ATC

Working With ATC

There’s always potential for miscommunication whenever low-time pilots are involved with air traffic control. That doesn’t mean they should avoid all such entanglements. Whenever student pilots interact with controllers rather than fellow apprentices in the break room, there’s going to be much less forgiveness when mistakes are made. Learners are expected to absorb rapid-fire instructions, […]

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I Do Declare

The silence was deafening. On April 26, 2022, at approximately 11:12 a.m. ET, while in level VFR flight at 2,000 agl and cruising over the nondescript Ohio landscape, 2,000-hour-plus pilot Marc Epner experienced the unthinkable in his Cirrus SR22, N973SD—a total engine failure. Cue the sweaty palms. What makes this event unique is the fact […]

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Say Again?

As student pilots, why do we get tongue-tied with the simple press of the push-to-talk switch? It seems simple yet creates more anxiety than a nun in a smoke shop. It’s a phobia most of us have experienced at some point. In fact, we’ve all been there, done that, and lived to tell about it. […]

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Hearing and Doing

It’s not just me. Many of the pilot population in my circle confess to having the same difficulty: understanding what the heck ATC is saying, and what they want us to do. Controllers seem to talk faster, using lots of words. We hate to ask them over, but we also don’t want to misunderstand and […]

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