ATC IssuesA place where pilots may enter the 'lions den' that is Air Traffic Control in complete safety and find out the answers to all those obscure topics which you always wanted to know the answer to but were afraid to ask.
I heard a station calling Singapore on HF one morning for a preflight check. After a suitable wait I intercepted him, and the conversation went something like this:
"Singapore Radio, Poppa Kilo Poppa Echo Poppa, plefright check 6556."
"Station calling Singapore this is Perth, readability 4, confirm callsign Pa-pah Kilo Pa-pah Echo Pa-pah."
"Negative Perth, this is Poppa Kilo Poppa Echo Poppa..."
1261 has a copy of the ITU book! I wonder what it says for the pronunciation of 'F'... I hear "Fox" with no "trot" almost all the time these days, so much so that I now do it myself except on the initial call...
"So-and-so radar, Golf Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot"
"Golf Echo Fox, so-and-so radar, pass your message"
"Golf Echo Fox is an aeroplane with two wings, currently flying through the sky, somewhere over England, quite low, routing directly in front of as many other aeroplanes as possible, request radar vectors towards other aircraft."
Since "Fox" is so common, and I certainly find it easier to say (does everybody?), how long before the Big Book gets updated. My guess is never
ModernDinosaur, I am sure your abbreviation of Foxtrot is in fairly common useage amongst most of us in the right situations. However, the book was already updated a few decades ago when the old Fox (with Able, Baker, Charlie, etc) was changed to its present form, back in the mid-'50s.
It works well on a clear VHF channel but the addition of the extra syllable was to distinguish it from (eg) Golf on a poor and barely intelligible HF freq. As the latter gives way to Sat-Data Com in the coming years, perhaps the phonetic will revert officially to just Fox, on the odd occasion that anyone actually performs air-ground verbal comms!
Meanwhile, one or two of us may continue to tease well-known senior members of the ATCO community with the occasional request for a confirmation the Queen Nan How, on first contact
Have to admit I say "Keh-Bec" and also was taught to say "Pa-Pa". As far as the "Fox" vs "Foxtrot" argument, I usually use Foxtrot as thats the way I was taught in Australia, but when I have FC201, FC301, FC501, and FC701 all on frequency at the same time, I do get lazy and call them Fox-Charlie. Shoot me!
I always use "kwebeck" and I think that foxtrot is infinately better that "fox"
And i think that verbal communications will not be phased out - also that they won't use satilite comms, I belive they will use microwave digital transmissions in the 4-5 GHz band.
