fuel situation (Mayday).
The Flying Tiger's accident was confusion with an altitude assignment due to the use of non-standard phraseology "two four zero zero" vs. "two-thousand, four-hundred" and a similarly poor phraseology in the read-back.
The point here is not that everyone should always use perfect phraseology. The point is that everyone should TRY to use standard phraseology whenever such phraseology applicable to the situation exists. What we see in these threads, however, is people advocating the use of non-standard phraseology which is intentional noncompliance.
FastEddieB
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Fast Eddie B
Oops! Fixed.
I don't need to sound like a pilot, I am one? That doesn't make a lot of sense.
James331
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Sure it does, I'm simply not concerned if I don't sound like a "real pilot" in the opinion of some 172 driver who hears me talking to ATC on the radio one day.
Don't get me wrong. I learned at a class D. When I take off heading east and switch to departure, do I say "One thousand TREE hundred for TREE thousand FIFE hundred"? No. I'm not an absolutist. But I am someone who thinks that we as pilots should strive to do everything to the best of our abilities, and like a good preflight, keeping the ball centered, using the correct speed on approach, etc., I think communication is important.We absolutely agree communication is vital (even when reading posts). But I guess you are going to repeatedly insist that anyone who doesn't buy into your absolutist view that rote standard phraseology rather than understanding the concepts is the most important thing, cannot possibly think communication is important. So be it.
BTW, here's your opposite example.
I was doing a C172 checkout for a pilot. It was a towered airport with three runways. Two parallel N-S runways and an E-W runway. The winds were about 300 at 15G20. We were cleared to land to the north. The pilot said to me, "You may have to help me on this one. It's been a while." Seeing a good communications teaching moment, instead of doing the crosswind landing with him, I replies, "Or, you can ask for Runway 28." He looked at me like I had two heads. "I never even thought of doing that!" Followed by, "Tower, we'd like 28." Despite the lack of an "unable" or some standard phraseology, we were cleared to land on 28.
You'd argue that it was the pilot's lack of understanding of standard communications phraseology which necessitated my prompting. If he only knew the word "unable," he wold have thought of it himself. I'd argue not knowing standard phraseology was not an issue for this 20,000+ hour retired airline pilot.
Regarding accidents, how many times have you listened to an ATC tape of a GA accident and the guy sounds like he has no idea what's going on? Pretty often. What I don't get is, why should we assume the pilot is any better in any other area of aviation than he is on the radio? I certainly don't.
Also, think about traveling. Somewhat related, no? Around here there are some local flavors in common ATC interactions. Like when you land at the class C, if they tell you, "taxi to XYZ, remain this frequency," the standard comeback is "ground with you". And I get it that elsewhere it's the same. But when you're traveling and flying outside of your usual haunts, it's best to use standard phraseology. The idea is that it's common and everyone understands it.
And how many people waste radio time because people don't have the first clue about communications? How many times have you heard a guy who repeats back absolutely everything because they don't know when to say "roger" or "wilco"?
I find this stuff important. I find it important to try and do my best in all aspects of my flying. And I find it interesting that whenever this topic comes up, with 80 people on a thread, the one who says proper radio work is important is always the clown. Imagine if this were a thread on landings. "Proper speed? Ah who cares, +/- 20 knots, what's the big deal! Why are you such an absolutist?!" Or, "So he bounced it and came down on the nose wheel three times, who cares? He got it down, stop being so judgmental".
I don't get it. But either I'm in the minority or I'm the only one dumb enough to argue this side.
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Well if a student sounded better than me I'd be embarrassed. But that's just me.
That's not it at all. It has nothing to do with how people think you sound, but rather with communicating effectively and efficiently. My guess is they came up with the pilot-controller glossary for a reason.
midlifeflyer
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I had a student who sounded much better than me. Just had the deep, resonant, movie star pilot voice. And since I was his instructor and we flew out of one of the busiest Class Ds in the country, his use of concise, clear, standard phraseology was immaculate.
According to the DPE who did his private checkride, he flew better than me too.
I wasn't embarrassed. I was flattered.
And as his instructor, did you find any value in that? Or if he'd been sloppy and just made it up as he went along, would that have been fine as well?
midlifeflyer
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Of course it would not have been fine. I actually use to whack him in the back of the head when "with you" started creeping in because he heard others using it. If you thought I ever said it wasn't important, I guess your communication skills need a little work.
Funny, based on all your other responses, choosing to completely misunderstand what I have been saying, despite my repeatedly saying you were, I was expecting this one. I write that good communication is "absolutely vital." You manage to read, "I don't care about proper communications." As I said before, the only thing I disagree with is your absolutist zero tolerance viewpoint.
Where did I say you said it wasn't important? I was pointing out that you clearly do think it's important. And where did I say I was an absolutist with zero tolerance? I'm probably the crappiest pilot on here, and I may well be the worst on the radio, too. All I said is that I strive to do the best I can, and I think others should as well. And here you're essentially agreeing with me and at the same time basically calling me a complete clown.
Okay.
And he obviously didn't get that good on the radio on his own. He had an instructor who cared and placed value on that aspect of aviation. I'm sure it's no coincidence that he was an excellent pilot either.
And yet there are instructors on this thread who clearly don't care that much about proper communication. And we wonder why we produce so many pilots afraid of ATC!
Again, sorry for being such a complete joke. I am deserving of ridicule.
James331
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I'd wager it's the other way around.
Non of my guys were afraid of talking on the radio.
I'd wager people who go as far as to even have the students study pre canned lines for radio communication, AIM phraseology, and buy ATC audio trainer programs are probably much more nervous about saying the wrong thing.
It's like toilet training a kid at gun point lol
Vs, just getting it from osmosis, knowing you really can't say something "wrong" on the radio for the most part, you can be a little long winded or say something that's not super clear, but then ATC or whom ever knock that ball back in your court and ask what you meant, really by the time you're doing your last cross country or so, you should be GTG.
midlifeflyer
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It came through pretty clearly in all of your posts.
I don't think you are a clown. Just someone who doesn't accept the validity of minor aviation slang variations of standard communications.
midlifeflyer
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You see, here's the thing - I don't think that's true. We've had both CFIs and ATC controllers saying they are not bothered by some of the nonstandard but very common and very well-understood slang pilots use, not that they don't care about proper communication.
FastEddieB
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Fast Eddie B
I think this might be a good time to bring up this form of argument which I think is being utilized here:
“A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".
Carry on.
“A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".
Carry on.
Palmpilot
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Reminds me of a bassoonist I played with for years in a couple of part-time professional orchestras. One of her students went on to play in The Cleveland Orchestra. It was obviously a source of great pride to her, in spite of the fact that he played in one of the top orchestras in the country and she didn't.
Palmpilot
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Me neither, but lately I noticed that I've been saying "kay-beck." Not sure why, but it confused the heck out of a new fuel truck driver when I tried to tell him I was parked in space Q-15. As soon as I pronounced it "kwe-beck" he understood what I was saying.
Probably best not to make assumptions either way. That having been said, during my two years of exercising sport pilot privileges, I did try to fly those LSAs to commercial standards, and communicate clearly and concisely, while secretly hoping that people would guess that I wasn't really a sport pilot.
For me, the standard comeback is to acknowledge with my call sign (although I may read back the route if they specify one).
That has become so common around here that I have been assuming people were being taught to do it. Conciseness has sure gone out the window at my home field. My primary instructor would have been horrified.
Palmpilot
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Another possibility is "the fallacy of the excluded middle."
This is exactly what I'm talking about. But apparently we're Nazis:
So if you want to sound like a hobby pilot (not to mention be a Nazi, use proper communication! Excellent philosophy for an instructor.
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Yes, here is some very clear absolutism from my posts:
I'll save any additional comment, it's obviously not worth the time.
midlifeflyer
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I'm sorry, but when I came across this video, I couldn't resist posting this. Unfortunately, the POA software does not recognize the part of the url which starts it at a certain point. The relevant nonstandard communication is 6 minutes, 7 seconds in. This link will go to YouTube at the right spot.
MD11Pilot
Line Up and Wait
Heard this many times....climb and maintain or descend and maintain
FL 100 or 200 or 300 not 10K, 20 K or 30 K
What do you guys recommend for calling traffic you see on the GPS via ADSB?
It is NOT TCAS
FL 100 or 200 or 300 not 10K, 20 K or 30 K
What do you guys recommend for calling traffic you see on the GPS via ADSB?
It is NOT TCAS
Clip4
Final Approach
You should say 2 thousand five hundred.
Kritchlow
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I don’t think “fife” goes back as many moons as you may think.
Kritchlow
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No clue about the ADSB aspect, but as you know most here fly within the US. There is no FL 100 here. But I’m certain you know that as well.
midlifeflyer
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The controllers her can confirm or refute this, but from discussions with controllers, I don't think it matters. It's pretty much irrelevant. When ATC is calling out traffic, they want to know you have visual contact and can maintain visual separation. Seeing it through the window, not on a screen.
I might say, "negative contact, but I have him on ADS-B" on the theory might be helpful, but I'm not so sure it is.
FlySince9
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mscard88
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It's not. You have to have the traffic visually.
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Velocity173
I don’t even tell ATC when I see the aircraft on TAS. They can’t use that call for any benefit on their end, so it’s a useless reply. If I don’t see the aircraft visually, regardless of what I see in the cockpit, i just reply with “negative contact.”
I see a future when ADS-B will be used as an approved pilot separation tool and ATC will only intervene to avoid a collision. Until that happens, ATC is required to apply separation on their displays and requiresl “out-the-window” visual separation.
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Larry in TN
En-Route
"Flight level one/two/three/four-hundred" is standard phraseology is some countries, most notably the U.K. Not in the U.S., of course (even if you say it with a British accent).
"Negative contact" Same as traffic you see on TCAS.
MD11Pilot
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Larry
You’re correct.
In Europe they use the lowest altitude to start the transition level going up and transition altitude going down. Generally in Germany it was 7000 feet but I have had it as low as 4000. In Europe they say FL 100/200/300.
I like having a standard altitude that we use here FL 180
As far as “fish finder”, I personally think it is ok but some of the first posts has guys thinking that was inappropriate?
You’re correct.
In Europe they use the lowest altitude to start the transition level going up and transition altitude going down. Generally in Germany it was 7000 feet but I have had it as low as 4000. In Europe they say FL 100/200/300.
I like having a standard altitude that we use here FL 180
As far as “fish finder”, I personally think it is ok but some of the first posts has guys thinking that was inappropriate?
Kritchlow
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Not sure... has the FAA always followed ICAO to the letter?