Originally Posted by
Gingerbread Man
....i'll be flying myself (under instruction I should add) out of the International Airport...
The major difference for departure from larger airports in the States as opposed to small ones is you will get to talk to Clearance Delivery.
So listen to ATIS as normal, but they will have a frequency for CD, who you call up next. Tell CD the usual who you are, where you are, what you want (to go somewhere VFR) etc and they will give you a clearance, basically much the same as you will get when flying IFR, without the clearance limit.
So use CRAFT (look it up) but you don't get the C. Get ready to write it down.
e.g. fly runway heading (
Route)
, Altitude <=1000, departure
Frequency xxx.xx,
Transponder xxxx.
Then call ground, say you have spoken to CD, and they will give taxi instructions and clearance to somewhere. Usually you then taxi to run up area (not called a hold), do run up, contact tower then (unless told otherwise by ground/atis). Tower will clear you onto the runway, then clear you to depart. Both will already know all about you because you spoke to CD.
After taking off, fly your 'clearance'. Next you will probably hear from tower is 'Contact departure, have a nice day'. You contact Departure (who knows all about you) giving call sign and altitude only. They will have further instructions.
Smaller airports don't have this (except the very, very busy GA class D's dotted around the place)
Coming back, listen to ATIS 40 miles out, then call approach telling them you have information xxxxx where xxxx is the ATIS identifier. Then you will be just brought in under radar control. Very simple.
What everybody else said holds true too. Listen on the web.