ATC Pro Tips from an Air Traffic Controller

hello everyone maybe you've heard about a facebook group called ask a pilot or air traffic controller it's one of the better groups on facebook where pilots and controllers exchange information answer questions to help each other out today we're gonna do one better than that i have michael here michael is an actual air traffic controller from our tower here in cedar rapids you run uh approach or tower right altogether and approach right so we're gonna take michael from cedar rapids to des moines another tower the airport michael will do the radio work you are a private pilot yourself yes okay so michael knows knows both of these worlds and he's going to talk to us about what he's doing and give us a few pointers along the way on what we pilots do well and where we can do better alright let's go fly rapids airport information echo time one three five two zero one one four zero six visibility one zero you clouds one one thousand pitcher two three dew point one niner altimeter three zero one six visual approaches from lane niner ease notice the airmen runway one three three one is closed effectively charlie closed out to the east ramp effectively alpha close between echo and alpha three effects away echo close north of delta we got available of them here com1 com2 you can switch between them up here uh my comp 2 is wired to the top antenna so we use that for ground and tower and the com1 is the bottom antenna which works best in the air so we got uh around there you push the targets here all right and then uh change the frequency the big big knob on the left yeah you can do it multiple ways you can uh change it like like this or you can tap it and then enter a different frequency uh like this skip the the leading one but you know to do like uh one one eight is just one eight point eight enter and then nice okay um so we have an ifr to des moines on file sounds good you ready ready cedar rapids grounds bonanza 7-0 tango bravo ifr des moines stands with seven zero thing a profit here up it's clearance recruiter the morning report has filed i maintain five thousand expect eight thousand one zero minutes after departure frequency 119.7 squawk six two one six bonanza seven zero tango bravo clear to des moines final climbing tan five thousand expect eight thousand one zero minutes after departure departure frequency 119.7 squawk six two one six stanzas bravo ready to taxi request full length with echo it's a seven zero tango bravo niner taxi via alpha runway niner via alpha bonanza seven zero tango problem good morning ruin good morning almost like they know you i know you work next to somebody long enough that you get to hear their wives all right so that was the getting the clearance and getting taxi instructions what are some things that that pilots do where you think oh you know what they they if they did a little differently it would be helpful well one of the things um and even on approach when you're vfr calling up for uh flight following if it's if the frequency is busy you know just say your call sign with like a vfr flight following requests um a vfr flight following it comes pretty low on our priority list you know it's it's not something you need right away versus like giving an ifr clearance or something like that so if we're busy just say hey i've got a flight following a request and we'll get back to you to collect all the rest of the information sometimes it's hard if like for example on approach if we're trying to give up approach turn on or something like that something a little more time sensitive you know and here you're kind of dragging on with your 30 seconds the other thing uh they'll be concise and be mindful of what else is going on exactly yeah so short to the point and uh you know if we need more information from you we'll get it so i noticed you didn't give the ada's information when you asked for clearance i always do that what's the official rule what is your your real expectation when do you need to hear the aids letter from me um we're required to hear some time before take off before you actually take off so uh you you really could get it while you're taxing typically uh when you get over to your local control local controls gonna want you to be ready to go you know they're not gonna wanna sit here and check to do you have the atis things like that you know they're running the runways they want to do their own things ground control will kind of get all the pre-duty stuff out of the way so i just you to be local control is what you call tower right yeah yeah yeah and ground control yeah it would be like ground and flight data clearance delivery here um so for us you know we're looking for when you taxi because he might call you for your clearance without the engine running or things like that just to get it say maybe we've got a full route clearance for you you know and you you got to put it into your navigation it'll take you a while sometimes like that and then you might taxi maybe 15 20 minutes later you know that's when we want to know you have the latest information at a reasonable amount of time before you're taken off let's do a departure briefing real quick uh so this will be a normal uh take off from runway niner at cedar rapids uh anything either of us doesn't like uh engine issue or something else that's severe we'll call aboard pull the throttle stop on the runway in front of us if we have an engine problem under 2000 feet msl will look for a nice place ahead of the wings into the wind if possible and land there we will not attempt to return okay and above 2000 feet we can we can spend a minute to think about what options are available sounds good not good all right and with that yeah you can uh all ready for departure cedar rapids tower bonanza seven zero tango bravo runway nine are ready fans at seven zero tango bravo cedar rapids tower turn right heading one one zero runway nine are clear for takeoff dash eight traffic on an eight mile final right one one zero runway niner clear for takeoff peninsula zero take a bravo hey traffic inside far out runway is clear there's a helicopter lights are on jenna 126 at crossdestro traffic after one o'clock about two miles he is going south westbound he will be no factor let's feel the power of that i o 550 slight win from the right sp alive pressure good positive rate gear up and that airport parking lot still looks almost empty yeah and we're turning to hitting one one zero tango bravo y'all have a safe trip we'll talk to you shortly contact departure contact departure zero tango bravo uh yeah just press the bottom one i'll switch it cedar evans departure bonanza seven zero tango bravo one thousand five hundred one one zero stanza seven zero tango bravo seed wraps departure radar contact turn right heading two two zero climb maintain eight thousand two two zero up to eight thousand bananas yeah everything bravo so there i did uh i did one of the things that drives me nuts you did something that drives you that's when others do coming out of departure there i said climb to 8 000. that could be confusing because they could think hey climb to and you'd think you know there somebody would say flight level or whatnot but that's one of those things that even you know in the moment you do it but uh as a controller you can it's definitely one of those things that you can eliminate some confusion okay so what we call tower you call local is there a different name for approach as well or what is that called no that's we typically just call it approach or departure or radar three miles westbound typing altitude unknown possible crop duster if you're coming up we talked about earlier about being brief or you know being short and concise if you're planning on something weird with these crop dusters uh we get pipeline inspection power line inspection all anything like that you know definitely let us know kind of tell us what your plan is a lot of the crop dusters are pipeline people they'll actually call us on the phone plan uh if you're doing flight testing for an aircraft you just built you know maybe you just want to hang above the airport you know phil you can always call us work something out turn left in one zero and we'll uh work with you that way it's a lot easier to do that than over frequency but if you are planning on something weird um definitely let us know so we kind of know what to expect one of the things that we train traffic 12 o'clock recognizing things that are unusual you know whether it be maybe it's a skyhawk in the winter and all of a sudden their performance goes down by 20 knots you know and you look at the weather in here it looks like they're in clouds or something you know and you're going to want to give that person like a descent or climb i mean things like that 500 kilos you know i mean as a pilot yeah very complacent especially flying instruments you know when you're just kind of like looking or if you're vfr you're just looking outside and you know you might not be attuned to oh i'm building up ice on the wings or something like that so we we try and find those things so if all of a sudden somebody starts you know they say hey i'm inbound to cedar rapids and all right you know enter left base and they did fourteen all of a sudden completely west instead of south or something zero two thousand you know we're like hey you know are you coming into cedar rapids because i was planning on you in my sequence you know vectoring somebody else or something you know trying to build space for you so that's always good good to let us know if there's you're planning on doing something unusual what what are some examples of some really unusual or funny requests you've gotten from people to share the most unusual it was this was probably like two years ago and uh this guy was on an ifr flight plan into cedar rapids and one of the local area area airports here marion airport they don't have an approach so this guy comes in to cedar rabbits ifr and then gets below the clouds which are probably like i don't know a thousand feet about two percent traffic i wanna cancel my ifr and i'd like to request special bfr over to marion and uh the atc rules for special vfr are the simple version is one in one out you know you can kind of only have one in your airspace at any time yeah you can narrow it down to like quadrants and different things but the the general rule is you know one yeah one in your airspace because they can the point of specialty of ours they can kind of maneuver however they need right well for this guy it was unfortunate for this guy because here we've got another aircraft right behind him on the approach already in the airspace so i you know if that if he would have let us know you know we could have put him second and let then let him do it first yeah that's a good example of where just a contact approach an early uh declaration of what you want to do here yeah exactly and and for that for the special vfr like i said i mean that's it's easy for us to plan if we know ahead of time so and contact approach is like a weird one have you ever done a contact approach no but i have uh on a couple of occasions uh flown a full approach where later i thought you know what the contact approach could have uh easily saved me a few minutes you know in places where i was very familiar with the area yeah uh but i i i it didn't occur to me at the right moment that that was uh a good and safe choice yeah and i mean as controllers we're a little hesitant to give them just because it is you know if it's ifr it's ifr for a reason you know and contact approach sometimes maybe might not be the best choice um but something weird like that you know if you're expecting or if you're requesting a contact approach let us know ahead of time we got a we got our own rules that we have to comply with and you know for something i've never given a contact approach if somebody asked for one you know i'd have to break out our our point 65 and look and make sure that i've checked all my boxes so that i can legally issue it digit 14. our book uh we call it the bible and 760 pages [Music] look up make sure you know before you start to uh issue something like that so that's the document you have up there in the tower and occasionally you you look at it to clear something up yep that's part of going through training when you're training in air traffic control it's a lot of memorization a lot you know for us our airspace is very important um the rules and loads with other areas we might have other approaches next to us or center would that be a good equivalent for the our aim for pilots yeah okay 300 feet ago about a half mile it's a completely calm morning [Music] chicago center one three two point eight one three two point eight bonanza zero tango bravo here's something i noticed he did that at the very moment we're leveling off and with you here doing the radios and me flying the plane that's easy but that is actually uh really distracting [Music] yep center bonanza seven zero tango bravo level eight thousand [Music] what's up zero single bravo chicago center welcome to white outdoors three zero zero niner zero niner finances here take a promo okay so five runway five is closed which leads us with runway uh one three three one uh the wind there latest observation is 140 at six so i might win well aligned with the runway and i should be able to pull off a decent landing with that win all right let's hope so it's always harder when you've got pressure of other people yeah well i got cameras running i got the faa in the plane i got my cfi in the plane there you got a controller that has seen hundreds of blocked landings i am feeling the pressure now let's assume we're landing on runway one three which is this one and uh elliot is right here so um we can plan for either delta iv or romeo make a left turn then they'll uh take us to right now there the other thing we can do here is uh i can set oops i can set a a vertical target so say uh two miles before des moines i want to be at patton altitude tango bravo contact one approach one two three point niner des moines approach one two three point nine bonanza zero tango bravo des moines approach bonanza seven zero tango bravo eight thousand [Music] [Music] you're talking about uh pilot workload with uh when we're leveling off you're doing frequency changes and stuff too but something has controllers you know it's it's hard for us to understand without actually being in the airplane you know what your workload is like things like that i always wonder like when we give uh an ils turn on or an rnav turn on you know that's a lot of information there you know we we call it position turn altitude and clearance um that's a lot to just try and memorize and then read back and then you know punch it in what not it if you ever if pilots ever have questions you know definitely ask clarify you know if we say three zero zero if you read it back put it in wrong or you know maybe you read something back wrong we're going to correct you that's it for the read you're only required to read back altitude by fact definitely and report feedback all of it if you know it all just so we can verify that you know that's [Music] so here's the uh that's one of my favorite features on the avadyn you see the the green arc there yeah that shows where the altitude constraint that i put in here where we're going to reach that at the current rate of descent i can make my descent shallow or steep as needed to uh to get to that altitude at the right time okay so um we're coming in from here runway one three is down that way so i assume we'll be told to make a left base for one three as we enter the pattern so everything's looking beautiful here we got traffic off to our right but nothing between us and des moines our descent looks good we got des moines tower and ground armed here planning for a visual approach it is clear as can be so very nice i don't need to bring this approach here's three month hotel executing uh missed approach now one thing i like to look up is if i go to the modern roads run right then dude if there is more traffic it needs to send us further out here what are what are the two thousand fixes on the approach that you might send us to knife or water michael jackson airport and actually i'm gonna you said you want another eye left just put them i want more let's be good then we'll go back to uh there's three mic hotels here we have them available okay i can see the city of des moines now 12 to 1 and i can see the des moines airport uh 12 o'clock in the distance another thing that's uh really helpful for atc so uh when you're getting an ifr clearance off uh uncontrolled airport you come off and you've already got your clearance whatnot you've already got a transponder code you come off and you'll initially tag up on our radar we've already released you it'll show your squad code your identification and whatnot um one of the things you're when you call up you know we're going to ask you to ident typically to give radar contact uh i see every once in a while somebody will come off and they'll start to ident right away we can't use that for identification we have to wait for your ident to finish then we'll tell you to identify yeah um another method we could use though is it's a primary identification method if you give us your position and your heading okay as long as there's no other traffic that it can be we can identify you from that so you know if you're coming off over here we have iowa city is a real popular uh satellite airport if you come off iowa city for example you know you might be going eastbound but you're coming off of two five approaches you come off and say hey you know i'm at 2 000 on heading 270 turning right to work direct on course or whatever we gave we could use that for radar identification you just have to give us a heading so if you just give us an altitude then we have to make you identical otherwise like i said we'll you know we'll give us the heading as long as we can verify that yes that is you for sure without a doubt that we can identify you straight off that so i've never heard that before yeah just saves us a step and if you're uh just starting flight training come and take a tour of a tower or an approach or whatnot a lot of flight training up here at least goes on at uh uncontrolled airports and that's sometimes all the people have experienced and then later on you know when they want to fly into an uncontrolled airport or excuse me into a controlled airport you know they might have a little nervousness or you know they might purposely avoid it just because they don't want to talk to approach or whatever you know we traffic advisories radar services that's something that we don't mind given you know for us it's it's very helpful because we know what you're doing you know versus just a primary target somewhere zero tango bravo plotting two seven zero vectors digital pros what do you see heading two two seven zero bananas i didn't catch the first number so yeah you know what we're we're people we uh we enjoy talking uh pastries you know as much as the next guy the the more you know the more students that we get into the tower to be able to kind of you know talk to introduce them kind of say hey here's what the airspace looks like you know if you want us to kind of explain how things work or whatnot before you fly in it's very helpful to us that way you don't sound when you get on the radio you don't sound timid you know so we definitely uh when people call us we definitely will instantly judge the pilot based on how their radio call is you know and if you sound assertive and you know you know what you want you know what to say you know we're going to trust you a little more than you know if you call up you sound real timid maybe you're unsure of kind of what you want to do what not you we're going to go space you out a little bit farther 500 so our thought is if if you don't know what you want to do we don't know what you want to do either that makes sense and you know as a pilot who has visited the tower a few times you know i i can't attest to you that that there's a lot to learn just by standing up there and seeing it through your eyes yeah uh seeing what you see what you don't see and that makes it easier for us to help you yeah and uh and yes treats are always appreciated by these guys oh yeah all right we got the airport at our 11 o'clock uh we're kind of setting up for left base for one three i'll set the course pointer to one three in fact here i can confidence the zero tango bravo doesn't maintain 3 500. 3 500 bananas here tango bravo i think he's making sure to give us the scenic tour of downtown des moines today there's a free mike hotel yeah three enough miles from robin turn right heading three three zero maintain two thousand well the nice things with usb we can kind of see you know happening possibly where we are in a sequence it looks like we're maybe gonna be ahead of this three mic hotel or we might follow him out wide nine to ten o'clock five miles turning northbound stairs descending out of 2500 you can expect lower passing finances okay i don't have him yet yeah you know definitely you can definitely use your asb as a tool to find the aircraft out the window but to us you have to visually see him nice view of downtown des moines this morning there's a pretty good burger place here called zombie burger i've never been to zero tango bravo traffic no factor clear visit pros runway one three and contact tower 118.3 with them all right landing checklist gear down unlocked landing lights on mixture enriching comes on short final see des moines tower bonanza seven zero tango bravo turning base runway one three and the seven zero tango bravo des moines tower wind one two zero at eight runway one three cleared land runway one three clear land bonanzas [Music] [Music] five that's the six nine golf mine tower only one three at delta five without delay clear for takeoff traffic bonanza turning two mile final all right on the roll uh 6900 golf for departure and the zero tango bravo traffic assessment departing before you arrived [Music] one mile final runway one three yes undercarriage fixture prop 500 [Music] traffic 12 o'clock 2 miles 700 feet below three greens let's see if i can set it down on the thousand foot marker that's my sixth under golf contact departure over to departure is the counter goal very nice thank you the uh stole pilots would be very appreciative of here they would have come to a full stop and taken off again in the distance like bonanza zero tango bravo going to elliot there's a zero tango bravo roger left next taxiway thank you via delta bravo this frequency left next next taxiway and delta bravo with you bonanza is your tank problem all right so left delta four after landing flips identified and up call flips are open trim three up lights back to beacon and then we're looking for a left on bravo and the information shouldn't have changed what what did we have what letter echo nicole i think or was it yankee ah hey check that out pc24 that's the first time i've ever seen oh that's cool you're right yeah that's the first for me too wow that's awesome and matt once you always just let him know that we're not shutting down otherwise he's gonna be confused what's the hand hand signal for we're not staying here i do not know i don't think there is one oh we got safely on the ground to a tower airport no surprise here michael works in the tower he knows how to do that how about we go into an uncontrolled field next are you up for that no no no no oh you were serious about that i was serious about that yeah uh we can try it you know i trust you as a as a pilot so we should be able to make it because sometimes the people that only fly at our airports they get a little intimidated when they fly to an uncontrolled field let's see how our tower controller does there all right why don't you call for uh the price of the pella all right okay so we got a win from 140 and i think pela has a runway one six and they have uh no indication of a right pattern so let's see michael's your next let's prepare for a left downwind for one six over flying we'll fly over the field and then into the downward depending on how much traffic it is we'll enter right away or we'll get on the other side descend there we'll play that by ears bonanza zero tango bravo request terminate radar but n zero tango bravo squad vfr changewise we get to approve scrap vr over to advisory you get it all right push the wrong button there all right again and then uh just this one here on number two for the weather down all right we're currently 14 miles to the west maybe i usually make my first call at 10 miles out right i normally listen a little bit ahead so i can get you know kind of get the understanding of what's going on and if there's anything unusual listening can be hard because there are so many airports sharing one frequency that the the amount of stuff you hear isn't necessarily indicative of how much traffic there is in hello exactly so we're going to listen closely and i see two airplanes that we want to listen to on frequency one is a three-four delta who's crossing two thousand feet below us right to left and the other one is one five charlie who seems to be in the pattern at pella and that three four delta looks uh three miles i don't see him might be a little hard we didn't see the cirrus either it's amazing how many airplanes you don't see even though you know they're two three miles you know exactly which way to look something hard for us controllers we get so used to looking at airplanes at the same spot we can pick them out pretty well but once you get into the air especially today a little bit of a haze it it can get pretty hard to see them we'll call out traffic and be like you know how do you not see that guy he's three miles away from you yeah well yeah [Music] oh yeah i see him he's a little crop duster he's past behind us now yeah teletraffic bonanza 7-0 tango bravo seven miles off to the northwest going to be flying over 10 to the left downwind for runway 16 do be a little bit a little bit brief know what you're going to say you know think and then speak and when you come to the towered airports you don't have to tell me that you're turning base you don't have to tell me you're turning final you know we've got these very big expensive windows that we're looking at okay i don't see any traffic it doesn't look like uh anybody's running up or anything the big old flock of keys down there will overfly the field and then turn left into the downwind and as we do that you can announce our downwards teletraffic bonanza zero tank of bravo entering left downwind for runway one six pellet is yeah i see something there the wind very clearly favors runway one six today so i don't suppose this is a departure from three four right tank fullest tank and i'm a little high so we'll fly the pan a little wider rock traffic setting up high zero back in to the west's gonna cross midfield enter a left downwind runway one two rockwell traffic bonanza zero tango bravo turning base runway one six pella finals clear you are a pilot but dude in your in your training to become a controller do you cover uncontrolled airports at all no probably not either the the only thing we get into with uncontrolled is like uh instrument procedures you got to learn obstacle departure procedures things like that all right cleon approach final is clear one mile final runway one six traffic bonanzas you're taking probably half mile runway one six pellet gas undercarriage fixture prop good traffic there's a 911 hole so after landing perhaps identified enough pillow traffic bananas your tank bravo clear runway one six pillow three up all right i think he's all right not too bad thanks for coming along all right push [Music] you

Channel: Martin Pauly

Views: 47,035

Rating: 4.9415307 out of 5

Keywords: atc communications, air traffic control, radio communications, atcha radio practice, flying radio, flying radio communication, Michael Ruen, pilot radio communication, pilot radio tips, pilot radio training, flying radio training

Id: 4AwAxsfCBuA

Length: 40min 48sec (2448 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020