RT practice

[*Zwitter*]

My mate (hopefully soloing this week) is really self conscious about his RT procedure.

Anyone know any good practice methods - any good websites?

ta

[TheKentishFledgling]

Practice (silently, in your head!) all the time - in car, on the bus, on the bike, walking down the high street etc.

"G-XX is a DB9 inbound to Sainsburys from home, VFR, 3 POB etc etc...."

Sounds stupid, but it's how I got through my RT!

tKF

[tmmorris]

Absolutely. Though my wife does get annoyed when I ring her and say 'inbound, ETA home 05'...

Don't forget the old trick of practising the phonetic alphabet by reading car number plates, out loud if you can manage the embarassment.

Tim

[Maxflyer]

I did much of what has been previously mentined, along with using a cheap airband radio and listening to my local ATC frequency when near to the field. It soon made me realise that there are good RT users, not so good RT users and absolutely awful RT users!

I now fit nicely into one of the aforementioned categories!

[rjt194]

If you have yahoo or msn messengers (aol?) then you can practice with someone using the voice chat.

If you don't have a fellow pilot to practice with you could get them a copy of CAP413 (CAA pdf http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP413.PDF) and have them read through the worked examples playing the ATC part.

[Whirlygig]

there are good RT users, not so good RT users and absolutely awful RT users!

Or there's me - totally unorthodox RT user!! The ATC guys in my area know what I mean and know who I am!!

It's a workload thing and if I am havng a bit of difficulty controlling the heli after changing frequency (for example) and am not totally sure whether I am overhead Great Massingham or West Raynham, then the RT goes to pot but I do hope, if nothing else, I am very clear and AWFULLY well-spoken. Just a little unorthodox!

Cheers

Whirls

[Secret Squire]

there are various websites (mostly american) for spotters which stream live atc feeds, which listening to might be a good plan, learn by osmosis and all that? I did it a bit when I was at that stage.

Cant tell you any off the top of my head, but they are out there

[Monocock]

I would agree with TKF. This is exactll what I did and it works a treat.

However, I did get a bit carried away and found myself doing all sorts of cross countries during the working day and was concerned that I was becoming slightly obsessed! (Voices in head and all that!)

It came to a head when I found myself at a particularly boring dinner party one night and ended up silently "RTing" from Blackbushe to Sandown. The other guests were wondering why I was ignoring them but I seem to recall it was a good flight!!

I think I'm ok now although I have this strange desire to fly under bridges these days but that's another story.....:}

[*Zwitter*]

cheers for the advice chaps - I'll pass it on :)

[MyData]

Take a look at

www.liveatc.net

www.atcmonitor.com

Some of the links and feeds are hit and miss, but when you do get one they are quite useful. I found that the US terminology and structure is slightly different to the CAA wording but you get the idea.