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Aviation Speak

RCO

When you find yourself in the middle of nowhere and in need of some current weather information, you can look at your chart and find an RCO, or remote communications outlet. These outlets serve flight service stations and allow you to contact a flight service specialist by relaying your signal through the outlet when distance or obstacles would make direct radio communication impossible. RCOs are sometimes confused with RTRs, or remote transmitter/receivers. In fact, the difference between the two is subtle. While RCOs serve flight service stations, RTRs serve terminal air traffic control facilities.

RCOs and RTRs may be UHF or VHF and are divided into a variety of classes determined by the number of transmitters or receivers. Classes A through G are used mainly for air/ ground communications. Class O facilities were created specifically to provide ground-to-ground communication between air traffic controllers and pilots located at satellite airports. The idea was to create a way for pilots to receive en-route clearances or departure authorizations and cancel IFR flight plans. Class O RTRs also were intended to allow pilots flying below the coverage of the primary air/ground frequency to continue to receive advisories from air traffic control. Class O facilities are nonprotected outlets and are subject to prolonged outages which may go undetected and unreported.

Verify

When a controller instructs you to "verify," he or she simply wants you to confirm information. For example, if a controller asks you to "verify assigned altitude," he is asking you to tell him your current assigned altitude.

If you ever hear this phrase or one similar to it, take a quick look at your instruments and don't be surprised if you aren't where you're supposed to be. Many controllers use the request to verify as a friendly reminder that you have drifted from your assigned course or altitude.

Visual Separation

Sooner or later you will hear a controller tell you to "maintain visual separation." For example, you are in the pattern at a busy towered airport. The controller tells you that you are number two for landing behind a Piper Archer and instructs you to maintain visual separation. That means you must see the other airplane and maneuver as necessary to keep a safe distance from it.

Another time you may be asked to maintain visual separation is when you are receiving flight following. If the controller has identified traffic and you have responded that you have it in sight, you may be asked to maintain visual separation by watching, and staying away from, the other aircraft until it is no longer a factor.

A controller may also do the separating. When a tower controller has two aircraft in sight, he may maintain visual separation by issuing instructions as necessary to keep the aircraft apart.

Elizabeth Tennyson
Elizabeth A Tennyson
Senior Director of Communications
AOPA Senior Director of Communications Elizabeth Tennyson is an instrument-rated private pilot who first joined AOPA in 1998.

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