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Old 1st Mar 2007, 18:13
  #6 (permalink)  
FlyingForFun

Why do it if it's not fun?
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
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I'm left-handed, and don't have many specific tips which are different from what a right-handed pilot would do. I do find an A5 knee-board easier than an A4 one, and I tend to orientate it sideways (otherwise my writing comes out sideways) - and that means I can't strap it to my knee.

There was just one incident, several years ago, where I was in Las Vegas, and requested a standard VFR route from ATC. I expected a simple "cleared on that route" type of clearance, but what I got instead was "Are you visual with the airport?" When I said I was, I was told to "route direct to the threshold of runway XX, then to the threshold of runway YY, then heading ZZZ, maintain X000 feet". My left hand was hovering near the ptt button, and my right hand was the only hand free to hastily grab a pen and scribble down the instructions.

I wish I'd kept my plog from that flight and framed it - scrawled across the whole plog, in barely-legible writing, was the best I could do at noting down the clearance with my right hand. It obscured everything else on the plog, and was so barely legible that I could only really use it to jog my memory as I followed the clearance!

But then I suppose that could happen just as easily to a right-handed pilot if the ptt button is on the right hand side of the yoke. Which is why I teach all my CPL students to have a pen handy when contacting ATC, even if they don't expect to need it!

FFF
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