 Hello and welcome, everyone. Most of you, in fact, I'm sure all of you know Bruce Landsberg as the Executive Director of AOPA's Air Safety Foundation. But maybe something you don't know about him very well is that Bruce describes himself as a long time and a long term student. And when we talked about this introduction, what happened is we went through his certificates and that sort of thing. But what came out was, here is a person who is dedicated, enthusiastic, and constantly interested in creating better pilot education. Please welcome Bruce Landsberg. Welcome everybody. It feels like the price is right or some sort of game show here, but I'm glad to see all of you here. And we're going to talk about communications this morning. But first I'm going to make an unabashed plug for the AOPA's Air Safety Foundation website. Quick question now. How many of you have been to the website? Okay, we've got about half the hands up. The other half, I want you to go to the website by the time when you get back home from Sun and Fun. This is the address up here. You don't have to be an AOPA member, but we like it if you are. It doesn't cost anything. All of our free courses are online so you can take them at your leisure. We have a new course up here called SkySpotter and that has to do with pilot reports and we'll talk a little bit about that in a little bit. Okay, so effective communication. How do you measure communication? Anybody? No ideas. Yes, sir? Clarity. Clarity. All right. Anybody else? Response. I like to think that the message is received and understood. Sometimes there's a difference between those two. They got the message, but they didn't understand what it was. It also helps us to increase our safety level and our confidence. If you've ever had a hard time communicating with a controller, hasn't it sort of increased your workload because you're going back and forth and you're not getting through to them or maybe they're not getting through to you, as the case may be? Here we have a situation. Obviously, the pilot had an idea that he wanted to get some fuel. The controller had a slightly different viewpoint. Was this an effective communication or a rhetorical point? Of course it wasn't. Marshal traffic, SNES-986, Bravo Charlie, we're at 4600, sorry, make that, 3,600 feet. We'll be landing on runway nine, heading down to 2,500 to fly over the field and then enter the downwind. That looks like we're on a left downwind here and we're 10 north. Anyone in the pattern there? Let us know. SNES-6, Bravo Charlie. I mean, Marshal traffic. I'm exhausted. I don't know about the rest of you, but as we like to say, nobody's ever completely worthless. They can always serve as a bad example. So that's what you have with this pilot. He's not trying to cause a problem here, but through difficulty, he's just not able to put it all together. So obviously, we want to be prepared before we talk. It increases your confidence. Did our friend here sound confident? No, not a bit. He was scared to death. Now there's two ways you can think about communication. Some people talk to think. We'll hear some of them on the radio. They're kind of formulating the words, but the thought process hasn't quite caught up to all of that. We would say that a better way to do it is to think first and then talk. Seems perfectly obvious. By the way, this approach to communications, people do communicate in different ways and in business, you will have some people who are talk to think. I fall into that category. And if I'm talking to a think-to-talk person, sometimes we don't get quite on the same wavelength. I'm talking to them and they're sitting there not doing anything. They're thinking. They're processing, but they're not doing anything. Just a thought for you to consider as you go into business. Now, I believe it was Benjamin Franklin that said that we have two ears and one mouth and they ought to be used in about that proportion. Traffic, 415 Charlie, upper on the 45 for 5, right traffic. Right of traffic, system 5 to tango, final 5. That was down clear, runway 5. Traffic, system 7-5, hotel is only 5 mile, 45 for runway 5, reject. Traffic, Skyhawk, 666, Somzho, California, 6.5 mile, 45 for right downwind of 5, Frederick. Frederick traffic, Ocopter 4-2 Uniform is turning left base, left side, 0-5 Frederick. Traffic, 415 Charlie, upper on the downwind for right traffic, runway 5. Yeah, pretty sad to guess. Anybody in the pattern at the moment have said it? We don't make this stuff up, folks. That's how it actually happens on a Saturday morning. Now, what could we learn from this? Two ears, one mouth. That last, as you could tell, the frequency is pretty congested. This guy is taking up some pretty valuable airtime. We've got a lot of airplanes moving around there and he wasn't paying attention. So, people like to hear themselves talk. This is absolutely the worst place to be doing it. Now, we talk a lot about expectation, alright? And sometimes we can be a little biased in things that we hear. So, here we have a circumstance with two parallel runways. We've got the FBO right down here and we're thinking that we're probably going to get runway 17 right. Now, that makes perfect sense to me and I would hope that it would make sense to you. But listen here. Baron 563 Lima, taxi to runway 17 left. Taxi to runway 17 right, Baron 563 Lima. Baron 563 Lima runway 17 right is no time closed for construction. Taxi to runway 17 left, that's 17 left via taxiways. Bravo and echo. Has anybody ever had a problem where they were expecting one thing and got something completely different? I've had it happen a time or two and you've got to be really careful with that because you can get yourself into, shall we say, an unexpected situation. Obviously, you've heard this one before. There are a bunch of people whose names end in I that allow us to do a lot of the things that we have to do. What has every flight instructor in the world told you in terms of how the priorities should be set? Aviate, navigate and that's the last thing that you should be doing. And if you think about how all of this works, if you don't communicate, what's the worst thing that could happen most likely? You might get a surprise. Well, surprises in flying aren't always good, but it's usually not the end of the world unless you collide with somebody. So we'll hold that one aside. That's fairly unusual. So you might get a surprise. Suppose you fail to navigate. What happens then? You'll go to some place that you haven't been before and you'll make new friends. So that's not all together bad either, assuming you have enough fuel to do that, which brings us to the last one. What happens if you fail to aviate? All kinds of bad things happen there. So that is the point of this little diatribe, even though we're talking about communications. The number one cause of accident problems is distractions. We talk about the accident chain and how the links get put together. It's because we weren't focusing on the main thing. So let's take a look at a few common errors that we might have. Ever heard somebody start a conversation before keying the microphone? And you missed some pretty important stuff. I see some heads nodding up and down. Here's another one of my favorites right here and say, well, we feel the need for speed. Sturgis traffic, 1-2-5, Echo Fox, 5 miles north, overfly the field of 2,500 Sturgis. Now that doesn't just happen on the pilot side. Anybody ever had a controller that had maybe a little too much coffee? Gave you a lot of information in a very short period of time. That's problematic. I was talking to a NACA group here a while back and I said, you know, we really like our communications, slow and chunky. And one of them said, oh, you must be talking about the flight attendants we have these days. And I said, I'm not touching that one with a 10-foot pole. I didn't say that. Okay, that was somebody else. I'm just quoting. How many times have you been droning along, kind of minding your own business, even though you're on the frequency and you missed the call? Or you heard somebody else get the call and they weren't getting. I was flying up in the New England sector near Boston last month and there was a GA pilot. It wasn't particularly bad weather, but we were all in class bravo. And this guy missed three calls and the controller is pretty busy. And finally he says, to 1 kilo, you really need to listen up because we're very busy here and I can't have you wandering off wherever you're going here. There was a long silence and then to 1 kilo said, Roger. And you could tell he had gotten the message. How many times have you had airplanes with similar call signs and heard or been one of the ones who took the clearance for the other airplane? Okay, that happens once in a while too and it can be really interesting as to what happens. Or somebody takes your clearance. You've been cleared down to 4,000 feet and the other guy says, why are you clearing me down to 4,000 feet? I said, 2,7,0. No, listen up. And while we're talking about call signs, when is it okay to abbreviate the call sign? Washington Center bonanza 7236 whiskey, 4,000. When should I start to abbreviate the call sign? After the controller abbreviates the call sign. If he comes back, 7236 whiskey, 3,000 milk altimeter 3025, I got to say 7236 whiskey. If he says 36 whiskey, then I'm good to go. Okay, how do we say some of these altitudes? Top one, 4.5, right? No. How about 4,500? No, wrong again. There's one correct way, 4,500. This next one is a little tougher. You won't often get up there in your Cessna 150 too often, but if you did, maybe in the updraft of a thunderstorm, what would you say then besides help? 1,010,500. The two altitudes that get messed up the most are 10,000 and 11,000. So good controllers and good pilots will put in the extra syllable there. So 1,010,500 or 1,010,000 if you're IFR is a very good way of doing it. Headings, you know how to say this one, right? 3,60. No. 3,60? No. 3,60. The last one for most of us, we won't see airspeeds like this and have the airplane still holding together. We might hear a lot of screaming in the background, but the correct pronunciation of this would be 250 knots. Details on how we want to do these things. The phonetic alphabet, Quebec or KBEC, which is it? KBEC, sure. Victor or Victor? Victor, believe it or not. Most pilots use the word niner even in normal conversation like, I'll meet you at niner o'clock. Sounds cool, you know? You don't hear too many of them say, well, I get off at five o'clock or I'll see you at three. The controllers will be using these kinds of communications because it cuts down on the miscommunication, if you will. It's okay. These are minor points. As far as the times that we get, I'm always confused about Zulu time. I'm always before, ahead or behind, but that's the time that ATC will always use. So if you know that's going to happen, you need to think about which time zone you're in and whether it's daylight time or standard time, write it on your clipboard so whatever they give you, then you've got it. Oh, one other thing. I put this in big yellow points. Annunciate. Have you ever talked to somebody on the radio who wasn't exactly clear in how they were speaking and I kind of slurred the words real quickly and it was hard enough with the radio not being very good anyway? It's very important to annunciate clearly. You parents, you know who you are, are working on your kids to say things correctly. It's good to use the king's English. Okay, so. How many times have you transmitted and not gotten any response whatsoever? I better see every hand in the room up, okay? If you hadn't, you're either an atrocious liar or you don't fly much. Squelch. What a wonderful term. When you were learning to fly, the instructor really explained to you about squelch. Huh? Can somebody tell me about squelch? What is it? Uh-huh. Nobody wants to talk about squelch. All right. Short course on squelch. Really simple and I'm going to teach you a little trick here on squelch. That's the knob that adjusts the sensitivity of the radio. If you have it adjusted too low, it's not sensitive enough. You won't hear anything even though the transmission site is directly below your airplane. What you want to do is to turn the knob until you hear a, and then you back it off just enough so that the background noise goes away. You've now adjusted the radio properly. Now, one of the things, if you fly a different airplane a lot, if you're a renter pilot or in a club airplane, you'll find people like to get in and they like to move things around. Guess what? It would sure be a good idea that we make sure that all the communications gear is set up the way you like it to have it. Now, a trick. We're talking about radio sensitivity. We're coming into a high-density airspace class bravo. We're landing at an airport. We really want to get the ATIS information. And guess what? We can't receive it because we're too far out and we know that when we get another 20 miles in, we're going to be handed off to approach control. They're going to want to know what the ATIS is and the frequency is going to get really, really busy. What you can do is to disable the squelch or turn the sensitivity up so that you get the background noise, but then you can hear the ATIS frequency and talking typically 20 to 30 miles farther out. Yeah, you got the background noise, but you can still hear what's going on. I use this constantly when I'm going into a busy area and it allows me to be heads up that much sooner. This would seem absolutely obvious, but I've gotten into an airplane, kind of fumbled around a little bit and then found out either somebody had turned the radio down. And the folks who designed the radios, they like to not put a marker on the knob as to where the audio is. It used to be they were painted in silver or white, but now it's just cool to be one color, black. And so I have no idea where that thing is set. Same way on my headset. I can have the radio cranked up all the way if I've got my headset turned down. The possibilities are endless. This one would seem also to be obvious. When you're dealing with 720 channels, is it possible to be a couple of decimal points off? Sure. Ever tuned to run frequency? Gave them your spiel and nobody was there? Oh, sure. And this one, this is one of my favorite, is it selected on the COM panel. Here's the COM panel and I like to call this the snake pit because there are so many buttons on it. Have you ever had a problem where you got into the airplane and nothing worked? Who's had that problem? Particularly if it's a rental aircraft or a club airplane and invariably the fool that was in you before was listening to the ball game, had the ADF cranked up and nothing else is working. So it's very important when you get in to get this all set up. Are we on COM 1 or are we on COM 2? It's very good the panel, it's designed by a PS Engineering. If I push this button here, I can monitor COM 2. I won't be transmitting on COM 2. Maybe I'm on ATC here and I'm going to push this one so I can listen to the ADIS after disabling the squelch so I can get it farther ahead. But then they say, okay, go ahead and change frequencies and I look up and say, okay, good, I'm ready to go on COM 2 and I haven't pushed this button, guess what? Approach is going to say, you're still on approach control frequency. I just told you to contact the tower. Marker beacons. How many of you have taken somebody flying on their first flight and you've flown over a middle marker or an outer marker at altitude and what do you hear? Beep, beep, beep. And the person next to you, their eyes get this big. It's, oh God, something bad is happening. It's bad enough with the outer marker. If you get to the middle marker, it's a higher pitch and it's going faster, something really bad is about to happen. You might think about disabling the marker beacons. However, if you're flying IFR and you need to hear those, let's make sure that's engaged. The mute button over here also on the marker beacons, you're flying down the ILS and the tone is going off and the controller is rippling at you. You'd like to hear that, you know where you are at this point. Reach over and hit the mute button. It all comes down to which button needs to be pushed at which time. So treat the COM panel like an absolute snake pit. Still other problems? Stuck microphones? Anybody ever been on the frequency when there's been a stuck mic? Sometimes it can be quite entertaining, can it? You hear people say all kinds of things that they ordinarily wouldn't think. Now in Washington, an open microphone is just an absolute invitation for the media to have a field day with you and people are telling jokes and so on and so forth. In our business, that happens, but it also tends to block up the entire frequency. On the newer radios, how do we know if we're transmitting? Usually we'll get a little TX next to the frequency, which tells us that. So when you're keying the mic or your mic button, it's always a good idea just to kind of scan over. Most of the time you'll see absolutely nothing and once it'll be you that has the hot mic and that wouldn't be the time to be telling jokes. Did I mention the wrong frequency before? I think I did. That's very important. And then finally, the ever-popular, well, the jack wasn't quite pushed in all the way. I can't hear, I can't talk, I can't do both, I can't do one or the other. Okay, quiz time. Lostcom, what's the transponder squawk? 7600 is right. Okay, this is one we don't want to have, but hijack code? 7500. If you were unable to get to the transponder, could you say that one verbally to the controller? Absolutely. You could say Washington Approach, transponder 7500. And they would know that something is going on. You might get a real nice close-up look at an F-16 at some point. Anything else? Other emergencies? 7700. 7700 are ever-popular. Okay, so here we have a circumstance. See what you think. We have to look carefully sometimes when they call traffic. The red doesn't show up quite so well, but you get the idea. Flight service. Flight service is really important for us in general aviation. This is our dispatch system. A lot of people, they think, well, once they got their instrument rating and so forth, I don't need to talk to flight service. Nothing could be further from the truth. Flight service can be a tremendous source of information for you. Obviously, we use it to get a pre-flight briefing or we'll get our briefing via computer. But then how many of you go through all of the nodems and read them and understand them? That's what I thought. We're working on a project with the FAA right now to get the length of nodems shortened down to maybe only 20 pages for a 50-mile flight. And so that's important. TFRs likewise. Maybe you don't use them for a pre-flight briefing. This is critical. In-flight updates. We see a tremendous number of accidents, weather-related accidents, where there is no record of contact once the airplane launched. They didn't get any updates on the weather. And one thing that you can be sure about with the weather is that it's going to change. Absolutely. Here's how you get to in-flight weather, the best kind. The call sign is FlightWatch. If you want to talk and file a flight plan, then you would be talking to Raleigh Radio. What's the common frequency for FlightWatch? 12020. Exactly. And there's the correct way to do that because that's a common frequency. You're flying along, you would say, if you knew which FlightWatch it was, you can call them by name. I seldom know where I am, so all I do is, you know, I'm 1,000 miles from wherever my destination is. That's the disadvantage of GPS these days. But you would say FlightWatch, Bonanza 7236, Whiskey, 20 West of Raleigh, 5,500. The appropriate FlightWatch then knows where you are and which transmitter to come back to you on, because they may be covering an area of several thousand square miles. So that's the correct way of doing that. On radio, we can use 122.0 and go from there. Remote communications, this is important. A lot of people don't know how to get a hold of FlightWatch if it's not a direct communications. Here we have an RCO right here and this would be the frequency and you would tell them that you are receiving Norman on 122.15 because the FlightWatch specialist has literally dozens and dozens of frequencies to respond. If you have a duplex frequency, now the R isn't for you. You will transmit on the R. They're listening on that and you'll have to turn up the volume on this side and punch the button so you can hear their response. Sounds very simple. You have to try at a time or two to see how it works. Automated weather, pretty good. The correct term is 1-minute weather. When we call in on approach, you sometimes get something like this. In fact, I don't even have a rental car, let alone a hotel. How many times have you heard people say, I have the numbers? That's not the right way of doing it. Which numbers do you have, by the way? I'm not sure which numbers you're talking about. The controller would like to know specifically the correct way is to use the code with information Foxtrot or just simply with Foxtrot. VFR flight following, lots of benefits to it. How to request it. One thing we didn't say, but this is something that every flight instructor has told you from the beginning. Who are you calling, who you are, where you are and what you want. Well, you can get into a circumstance in a very busy area where if you go through that litany, the controller's not going to be totally happy. So a better way rather than saying, Raleigh approach, Bonanza 7236 Whiskey, I'm about 20 miles west at 4,500. I just used up about 10 seconds of airtime and if he or she's busy moving people around, he's not going to be totally happy with me. As opposed to saying, Raleigh approach, Bonanza 7236 Whiskey, VFR request. He'll get back to you when he's ready and able. He may say, unable traffic advisories. Well, there's your answer right there. But this is a better, more professional way of dealing with it. When you want to stop, just tell him you want to stop. We'll go over to advisory frequency now or thanks very much, we'd like to terminate radar service. Whoa, where'd he come from? We have a tendency when we get into flight following to think, okay, I can kind of let down. I won't have to look outside as much. Nothing could be further from the truth if you are in VFR conditions and if you're getting VFR flight following, VFR conditions probably apply. And when they call a traffic at 3 o'clock, that is relative to your track, not your heading. So if you've got a 20 degree correction angle from whatever heading you happen to be on, the controller's call is going to be 20 degrees off from wherever you are. Only two responses that you want to give when they call traffic for you, either traffic in sight or negative contact. Tally Ho sounds kind of exciting, but it's a little dated. Pyreps, very quickly. Why are they great? How many times have you heard VFR not recommended, decided to go take a look, and it turned out to be a pretty good day? How many times have you had that happen? Wouldn't it be nice if somebody or a lot of somebodies had filed pyreps and said, hey, it's pretty good out here. It's kind of bad over by the mountains, but here along the shore everything looks great. Get that back into the system so other pilots can fly, and more importantly that the National Weather Service can update their forecasts. How many times has the opposite happened? You were told the weather's going to be pretty good, and woo, it turned out not to be so good. Pretty important to file a pyreps. If you're too busy to be able to file that pyreps while you're in the heat of battle, when you get down on the ground, call Flight Service and give them the pyreps right then and there. We have a new course that just came out last month called SkySpotter. Please take a look at it. I think you'll find it quite entertaining, and it'll tell you exactly what to do. Okay, we're getting close to the end here of time. There are three magic words that every pilot should know. One of them say what? What might we say instead? Huh? Is not a good response. Say again. And if it's one of our controllers who likes to do things really fast, tell him to say it again slower. Okay? He'll get the idea. If he has to repeat it four times, we've made our point, you didn't save any time by saying things fast. The same thing applies to us as pilots. I can almost tell a new pilot on the frequency because they're going through things just as fast as they can. Really good air traffic controllers will have a very measured pace. They will chunk the information so that people can follow it and so forth. The same thing applies to us. Number two, absolutely. Do you ever get stand-by from the controllers? All the time. They're busy with something that at the moment takes a higher priority. Remember what we said about our three priorities? There are going to be times when you're going to be busy with airplane, tell the controller, stand by. Don't just throw that out there if you happen to be, you know, fooling around with the GPS or momentarily distracted. Probably the controller is something important. Last one, very important. Unable. Very important. And that applies to weather. It applies to trying to get somebody on a frequency where nobody's there. You go back to the prior frequency and say that. Since we are out of time, I want to jump ahead because I have a very good example of something here that I want you to see. And I think it'll be beneficial here. It's a little bit farther. This looks promising. Okay. We've talked about some things to do. Let's talk about some things that we ought not to do. And I think you know what's coming here. A Boston approach, Piper 7-7 Uniform of the city of Brockton at about 2,500. I wanted to see if maybe I could get clearance in your class Bravo surface area so that I can do like a fly-by for my company Pegnic and Townsend Island out there in the harbor. What do you think his response is going to be when we talk about solar? Exactly so, unable. Here's another one. We talked about, how about this one? Omaha ground on just a 9 or 7-6 Bravo top up request taxi and some pattern work. Are we talking to think or are we thinking to talk here? We're talking to think. We haven't formulated our idea. This is a good one. Hello, Senator. 7-2-1 Alpha Papa checking in level 8,000. Well, we're checking in at 8,000. Now when you leave that frequency will you be checking out? It doesn't convey any useful information. Some people think it sounds pretty cool. To me it conveys that you're an amateur. Here's another one. And you'll hear some airline people do it as well. We have a retired airline pilot that works for us who was a bit of a stickler and he said if I ever heard any of my first officers use language like that they'd be filing my jet plates when we got back to the hotel rather than doing other fun things. Here's another favorite one. I'm so glad you're with us because we certainly wouldn't want you to be against us. Once again, no useful information conveyed kind of a funny thing. It just doesn't seem to add much. Here's one that you will hear at non-towered airports all the time. Well, don't take it far because we're going to need it back shortly. There's another airplane on short, final. You can say that you're departing whatever the runway is taking the active. Well, gee, I don't know what active is at non-towered airports. The active runway happens to be the one you're on. And finally, the one that has been so abused lately that it actually made top billing in that wonderful tome of the Far Aim book. By the way, how many of you have a current copy? How many have legacy copies? It's okay. You can raise your hand, but this one just takes the case. If you heard when we did the opening sequence at Frederick and so on and so forth, if all the airplanes in the pattern advised him of where they were even though they had already just done so, we'd have been 30 minutes with the frequency jammed up. So, this is just a quick look at some of the things that is available. I would also like to ask you instrument polygons that are available and I would also like to ask you instrument pilots did most of you or all of you get a thunderstorm communicating with ATC disc here just recently? Okay. Air Safety Foundation just sent out a CD on talking to ATC with thunderstorms. This is a critical item and if you fly IFR you need to watch this disc. If you didn't get it in the mail or a VFR pilot you're just interested to take a look at the website and take a look at the whole program. It runs about 45 minutes. The old story about the controller saying, well, my radar doesn't show much weather is no longer true. Every air traffic control radar in this country with just a couple of exceptions shows weather, okay, and it can be a tremendous help to you when you're flying either IFR or VFR and getting flight following. This is an additional website on our website that you can go to for more information. I've already overstayed my welcome. We'll take just a couple of questions here so if we can bring the lights up we'll do that. Questions, anybody? Yes, sir. When I was getting my instrument rating I was taught to use the phrase with you at 5,000. So what phrase has replaced that? Nothing. Don't say with you. The proper check-in, I'm not faulting you. Your flight instructor did exactly what he was taught. It was taught by her flight instructor prior to that and so on and so forth. The proper way to talk to any particular center would be Miami Center, Bonanza 7236 Whiskey, 4,000. That's all you have to say. They know you're with them because you wouldn't be on the frequency otherwise. Or checking in. They know you're checking in. That's why you're there. You've been a wonderful audience. Thanks so much. This is AOPA Day. Please join us over at the Big Yellow tent just off here at about my four o'clock position that has nothing to do with heading. I think it's track and I'll be doing a little discussion here in about an hour talking about technologically advanced aircraft and safety and there's some good things about these airplanes and there's some other things that we probably ought to talk a little bit more about. So if you get a chance, we'll be right over. Thanks very much. Fly safe.