This book is intended both as a ready reference for seasoned pilots, and a guide to new airline pilots who need to perform at the level expected in the highly demanding air traffic situation at busy and rapidly growing airports around the world. I was motivated to write this book as a result of my experience in the airline both as a Training Captain and an Instrument Rating Examiner. A lot of the pilots joining the airline in which I operated lacked formal radiotelephony (R/T) training and were consequently poor materials for the bulk of their co-pilot duties, which was mainly communication…

Throughout the book, there is an emphasis on making the transmissions as real as possible since it is felt that the usefulness of a technical manual lies in how well the materials learned from the book can be applied to practical situations. In communication, much of what one perceives depends on what one expects to hear. Without this expectation, one may not understand what is said, no matter how clearly the words sound. A visit to an auction sale or the race tract will attest to the verity of my last statement. There, although the words are in English, you may not understand a word because you have no expectation of what to hear. What I have done in this book is emphasize the things that you should expect to hear so that when you enter the airspace, you will find that you are able to understand much of the conversations from the very first minute…

Note that when referring to numbers with decimal points, you are to pronounce only the word “Dayseemal”. Do not include the word “point”. In addition, note that numbers are pronounced as individual component numerals. The FAA wants you to say “point” but would honor the ICAO use of “Dayseemal” in place of point . Examples:

14 - One-four (WUN FOW-er)
150 - One-five-zero (WUN-FIFE-ZEE-RO)
1600 - One-six-zero zero (WUN SIX ZEE RO-ZEE RO or (WUN-SIX-HUNDRED)
25,000 - two-five-thousand (TOO-FIFE-TOUSAND)
27879 - Two-Seven-Eight-Seven-Nine (TOO-SEVen-AIT-SEV-en-NIN-er)
121.5 – (WUN-TOO-WUN DAYSEEMAL FIFE.)…

The strength of the transmitted message in terms of clarity, is subjectively scaled. The scale is subjective in that each recipient of a message decides whether or not the message is clear. Signal strength is rated from one to five, five being the most effective while the lower end of the scale terminates in one.


5 - Very effective
4 - Not so effective
3 - Intermittent
2 - Hardly readable with a lot of background noise
1 - Not readable or unreadable
2

If you read somebody 3, for example, it is advisable to ask for a repetition of each word. You would make this request in the following manner:


“I read you 3 (TREE), words twice, over.” …


Since we want to be as brief as possible in order not to congest the frequency, we usually report only the minutes past each hour when the party being addressed understands the hour we are referring to. This is usually the current hour. For instance, if when over a radio facility, “KD” you reported 08:35, and your next reporting point “KA” was only twelve minutes away, you would report it as “FOW-er SEV-en” (47) representing the minutes past eight and not the entire 08:47. However, when you are giving your estimates, each time your estimate changes to a new hour, you must state the whole four digits of the time. For example, consider a journey from point A to point B, which has five reporting points for which estimates are required. These points and their estimates for a hypothetical journey are as follows:


Depart A 08:10
Estimate (est) TJ 08:55
Est KK 09:20
Est RK 09:35
Est IN 10:07
Est BN 10:28
Arrival B 10:49


In reporting the above estimates, you need only say the following:


Departed Alpha, ZEE RO AIT WUN ZEE RO, estimate TANG GO JEW LEE ETT, FIFE, FIFE, KEY LOH, KEY LOH, ZEE RO NIN-er TOO ZEE RO, ROH ME OH KEY LOH, TREE FIFE, IN DEE AH NO VEM BER, WUN ZEE RO ZEE RO SEV-en, BRAH VOH NO VEM BER TOO AIT, arrival BRAH VOH, FOW-er NIN-er.


In a normal position report, item “c” in the typical R/T message above, would include four parts that have to be given in a particular sequence.


These are: (1) Position on ground over which you are. This could be a Very High Frequency Omni-directional Radio Range (VOR) facility, an intersection of VOR radials, abeam a non-directional beacon (NDB), or over an NDB. The position could even be given by the geographical coordinates on an Inertial Navigation System, (INS), Global Positioning System (GPS), Loran C, etc. (2) Your time at the position, (3) Your altitude, and (4)Your next position and estimated time at that position and optionally, (5) the next position after that. Specific ordering of the information is required because it aids reception when the ATC controller knows what to expect to hear. It could be quite confusing otherwise. In addition to these, you will include what is called PIREPS or Pilot Reports of Meteorological observations.

Request: This word is very handy. It is like a master word. It is a shorthand for “please, I wish to …” or “could you please permit me to …”, etc. You will find that in R.T we do not use the word “please” since it is implicit in “request”.


The instrument rating (I/R) renewal test is given every thirteen months to keep an I/R in vigor in countries like the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries. In the United States, the I/R test is given only as an initial rating and no renewal is necessary as long as the pilot flies a specified minimum number of hours annually to keep current… Thus the I/R renewal test procedure outlined in this book will focus on the requirements of a Commonwealth licensed pilot.