Booty Calls, ATC and "You know, it's all recorded"

Just press the damn ident button! No response over the radio is required!

Worse for me on our end is when a new controller tells a military pilot "Push Center/Approach/Tower on 345.67." I'm just waiting for the pilot to say "Push 11" and watch heads explode.
 
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Well. Better than whatever discharge it was that "smelled like onions but tastes like chocolate".
 
Even worse is pressing the button without being asked first. That's just not how radar identification works for ATC.

Yup. when requested by ATC, just push the button as a response. Works just fine. :)

Worse for me on our end is when a new controller tells a military pilot "Push Center/Approach/Tower on 345.67." I'm just waiting for the pilot to say "Push 11" and watch heads explode.

Thats common for jets that didn't have an interflight radio for the flight, and the freq given was a preset. Although good practice is to readback the given freq for ATC response, then add on the end the push-to-preset for the wingman.
 
Wow. Just… Wow. Ok.

Sometimes my mouth is loaded and I can't control what comes out of it. I might have said the same thing.

ATC has NO REASON to ask why you're changing your destination and it's really none of their business unless you declare.

I was VFR at 17,500 in my Viking and I must have had too much fiber the day before. I was never going to make Plainview Texas non stop from Chino. My hands were shaking the pressure was so great.

Me: Center 01B is diverting to (somewhere) NM out of 17,500.
Center: 01B say reason for diverting. <Come-on, I'm VFR!>
Me: I'm hoping that airport has a bush.
Center: Say again.
Me: I hoping that airport has a bush, a really big bush.
Center: Say again.
Me: <Kind of annoyed> I need to use their crapper.
Center: Oh, roger.

When I got to the FBO the men's room was occupied so I used the woman's room much to the horror of the young girl at the desk. After what I did in there I'll NEVER return to that airport again. They may have issued a NOTAM for the next few days.
 
Even worse is pressing the button without being asked first. That's just not how radar identification works for ATC.
Just curious. I fly out of LGB. Every clearance starts with fly runway heading to 1500ft, left turn 270 or 180. About 4-500ft we get switched to SoCal. Every time we get the request to ident. For last few years or so, once we get the hand off to SoCal we switch freq's and ident at the same time. We make contact and they come back with Lear NXXX radar contact, climb and maintain X,XXX. No one has ever said a word. If we do forget to ident, we'll get asked to. Do the controllers really hate that? It seems to lessen their workload in some pretty busy airspace as there's one less radio call they have to make.
 
Even worse is pressing the button without being asked first. That's just not how radar identification works for ATC.

So true. If you preemptively press the ID, the controller then has to wait for the flash to stop and then instruct you to do it again to be legal. Used to drive me nuts.
 
Do the controllers really hate that? It seems to lessen their workload in some pretty busy airspace as there's one less radio call they have to make.

Yes, don't indent until you're asked too.

Look up the ways ATC can radar ID an aircraft.
 
Yup. when requested by ATC, just push the button as a response. Works just fine. :)



Thats common for jets that didn't have an interflight radio for the flight, and the freq given was a preset. Although good practice is to readback the given freq for ATC response, then add on the end the push-to-preset for the wingman.

I get it, but the list of aircraft with presets probably doesn't include KC-135s, Beechjets, Lears, Nightengales etc etc. At a certain point you wonder if they actually know what the thing they say means.
 
So true. If you preemptively press the ID, the controller then has to wait for the flash to stop and then instruct you to do it again to be legal. Used to drive me nuts.
Again, I've never been asked to re-ident. Not once. In more than 2-3 years of doing it. It is the only place I do it though.
 
I get it, but the list of aircraft with presets probably doesn't include KC-135s, Beechjets, Lears, Nightengales etc etc. At a certain point you wonder if they actually know what the thing they say means.

That's why I say that best practice for the pilot is to repeat the actual freq back to ATC, then follow with the preset for the wingman.

What's even funnier is when civil ATC issues the freq change by preset to the appropriate aircraft. :)
 
At night, is only the main runway open there?
As far as I remember yes. Some times it's NOTAM'd closed and 25L is in use over night. There are some pretty strict noise abatement rules over night though. We have to be there by 2300 and can't take off until 0600. And we're in a stage four certified Lear 45.
 
Sometimes my mouth is loaded and I can't control what comes out of it. I might have said the same thing.

ATC has NO REASON to ask why you're changing your destination and it's really none of their business unless you declare.

.
They must have a mandate, because they always ask, almost always with the same phraseology.
 
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