Walk the talk

It is early in your flight training. You are working hard to manage your airplane’s altitude, airspeed, and heading while struggling to navigate the airport traffic pattern. If that were not difficult enough, you also have to maintain spacing with other aircraft in the pattern while managing aircraft control.

Adjust power, change pitch, trim. Lower the flaps and trim. Crosscheck airspeed, altitude. Make another power adjustment. Adjust your heading for the crosswind. Check your position relative to the runway. Yikes, forgot to trim again! You are at the absolute limit of what your brain can handle—a predicament known as task saturation.

Meanwhile, the control tower is firing instructions like an auctioneer at everyone in the pattern. If you are already task saturated, hearing and responding to tower’s instructions seems impossible. To survive, you mentally tune out the radio.

Whether you are aware of it or not, your brain is making the right choice when it deprioritizes listening to the aircraft radio. Your flight instructor will remind you, when the chips are down and you are struggling in the airplane, “Aviate first, navigate second, and communicate last.” By ignoring the radio, you favor flying and navigating over radio communication.

At some point, you are going to have to learn to communicate in addition to flying and navigating. Flying laps around the airport traffic pattern simply to learn how to talk on the radio is time-consuming and expensive. There has to be a better way.

No chairs this time. If you think chair flying is the solution for learning to fly and talk at the same time, think again. To understand why chair flying—practicing aircraft control and procedures while sitting in a chair—is not the answer, think about the root cause of your struggles with the radio: task saturation.

Sitting in a chair and moving through the motions of flying at your own pace will not induce task saturation. To re-create the time pressure and the task load of flight training, you have to physically move forward while practicing your procedures.

Get up and walk. Walk flying is the answer. Walk flying is a time-honored training technique used by the U.S. armed forces to teach student pilots to fly and talk at the same time. Here is an adaptation of the U.S. Air Force technique you can use at home.

First, find an area in or around your home that measures at least 12 feet by 15 feet. Next, create a scaled-down rectangular airport traffic pattern within this area. Place strips of masking tape or a similar marker on the ground at the four corners of the pattern: the turn to crosswind, the turn to downwind, the turn to base, and the turn to final approach. Define your “runway” by placing markers at the end of the final approach leg and the beginning of the departure leg.

For this exercise, you will play the roles of both pilot and tower controller. (If you have a training partner, you may ask him or her to play the role of tower controller.) To begin your exercise, we will assume you have taxied to the runway and told the tower you would like to remain in the traffic pattern for touch and goes. Say the following out loud:

As tower: “[Call sign], report left downwind, Runway Two Seven, cleared for takeoff.”

As pilot: “[Call sign], report left downwind, Runway Two Seven, cleared for takeoff.”

Walk toward the marker for the turn to crosswind as you go through the motions of advancing an imaginary throttle, pulling back on an imaginary control yoke to achieve a takeoff attitude, and raising the flaps on schedule. When you reach the marker for the turn to crosswind leg, make a left turn. Continue walking to the turn point for downwind and make another left turn. As you complete the left turn, continue walking on downwind and say your next radio transmission by speaking out loud. Do not stop to make a radio transmission, even if you have trouble remembering or speaking the transmission. Remember to go through the motions of reducing power and changing pitch as you would on the downwind leg.

As pilot: “[Call sign], left downwind, touch and go.”

As tower: “[Call sign], Runway Two Seven, cleared touch and go.”

As pilot: “[Call sign], Runway Two Seven, cleared touch and go.”

Walk to the turn points for base leg and final approach while going through the motions to reduce power, change pitch, and other procedures specific to your aircraft. Complete your touch and go by walking the length of the runway as you raise flaps, and add power. Make your next transmission to the tower.

As pilot: “[Call sign], request right traffic.”

As tower: “[Call sign], right traffic approved. Report a right base for Runway Two Seven.” And so on.

Finding the clearances. To review the various clearances you may receive in a tower-controlled pattern, refer to the FAA’s air traffic controller order, J.O. 7110.65, available free online.

Section 3 of Chapter 8 (3-8-1 Sequence/Spacing Application) in the manual contains all of the authorized clearances a tower controller can give you. Copy these phrases to note cards and use them to create your exercise.

Speed up and repeat. As you learn to make the required radio transmissions without hesitation or error while “flying” your imaginary airplane, increase your walking pace around the pattern. Repeat this exercise once a day, mixing up where you enter the traffic pattern, and changing the types of air traffic control clearances you request and receive. By walking around your simulated traffic pattern, you create a limited timeframe and a specific place to recall and speak the radio transmission that fits. When you add the physical movements of manipulating imaginary aircraft controls into the mix, you produce additional workload for your brain. As you practice, you will train your brain to manage the workload and avoid task saturation.

Walk the talk. It is a fun, inexpensive, and very effective way to build the habit patterns you need to fly and talk on the aircraft radio at the same time.