I always read Flight Training magazine cover to cover. It is an outstanding source for my trade as a CFI. Last month, William Dubois suggested using cotton bales as a source of light cargo in his weight and balance piece (“The Weight and Balance Jungle,” June 2015 Flight Training).
Unless the agriculture industry has really lightened its specs, the average weight of a cotton bale used to be about 500 pounds—20 bales, at 500 pounds each, may be a little heavy for this load.
Dennis Faver
Southport, North Carolina
Be a radio star
After reading this article (“Be a Radio Star,” June 2015 Flight Training), I was very disappointed at how inaccurate the information was, and it left me wondering if author Jamie Beckett is one of those pilots who inadvertently operates from faulty information handed down to him.
In the article Becketts says, “Ten miles out. Tune and listen to the automatic terminal information service.” Do this and you are way behind things and in danger of busting the airport airspace before establishing communication. At 10 miles from the airport, you are only three minutes from the Class D airspace. Pilots listen to the ATIS, write it down, adjust the altimeter, and study it as needed. Then the frequency being busy may cause a delay in making the initial call. The pilot will still not be able to penetrate the Class D airspace until the controller has responded with the N-number. Three minutes will frequently not be enough time to accomplish all of that, and will get your arrival off to a very bad start.
Beckett says, “First call: Central City Tower, Cessna One-Two-Three-Four-Five.” This would be a very poor initial call to a tower. It causes extra time and delays on the frequency. Unless the controller is overloaded there is no reason to not include all of the recommended information in the initial call instead of only the N-number, which requires a second transmission to include the message.
The comment, “Your reply: Cessna Three-Four-Five is 10 miles south, inbound, full stop, with Information Oscar” is incomplete information—altitude should also be included.
And, he says, “On the ground. If the controller is busy and doesn’t contact you, simply turn off the runway at your first safe opportunity, tune to the ground control frequency, and make your call.” Automatically calling ground control may be one of the worse things a pilot could do; it could cause some serious ground operation problems. It is critical to stay with the tower controller who is landing aircraft on both parallel runways and will be controlling the aircraft taxiing across either of these runways. The tower controller, after attending to another aircraft, may need to get a quick instruction to the landing pilot to clear a path for other aircraft arriving or departing. That may be delayed because the pilot changed frequencies without being instructed to do so and the landing pilot is blocking the traffic flow. There are a lot of guidelines in the Aeronautical Information Manual covering these points.
Warren Webb Jr.
Cromwell, Connecticut
Jamie Beckett responds: My intent was to address pilots flying lower-horsepower, slower-moving aircraft. Not in an effort to exclude pilots of higher-performance aircraft, however. My intent was simply because of the higher percentage of pilots flying slower-moving aircraft. For the Bonanza or Cirrus pilot, 10 miles is a bit tight for an initial call. Yet for the pilot of a Cessna 150, an Ercoupe, a Champ, or a Piper Cub, 10 miles leaves quite a cushy period of time between the call and their arrival in the pattern. You’ve raised some excellent points that I will make it a point to keep in mind in the future.
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