Flight Training - May 2012 - 17

BY ROD MACHADO

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Dear Rod: Here’s my confession. I’m absolutely scared to death of talking on the radio. All of my private pilot flight training to date (30.4 hours) has been done at a nontowered airport. My instructor insists that I obtain training at an airport with a control tower. Any suggestions would be welcome. Ms. B. Greetings Ms. B: Many new pilots share your concern (and pulse rate). There are three immediate things you can do for yourself. You can purchase Bob Gardner’s excellent book Say Again, Please and/or purchase his communications training software with the same name from ASA. You can also purchase the Comm1 VFR Radio Simulator. You can also take the Air Safety Institute’s Say It Right: Mastering Radio

Communication online course. Any or all of these will help you with your radio anxiety. The next thing you can do is to practice listening to ATC. We can actually learn to listen 10 times faster than the average person speaks with a 40-percent distortion of the transmission (that’s probably what ATC sounds like to you). There are many Internet sites that offer live ATC communications and there’s even an iPhone app called LiveATC Air Radio that allows you to listen to live ATC communications. It usually takes about three to four hours of listening practice before you begin to feel more comfortable with radio communications. In regard to what you should say to ATC, the best way to learn this is to have your instructor write the correct verbiage for the most common communication

situations on note cards. When you need to communicate, pull out the appropriate card and read what it says. It should only take a few hours of actual in-airplane practice to eliminate your need for cards. But please don’t read your instructor’s personal notes on the card, either. The last thing ATC wants to hear you say is, “Say this when you want to taxi for takeoff,” or “Use this phrase when you are holding for departure.”
Rod Machado is a flight instructor, author, educator, and speaker. He has been a pilot since 1970 and a CFI since 1973. rodmachado.com). Visit his blog (www.

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Flight Training - May 2012

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