Twelve ways to drive Tower Controllers up their glass walls!

[Tore Sætre]

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Twelve ways to drive Tower Controllers up their glass walls!

1) Equip your aeroplane with at least one very poor quality radio which will

transmit nothing but squawks and squeals. (It's important to use a good

receiver so that you can hear the Controller trying to reach you). The

busier the airport the better, because your unintelligible gibberish will

block out everyone else, and if you really work at hogging the frequency,

the traffic congestion will grow to unbelievable proportions in short order.

No fair looking at the Tower cab during all this, since they will no doubt

hit you with a flashing white light (return to the ramp) in an effort to

unclog the jam-up. When you figure the Controllers have had just about all

they can take, switch to your good transmitter and say eagerly, "How do you

read this transmitter?" You will be cleared for an immediate takeoff, with

the Controller's best wishes for an extended cross-country. . . One way.

2) Make your initial call to a busy Tower ". . . ten miles east" when you're

really ten miles west of the airport. The Controller will schedule your

entry and pattern sequence from the east so wait until you're no more than

two miles out to let him know your true position, and watch him scramble to

readjust things. Besides, this will give other pilots some real-world

practise at dodging head-on traffic.

3) This is a variation of the call-in-from-the-wrong-direction trick. Pick a

very busy day and wait until you're only two miles from the airport to call

the Tower. It doesn't matter a whole lot from which direction you approach

when you're in this close, and an unexpected entry into a pattern full of

aeroplanes is in itself enough to set off some frantic controlling. There's

a reasonable chance that you'll get a landing clearance ahead of everybody

else. The Controller may consider that getting you on the ground in short

order is the lesser of two evils.

4) Equally effective on the ground or in the air, this little gem requires a

specific set of circumstances; namely, when several aeroplanes are getting

ready to taxi, or when you find yourself at the end of a long line of

inbounds to a terminal seething with airborne traffic. On the ramp, for

example you should wait until at least four or five pilots ahead of you have

called "ready to taxi," and each one of them has been patiently briefed by

the Ground Controller on the runway, winds and altimeter setting. (Really

brown it up by waiting for a day when the Controller is bound by local

policy to advice you of "men and machines working both sides of the parallel

taxiway, heavy construction equipment crossing the taxiway two thousand feet

from the departure end of the runway, taxi on the right side to avoid fresh

paint on the centreline of the taxiway.") Even though you've heard all the

good news five times and could repeat it verbatim, don't bother to tell

Ground that you "have the numbers"; just call in "ready to taxi," and see if

he can do it all over again without losing his cool.

5) Here's one that's a mettle tester for Controllers and fellow aviators. It

will work only when you're number one for takeoff at an airport logging an

arrival or departure every minute or so. When the Tower advises that you're

"cleared for immediate takeoff," go through your before-takeoff checklist

once more just to be sure you haven't missed anything, then ever so slowly

start moving towards the runway. There aren't many Controllers who will be

able to contain themselves, especially if you amble out to the centreline

just in time to make the guy on short final go around.

6) Fly out-of-sight patterns. Turn downwind when the airport is just barely

visible on the horizon, extend it to the limit of prevailing visibility,

don't turn base until fuel exhaustion becomes a possibility and fly the

final approach as slowly as possible. This will test the Controller's vision

as well as his sense of fair play, for a sneaky one may try to land several

other flights ahead of you. When the Tower asks you to extend your pattern

so he can get a couple of long suffering departures off the ground, that's

the time to cut 'er close. A sure way to find out if the Controller knows

that aircraft on final approach have the right of way.

7) After landing at a completely strange airport (the bigger and more

complex the better), don't bother to ask Ground Control how to get to where

you want to go. Just say "34 Alpha to the ramp" as though you know the

airport like the home 'drome, and drive down the nearest taxiway. More than

likely you'll soon be involved nose-to-nose with a DC-10 or something

equally non-turn-aroundable on a taxiway, and then let the Controller

unscramble things. A variation of this ploy is to turn onto an active

runway, and see if the men in the Tower notice. A great way to find out if

they're controlling traffic or playing Chinese Checkers.

8) There are two ideal situations that will get you the most out of this

one, and if you set it up correctly, you might even combine them for twice

the effect. In the first case, you should be leading a parade of several

aircraft down the approach to a long, long runway with one taxiway within a

thousand feet or so of the approach end, the other one a mile and a half

away at the far end. When you're cleared to land, slow up so that all the

people behind you have to S-turn and slow-fly and make 360s, then land on

the threshold, roll slowly past the first turnoff and go all the way to the

other end at no more than twenty miles per hour. Listen carefully to see if

the Controller can handle himself with aplomb as he orders three or four

missed approaches.

The daily double is yours when there is a gaggle of planes lined up waiting

for takeoff. By landing short and rolling long you will also cause them to

be delayed, further complicating the Tower's problems. If this game had

points, you'd get a bagfull for putting these two together.

9) Here's another that may blow a Controllers mind when the pattern is

bank-full; wait until you're well established on final approach with two or

three behind you, then let the Tower know you've changed your mind, this one

will be a full stop. Of course you must have set him up with a long series

of touch-and-gos before you drop the bomb. What the heck - those pilots

behind you probably needed some go-around practise anyway.

10) "Tower, 34 Alpha ready for takeoff" when you are number ten in line

isn't so bad, but you've only begun; as soon as everybody moves up a notch,

call the Tower again and repeat every time the line advances. By the time

you get to the head of the class, you may have a Controller tearing his

hair.

11) Wait for a true fair-weather day when everybody and his brother are out

flying and the airport is the centre of attention for a swarm of

propeller-driven bees. From ten miles out, call the Tower and identify

yourself, making sure to specify your exact position (say "ah-h-h-h" between

landmarks while you look over the side to make sure), taking as much time

for this transmission as possible. As soon as the Controller has digested

all that meaningless information, he'll ask if you're landing at his

airport, whereupon you execute the master stroke by informing him that you

are just requesting permission to pass through his Control Zone.

You know that Control Zones are of concern only when the airport is

reporting less-than-basic-VFR weather, but does he know that? A Controller

whose goat is easy to get will ask you to report entering and leaving the

'zone,' which gives you the opportunity to bug him several more times, but

most Tower people figure it's less trouble to clear you on through than

explain that they don't really care - especially when they find that you're

flying at 9500 feet above the ground. Want to drive the botherspike a bit

deeper? Call the Tower when you're five miles out whether he asks you to or

not, hit him again directly overhead and once more at the five miles point

outbound. If you can operate this procedure with Trick No. 1, the unreadable

transmitter you'll have done a bang-up job.

12) Last in the even-dozen of Tower-teasing tricks is another variation of a

theme. When you complete your high pass a-la No. 11, turn around and come

back the other way, but at an altitude of 1000 feet AGL. This time you're

right down there with 'em, well under the 3000-foot ceiling of the Airport

Traffic Area. If at all possible, push the aeroplane past the legal speed

limit of 156 knots (so they won't be able to put the binocs on your

registration number as you smoke by the Tower), fly right over the middle of

the field (no sweat, you're all of 200 feet above pattern altitude - if any

students or Sunday flyers aren't paying attention to their altimeters and

get a little high on downwind that's their problem) and of course you're not

going to bother the Controller for permission to fly through his back yard.

Do keep your receiver on Tower frequency, though; you'll be the subject of

an interesting one-way conversation, and you can eavesdrop the frantic

warnings to the student on downwind who's followed by a Sunday flyer, and

they're both a little high.

------------------

Tore Sætre

Oslo, Norway

E-mail: tore.satre@iname.com

[Endret av Tore Sætre 14-11-2000.]

[Fred Vonstett]

Hei Tore,

Hyggelig å se at du har funnet veien til TradeWind Caribbean Airlines (TCA).

Finner deg ikke på assignmentlisten for november ;-(

Håper du og andre fra norge finner det verd å bli medlem. TCA er en av de aller første VA og det beste hva menneskelighet og humør angår. Alle bryr seg om hverandre og det er en fin atmosfære og masse hjelp å få vedr. flightsimming.

Mye goodies i denne topic ;-))

Da jeg alikevel nevner Caribbean her, så legger jeg ved en link med ny scenery for området beregnet for Fs2000.

http://www.dreamwater.net/biz/wilkes/IWI/"'>http://www.dreamwater.net/biz/wilkes/IWI/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.dreamwater.net/biz/wilkes/IWI/

Mvh

Fred Vonstett

[Sander Johansen]

Før dere distribuerer til flyklubber/skoler etc...endre heading til "Twelve ways to drive wannabe airline-pilots out of business"

Det er en brutal virkelighet der ute.......

[image]http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/shocked.gif'>http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/shocked.gif[/image] [image]http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/shocked.gif[/image] [image]http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/tongue.gif[/image] [image]http://www.flightsim.no/ubb/images/icons/grin.gif[/image]

Sander Johansen

ATCO

Oslo ATCC