Being an air traffic controller...

A150K said:
I never understood asking for airport advisories at an airport with an ASOS/AWOS...There is one field in my area (GNT) where the airport manager will give them as soon as you make your initial call up if he's in his office, but that's because he's old school and the definition of a badass
(one of those guys that every pilot within a 100nm radius knows).
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.....because I want to know what the "active" is.........:D
 
Autothrust Blue said:
just as I hear "Sorry, Air Carrier 123, I was on the landline" frequently.)
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I never say that, I don't know why but for some reason that phrase bugs me. If I'm on the line I hear the pilot over the speaker and 99% of the time I'll catch the callsign if not the whole transmission and ask them to just say again.
 
Maurus said:
Saying sugah instead of the proper phonetic has always erked me for some reason. Problem is that one guy at the airport I flight instructed out of said it all the time.
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When I flew out of BWI, I'd always run into a King Air "five-seven sugar charlie" on the frequency. He basically became my Lex Luthor. :bandit:

Ask boondr. He was there.
 
Does anybody else get seriously annoyed when people start each and every transmission with, "ANNNND 1325 holding short" etc?
 
dasleben said:
Though, without fail, the other guy has his speaker turned way up and doesn't seem to notice or care about the jackassery on the freq. :)
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I gotta pick on Cactus here.

For some reason, almost every crossing, it's "Cactus XXXXX to Cactus YYYYY ya 'on freq?"

"What time y'all landing?"

"(name) on board?"

"Yeah, tell him (name) say hi"

**deselect**

**Angry Birds volume UP**
 
Doug Taylor said:
I gotta pick on Cactus here.

For some reason, almost every crossing, it's "Cactus XXXXX to Cactus YYYYY ya 'on freq?"

"What time y'all landing?"

"(name) on board?"

"Yeah, tell him (name) say hi"

**deselect**

**Angry Birds volume UP**
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My favorite conversation overheard on 123.45:

Delta: "Hey aircraft at 40W, how's your ride?"
Aircraft: "Pretty good here at 10,000!"
Delta: "Oh...well watch out for sharks!"

:)
 
Ha!

On the same tone I had to tell a Continental one night his options on the ocean were 400 or 290...

Without missing a beat he said
"Well we'd take 290 but we didn't bring enough oars to row across, so we will take 400"
 
Two comm problems over this past weekend:

My wife and I were flying the combat 172 into an unfamiliar uncontrolled airport last Saturday, and I was making the requisite radio calls on CTAF at 10 miles, two miles, overhead, downwind, base, final and short final (yep, I'm a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy going into unfamiliar rural strips). Nothing came back on the radio. Winds were about 15 knots straight down RWY 22, and as I made the short final callout, I noticed an Ag Cat on short final RWY 04. We saw each other at the same time and both pulled up and to the right. I climbed to re-enter the pattern, but apparently he simply made a tight 360, landed downwind on RWY 04 and tucked it behind a hangar before we set up on final again. I'm a short old guy, but I was ready to take a swing at that knucklehead if I found him. NORDO, no lights and downwind.

Later that afternoon as we neared SAF in hot, bumpy haze, we tuned ATIS. It sounded like the tower had been stormed by a bunch of guys on 'ludes: "We don't have radar and can't see too well in this haze, so y'all please turn on your lights so we can see you a little better." Picking up our departure clearance two days later was even worse: No squawk code or departure frequency, just "Cleared to xxx, cross the Santa Fe VOR (5 nm away) at 10,000, and Center will take you from there." Why he thought that a C-172 could climb 3,652' in 5 nm from an airport with 9,000' DA is beyond me, but we gave it our best.
 
tomokc said:
Two comm problems over this past weekend:

My wife and I were flying the combat 172 into an unfamiliar uncontrolled airport last Saturday, and I was making the requisite radio calls on CTAF at 10 miles, two miles, overhead, downwind, base, final and short final (yep, I'm a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy going into unfamiliar rural strips). Nothing came back on the radio. Winds were about 15 knots straight down RWY 22, and as I made the short final callout, I noticed an Ag Cat on short final RWY 04. We saw each other at the same time and both pulled up and to the right. I climbed to re-enter the pattern, but apparently he simply made a tight 360, landed downwind on RWY 04 and tucked it behind a hangar before we set up on final again. I'm a short old guy, but I was ready to take a swing at that knucklehead if I found him. NORDO, no lights and downwind.
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It's not worth getting upset about because many cropduster don't even have radios.
 
canadian_atc said:
The stress of this job is something we can't explain to those who have never done it... I dont think about smashing planes together, but it's still stressful, in an underlying cumulative sort of way.

Most of us have our ways of handling it, but it's hard to explain.
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I think being in the plane while a "newbie" is trying to vector us into each other more than covers the experience. Again, stressful job, but not nearly as stressful as being the one who almost dies!
 
KLB said:
It's not worth getting upset about because many cropduster don't even have radios.
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Understood, but safe operations without a radio necessitates doing other things to make your presence and intentions known. He was operating w/o strobes, landing lights, flying no traffic pattern at all, landing downwind, and clearly not watching for other aircraft in the pattern. If his goal was to intentionally create a hazard to other aircraft, he couldn't have done a better job.
 
tomokc said:
Two comm problems over this past weekend:

My wife and I were flying the combat 172 into an unfamiliar uncontrolled airport last Saturday, and I was making the requisite radio calls on CTAF at 10 miles, two miles, overhead, downwind, base, final and short final (yep, I'm a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy going into unfamiliar rural strips). Nothing came back on the radio. Winds were about 15 knots straight down RWY 22, and as I made the short final callout, I noticed an Ag Cat on short final RWY 04. We saw each other at the same time and both pulled up and to the right. I climbed to re-enter the pattern, but apparently he simply made a tight 360, landed downwind on RWY 04 and tucked it behind a hangar before we set up on final again. I'm a short old guy, but I was ready to take a swing at that knucklehead if I found him. NORDO, no lights and downwind.

Later that afternoon as we neared SAF in hot, bumpy haze, we tuned ATIS. It sounded like the tower had been stormed by a bunch of guys on 'ludes: "We don't have radar and can't see too well in this haze, so y'all please turn on your lights so we can see you a little better." Picking up our departure clearance two days later was even worse: No squawk code or departure frequency, just "Cleared to xxx, cross the Santa Fe VOR (5 nm away) at 10,000, and Center will take you from there." Why he thought that a C-172 could climb 3,652' in 5 nm from an airport with 9,000' DA is beyond me, but we gave it our best.
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Was the uncontrolled field SKX? As for SAF, I'm based there...it depends which controller you get. I'll leave it at that ( by chance was it the guy with the high pitch voice or the senile old dude? They both tend to ramble on the ATIS). That's an odd clearance. What did you file? There is an ODP that you do not have to be cleared for (SAF VORTAC, Climb in published hold to MEA), you can do it just as long as you didn't get cleared for a SID. Even then, It's your responsibility to make sure you can fly the clearance before you accept it. Many controller do not understand things like performance and aircraft capabilities.
 
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