This week we've wrangled three real life air traffic controllers and brought them in to grill them with questions! Our thanks to Clay (from Houston Approach) and Nick & Gio (from Houston Center) for stopping by to drop some knowledge from the controllers' perspective of aviation. We covered everything from how to become an air traffic controller, to their common pilot pet peeves, to the scariest emergencies they've ever worked.
As pilots, we see other pilots all the time. But what about those mysterious voices on the other end of the radio... the air traffic controllers. Sometimes they may seem like robots spitting out clearances at a million miles an hour. Maybe they'll be the voice guiding you to safety if you encounter bad weather or an engine failure in flight. Possibly you've even been lectured by one for failing to comply with an instruction. But believe it or not there are real people behind those voices on the radio, and we've got three of them in studio with us today on the show! Thanks to professional air traffic controllers Clay, Nick, and Gio for joining us on this week's episode of Behind The Prop!
Clear prop! Number two following twin traffic on 3 mile final. JB using runway 25 on a 4-mile final.
This is Behind the Prop with United Flight Systems owner and licensed pilot, Bobby Doss. and it's co-host: major airline captain Designated Pilot Examiner, Wally Mulhearn. Now let's go behind the prop!
What's up Wally? Hey Bobby, how are you? Fantastic, We've talked about it a few times on social media. You guys have sent in your questions and we are going to have a couple of conversations with the air traffic controllers from the Houston area. We have three gentlemen with us today. We have Clay Matheny, Nick McDonald and Gio Handall. Two from Houston center, one from Tracon. Hopefully we all get some good learnings from today. Wally We've been pre prepping here a little bit having some good conversations. I think it's going to be a couple of great shows for all of our listeners. So let's say hi. Gentlemen all right so first and foremost. I didn't even know it was a big process but it came up. How do you become a controller. Like I think. I knew how to get my first job but I heard it's not just the you raise your hand and say hey. I'd like to work in a big tower or something like that. How did Clay tells I. How did you get into being an air traffic controller. A second-generation guy My dad was a controller. All over the place really. But I think in nineteen seventy-seven. He ended up in Houston Worked at Houston up down tracon and tower So as a kid. I wanted to do it. I always want to do it. So when I turned eighteen I joined. The marine corps did five years in the marine corps. Learn how to do basic air traffic And then from there got out had to do. A couple of small jobs worked for continental Ramp tower here in Houston for a while waiting for the FAA to call Then been in ever since. How much has it changed from generation one to generation two. Oh quite a bit Yeah tells them me or my dad tells me some stories. I should say and I was like man that that stuff doesn't fly anymore. More computers I guess. We'll start with Gio tells a little bit how you found this group. Yeah well I think. My path is a little bit more conventional than the military. Were I found a job posting online. And for those who don't know trying to get a government job it. It's quite a process. You have to do your security clearance. There's a medical involved which for the pilots out there equivalent to a second class medical and it took me all said and done about two years from the day that I put in my application to actually getting hired by the FAA and once we all get hired we have to go to the FAA academy. And that's in Oklahoma city and that's where the majority of us learn the basics of air traffic control where you know basic separation and we even do an air traffic basics course which a lot of it is basic aviation things airplane types and a lot of basic stuff that can be covered on a private pilot. Course so just your day we are. How long has that course- the academy in total was. I believe it was three or four months four months. Yeah about four months. The initial course is thirty days and it's optional. Course if there's certain things you can do to get out of the course. But I don't know if there's anyone listening that has applied or is going to apply but always go to the air traffic basics course but overall it's a long process but definitely worth it best job in the world. We beat working for living. I'll say that much and nick. How did how did you get into traffic control. Yeah mine was very similar to Gio. I had another career before this for about ten years in radio like my dad commercial radio and just always wanted to be an airline pilot. And every time. I would go to do it. I would look at how much it costs. That was like what hundred thousand debts. What and then. Yeah just ended up seeing the job posting it usually. It's about a week a week a year or so they have an opening an open call for controllers and you just need a couple years work experience or a college degree and applied ended up getting something like Gio, the security of the medical You have to take an. ACT, SAT test. which is. I always tell people. It's an eight-hour test to make it sound harder but you have eight hours to take the test that usually ends up being three or four hours. But it's some very basic aviation stuff and then some IQ type stuff just. Sat toward a sort of questions and they never tell you nowadays what you scored on it. But they call you back if you pass it and ended up getting the call. I got the invite Oklahoma city and then they tell you before you go to OKC. See whether you're going to be center or terminal which would be approaching tower and ended up. Getting center survived the academy. And they give you a very short list of facilities at the end and Houston was on that list. And my wife and I looked at the and think it was Oakland, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis and Houston were our choices and my wife and I had never been to. I think we've been to Texas once and we'd only been or never been Houston and saw the cost of living was cheap down here and we're like let's go to Houston center and the other one's just sounded cold me. Yes I would have had zero interest in those other locations so I guess any idea. How many controllers are like. I don't even know if there's a number. But I feel like I’ve heard twelve thousand in the. US sounds about right. Yeah so interesting job. Not an easy to get from you. Guys just shared a lot of people talk about how stressful it is. Tell me a little bit. I guess from your perspective. Is it really a stressful job. Is it something that you guys do really all smoke two or three packs a day and voice or is not. That is not what we see in the movies. I guess try. I like to tell people it's ninety nine percent the most chill job in the world with one percent moments of sheer terror. That will terrify you and leave you rocking back and forth in your car and break but No in reality it’s the greatest job in the world Training is very stressful and Oklahoma city.
And then when you get to your facility for about a year your initial training. They try to stress You out in every way just to see if you can survive. I guess and once you once you complete training it just becomes like any other job. It's a kind of develop a routine and you learn how to survive the busy days the weather days and it's a great job I wouldn't trade it for anything if you'll have noticed yet. Nick happens to be the voice of behind the prop podcast and works Houston center as well.
So have you ever hear him. You'll have to be really high, but you might hear him on the radio as well. High, altitude wise really really high.. What makes it stressful. What are the one percenter. What is the. What are the causes. The stress that. I think we see highlighted in the movies For an air traffic controller. I'm with him. You know it's to me. I really don't stress out over this job. You do it so much over and over and over. There's just you know it's just another job but you know weather, emergencies Whether it be a medical emergency or an aircraft emergency Things like that You know you. You're always try to stay few steps ahead. And sometimes something happens to where it changes your plan a little bit and you've got to regroup and come back and so that can stress you out a little bit. But I would say definitely emergencies really. I mean that's the main thing that will get me going. Get my brain going in general or pilots needy or are we pretty subdued as well on the other side of the radio it can get like that it can seem pretty overwhelming on especially when there's a lot of turbulence and that's for us especially in in the center environment where most aircraft up at thirty-five thousand feet. It's a day where thirty-five thousand feet and above is moderate turbulence guess where everybody wants to go. Thirty-three thousand feet and we can only fit so many airplanes at one altitude at any given time. So that's where it can get a little bit stressful trying to accommodate everyone's requests and you know an answer question. Some pilots more needed than others but Generally we try to fill every requests. That's out there at the end of the day. We're service you know. We provide services to the pilots. And especially I try to do whatever I can especially when it comes to rides or shorting up a route when I can. So it doesn't bother me with whenever pilot has a request to think weather days are tough to right. I mean we all. We've all traveled. We've all been delayed. We've all had Wally not wanting to leave the terminal for some reason. Whatever what is it like for a weather day for you guys. I mean if you if you work Houston center and Houston. We've had some pretty bad weather lately. obviously planes just can't get down is holding people all day. Diverting people all day what does that was. That was that create for those of us. That don't see it on our scopes every day. Yeah I mean it's a combination of a lot of things at for us a lot of the ease of our job comes from knowing the root of an airplane knowing they're going Houston to El Paso via this route. But when their son or storms out their aircraft have to start deviating and they're going off the roots. And if there's one whole of the weather everyone's going to start pointing towards that whole and when you can pound that with bad rides in bad turbulence have everyone at the same altitude pointing at the same direction. Then that's where we really earned our money with vectors trying to figure out new routes around the weather but Luckily we do have things like traffic management which They can set up routes pilots on the ground where they can completely route them on the other side of the weather. We also have the center weather service unit which they're essentially meteorologists at our work back in track the weather and they can kind of predict. Okay where's it going to be in an hour and we can start making a plan based on that but there are days where there's just a storm sitting over IAH and we've got a hold airplane and it can be. We can have stack of airplanes from seventeen thousand feet. Thirty-five thousand feet and a lot of people think the hard thing is putting him in holding the hard things actually get out of holding because now we have to get aligned line. Sometimes we have to give them ten miles in between each airplane and when you have a stack of airplanes going up that high it can be quite challenging and those are some of those stressful moments but it really is maybe twenty minutes of working it in but it can seem like an hour when you're in there really working that hard so Clay at the at the lower level at the closer points of the airport. What what's a stressful day for you. Same thing weather, absolutely same thing weather I mean we do the same thing. They a lot of the workforce they set us up and then when we bring them in the only problem is. We reroute guys as well throughout our own airspace. But like you said. Normally there's a clean page. Clean a bit of airspace out there and everybody wants it. So you got departures. You've got rivals. You got the general aviation. That wants to climb. We're on a normal day. I got to GA guy that wants to climb to sixty-five hundred feet. I really don't care. On this day you're going to be at two thousand for a while. But you know sorry because I got a hobby arrival coming in about three. I got departure climbing out. And I got all kinds of stuff going and they all want hit the same spot like I said TME. Helps out quite a bit. You know I mean that's normally at the beginning of weather it's going to like oh my gosh. Let's give these guys in and out. And then we start developing a plan to go around. The weather our Sector TMU and Tower TMU. I believe they work really well together and come up with a plan and we're good from there. I don't think I knew it. And maybe the listeners. Don't know it. But I didn't know there were these banks of arrivals in these banks. Departures are the call. Banks is that. Yeah so these banks I didn't know there was these quotes unquote groupings.
An- and if you guys are working the airspace you must know the banks are coming. You guys have a list of the bank times or is this my imagination. It's just the airlines. That are doing it. We call him pushes. I don't know what you guys call in the airlines. But yeah basically we know like if I’m working in an afternoon shift to three o'clock there's going to be a decent arrival. Push five to six o'clock. It's going to be probably about the busiest of the day. And then there's an evening arrival. Push it about eight and same thing you just like any other job if you work in the drive through at chick fila you know the busy times. Def Con three we need some More nuggets exactly when people get hungry. There's going to be long lines. It's the same thing. It's just the way the flight schedules the way things get scheduled out. You have certain times that are busier than others. And yeah I mean think about it like putting your thumb over a garden hose like a backyard garden hose. Know you have seventy-five-mile-wide sector and fifty. Five miles is closed off with bad weather with thunderstorms while you got the same amount airplanes the now need to go through that remaining little sliver of your space and it's going to be busy and hectic and crazy the stressful times for sure. So you said you call them pushes that brings up a movie that we've probably if you're over twenty-five you've probably maybe seen it called pushing ten. Is that your real life pushing ten. If you haven't seen the movie go watch it day. One at the academy in Oklahoma city is we all have to turn the lights off and watch that movie. Okay maybe a little farfetched. Unfortunately, that's what most of us probably think a day in the life of being controller is all about you squeezing you know a bunch of planes in what don't the know about controllers like what you do where you sit. I mean we. We have these pictures of what I think towers centers look like but when we're talking to nick and Gio for sure you guys aren't in a tower somewhere like where are you sitting or what are you doing. I mean what. What don't we know if you've ever seen like Close encounters third kind is another movie. Where that's I think. That took place at Indy center. In the beginning it's an it's a dark room Dark scopes we sit with a headset on. Usually I guess in a little line of scopes and there's three to four of us in a little line thereby by our scopes and each person is working a sector in our case the sector. Is you know hundred to three hundred miles in diameter. I guess because you're working people really high up in the center in the center environment usually and that's the thing is when we describe our jobs people to people outside of aviation most people don't even know what a center is so I just say I work in the tower yup. It's hard to explain what a center is exactly. But usually we're working largely IFR traffic eleven thousand feet and above Clay. You see a lot more. That lower guy down at Houston tracon. Yeah We do at Houston Tracon we own from the ground sixteen thousand feet and at most places. There's a couple of places where we own a little bit less But we basically Work from west college station east of Beaumont from north Conroe down to the coast and we have a similar setup. I mean we have a. It's basically a big square room and we have scopes that go almost around the entire area Around the entire building. Excuse me and You know from there. It could be you know. There are twenty positions opened up or we could have combined it was only five. You know Late at night there's only two But yeah you're sitting next to each other and getting the job done so obviously crazier for all of us with covid and everything happened for everybody but was it an easy year for. Y'all was it a harder year. For y'all I mean I know the public wants to know about our schedule for us. Man the tower. This airport was on restricted hours for over almost a year if not longer definitely impacted our business it impacted aviation as a whole feels like things are coming back. I think we're almost back and quote unquote normal but Tell us a little bit that you can share with us about what covid was like for ATC. In the center environment. I mean there was some days where we would be expecting our departure push and we just maybe have to airplanes flying through a whole area cause he just didn't know how could you know yeah. It was definitely And it was weird. Seeing all the airlines like American, United, they were flying their aircraft to desert to store them. So I mean just seeing all these airplanes go into random airport and we've okay where are you going like. Oh we're dropping off over there in the desert cause its dry, it’s a lot better for the airplanes and then the second favorite question we would ask is how many people on board. Well we don't get anyone or we got two or three onboard. So that was definitely that was eerie for a while but it's slowly started picking up and actually got to a point where it's so busy where we would be combined on one sector Sectors just being a slice of airspace Or I should say it. We were combined on one position. And we're working five or six frequencies and would have almost normal airplanes for. We were extremely busy. And I know places like hooks. Here they stayed almost just as busy as normal but towards the back end of it was. It was getting pretty busy. We were having a lot of frequency congestion. But now we're a lot more normal configuration and like you said almost back to normal gets you. It was a crazy year I can. I can speak to dozens of GA pilots. It landed intercontinental because there was zero traffic. And I know. I think some of my captain and pilot friends that fly for the bigger airlines. Some were doing cargo that the airlines are doing whatever they can do this to keep the planes in their pilots. Busy so crazy year. Something I like to ask all of our guests no matter who they are some of your pet peeves. We talked a little bit about some of those before we started Clay. I'll start with you because it's so real to the world share some of your pet peeves around flight Followings and or maybe give some tips and tricks to eliminate your pet peeves. I don't know how you address it. Yeah absolutely So the first thing. I'd like to tell pilots that. Don't get to talk to controls a whole lot is the initial VFR flight following requests You know we're good at what we do but we're not You know brain surgeons or anything like that. You know we're not going to remember everything you tell us So you know not only are you not the only one in the sky we also have you know. There could be requesting multiple approaches. You know we’ve got ten other aircraft multiple approaches all the different airports. You know I could be working a sector that works David Wayne Hooks, Conroe, You know Cleveland. There's a bunch of airports actively working at the same time so as far as VFR flight following you know basically keep it. Simple at the beginning You Houston approaches Cessna One two three four five with requests. And then let us go from there. If we don't answer you right away. It's not a big deal. We hear you most likely. I'm typing your call sign and the computer just getting ready. Then I’m going to never miss my call sign like even if I say something really abbreviated November one. Two three four five you know. It's crazy. Are you typing it every time you hear the time. Yeah so. That's the initial. That I want to know I want to know your call sign and that you have some kind of requests for me when I get back to. You know I’ll find out what type of aircraft you are if you're going somewhere outside my airspace. There's a couple. There are two different beacon codes that I can give you. We have local codes and nas codes so like when. I sent it to the center. It's got to be. I got up certain information in it for them to be able to see if it's if it's staying local. It's a lot less information. I really just need to call sign everything else is. I'm just going to remember it where I’m going to type it in myself. Too much information but what’s local. Mean to the piloting our airspace. So if you're going to stay in Houston Tracon’s airspace. No one else is going to see you then. It can just be on our codes for airplane existed. But if it's going outside from here all the way to California it's going to have to go through all those different airspaces you're going to need a national airspace system code So yeah so from there You know let us know you're request from there we'll ask for the first one and don't give me too many. I'm not going to remember five or six or seven of your approaches. Give me the first one Let me know if you're going to miss with me. If you're going to go with tower you want stay in their pattern or if you're going to be a full stop. Whatever the approach is going to tower the approach is going to terminate. Let me know. And like. I said we'll give missed approach instructions you call us back on the way up and we'll go from there and pick up your second question. I got a pet peeve if you got if you don't mind Bobby. One thing I think a lot of pilots on understand is The read back to even something as simple as an altitude change is very important. We learned from day one at the academy if we assign you in altitude and you read it back incorrectly. And we don't catch it. And then you bust the altitude that we assigned guess. Whose fault is that is. That's one hundred percent on the controller. Because you read back what you thought it was and we didn't catch the read back and so even something real simple fix that I’m clearing you to or whatever if we throw something out there be clear with that. Read back because that is important to us. I've heard guys. And I’ve even had it on the tower here when I’m flying. I'm a private pilot by the way and I Was flying into hooks and the guy cleared me to land three five left or Whatever and I just said cleared to land you know I read it back and he said cleared to land three five left. And I said three five left and he go I need it for the tape, cleared land Three five left and I was like ugh I'm a controller. I should know that's come on but that is important. Because if I land on the runway or whatever do something crazy on their he needs that on the tape that he said it and I repeated it back. That was the clearance. That's good information for all of us. So I was going to ask you Clay your points around flight following and shooting practice approaches. Obviously with a safety pilot. When I say I want to go to Conroe shoot the ILS 14. Do I tell you in that in the Initial conversation that I want to go or we're doing practices approaches. What's best I think. A lot of pilots around the flight school ask questions like that. Like what are you really want to know.
And I’m sure there's technique in there's personal preference but what do you think the generally ATC community wants GA pilots to the I think once we get that initial conversation down if I know what type aircraft are and you know right away after we know all that I know where you're at all that stuff You've got your beacon code a radar identified you. Then you can say okay. This is what I want to do And then from there. You let us know. We'll start knocking it out and then like I said we'll go to the second one after that. Okay so just keep the conversation going. And if you don't know what you want to know you're going to ask me them absolutely. Yeah aircraft type or when you are learning the academy said earlier that you learn all these aircraft types a Cessna is not a Cessna like what how do you like pilots or what are you hoping that pilot does to identify themselves as a Cessna One seventy-two enough is. Is there something else that you want from. A Cessna citation. Yeah we actually want the exact type aircraft because it really does make a difference not so much to maybe us on the radar environment. Once you get to tower environment it really does At least in my eyes. I'm guessing model exactly. Yeah you're right. Is that a citation five Sixty what is it you know what. What type of aircraft is it really because the tower. That's all they have to go by. They might be expecting one aircraft and then it gets there and it doesn't really bother them. I don't know. I'm not a tower guy but we want to give as much useful information as we can to every facility around us so yeah. We travel air when I fly. Sometimes I don't think it's a real common type of aircraft. Maybe if you say BE ninety-five they must look something up and they instantly know the speeds and ranges the all have a cheat sheet or a not an acronym but a model type. You can look up in the center world. We have something called a ERIDS is basically a gigantic iPad. That's right our sector where we can put in puts a call sign. We haven't seen we're talking about like a charter airline run example United. It's UAL so we see that all day we know ual's united but there'll be something like a DJE. Where like. I have no idea what that is. I can look that up. And it goes the same for aircraft types where I can put in whatever the aircraft identifier is in the white plain and I can say okay. This is a merlin or piper malibu Now for the most part like we’ll know The most common ones seven thirty-seven obviously C one thirty or something like that but Occasionally there's the weird ones the weird VFR experimental and RV or something like that that that will that will look up. And just we're just curious because it does matter to you. If it's a piston jet multi or single where we can all look at up and most I guess. What are you looking at airspeeds. Is that the biggest thing really had the performance characteristics that aircraft so we have These things called letters of agreement so we have certain routes for turbojet certain routes for Pistons and turboprops. So a lotta times. That's what I’m looking up. It's a weird one. I'll go look up okay. This is a turboprop. Actually so he needs to be at this fix at nine thousand instead of being on this arrival and in even complete change your route as a few looks up something like the driller five arrival into IAH it'll say turbojet only so if you come over and you’re a Cessna one seventy-two and the driller five arrival. Well we know that's not going to work cause you probably can't do any close to two hundred eighty knots but I have said skyline heavy one eighty-two. Yeah that makes a difference. Just do that to try and be cool. Wally, you fly something bigger and heavier. What what's a pet peeve that you have. Gio give us something that is one of your pet peeves so for me. What it boils down to is just a lack of situational awareness and by that I mean pilots who check on without kind of just testing the water for just listening for a second and as an instructor as well. That's what I teach my students like whenever you go to a new frequency. Listen for a second. See what's going on there can be an emergency.
You could maybe be hearing the back end of a read back and or a clearance and in that case the pilot's going to read back and if you step on if you hit the push to talk right when you're doing those two pilots talking over each other and allow them to get that read back again because we didn't hear it so just you know not having that situational awareness to know hates busy on this frequency any. Listen up or you know. Pilots you check on with some sort of shortcut requests where we already shut down the first five airplanes at checked on for some sort of weather or a lot of stuff out of our control where there's a traffic management initiative for the whole country. It says we can't shortcut anyone going to ski country at. That's probably the best example. I can think of there in the winter. Everyone wants to go to aspen right. I can't shortcut anyone going to aspen them to stay on the route because they have certain arrival times they have to meet so someone will check on. Hey looking for direct red table. I'm unable the next person which look in direct red table unable red table. Then it's just adding to the frequency congestion. So that's the biggest thing in recommends on the frequency. If you hear a controller give clearance give a second for someone else. Read it back because a lot of times it could be on a different frequency where you can hear them. But you can't hear the other pilot so give a second for read back and you know there's generally not a super rush to check in if you have to run a checklist. If you want to grab the ATIS. Because that's a lot of times if you're looking for a practice approach requests the first thing they're going to ask you for advice when you have ATIS information alpha at college station so do what you have to do before rushing to check in. I guess talked a little bit earlier about checking them before we started recording. What what's too long too short. I mean we've all heard the pilot in clearly tune in the new station. Push the button. Say they're there with you to twelve thousand feet. They haven't listened to a word. They clicked finishing spinning the. That's too quick three minutes too long. Four minutes too long three minutes. I'd say within a minute or two is good when I’m flying to. We were talking before. I like to grab the ATIS between frequencies if I’m coming in because you know that's the first thing we are probably going to ask you to if you have information tango so take a minute or two. That's fine. do what you got to do. But I’d say inside two three minutes something like that get over there somewhat soon and monitoring a frequency you know try to keep the old one the new one in the box so you don't totally lose it and if they have an instruction for you they can still get a hold of you perfect and Gio you said you're instructing you're are assistant chief here at united flight systems and Nick you are a student and voice of the behind the prop podcast is being a controller. Similar to being a pilot are there. Any comparisons are all controllers pilots. That's a great question. So generally speaking. I would say that less than the majority are pilots. I mean it's very few are actually Pilots, controllers speaking But there are some things that definitely helped me being a pilot and control role. Because I the pilot and then I became an air traffic controller so knowing well actually just flying for so long. I kind of really heard air traffic controllers talk so going to the academy. I kind of had that head start already. I kind of knew the flow and the cadence of being an air traffic controller. So a lot of that did help but there can be actually some downsizes a lotta times. I'm going way out of my way if I see a GA guy I’m going to do whatever I can to you know to get a short cut. So I’m kind of guy at work you know if there's a guy checking in I’m all I’m watching out for him but it has helped. I've had cases of pilots who had an issue like their landing gear and a piper arrow where they were concerned that they can't drop the gear because they had an electrical failure. But me knowing the systems knowing that you could still drop the gear even if you had an electrical failure in a piper arrow able to help them out so I would say there's definitely some advantages to it so far like I said it's helped me quite a bit okay. I got a couple of last questions. These are my personal questions. Because I want to be a better pilot to seems like every time I leave the Houston airspace. I get confused between them. I talking to approach departure guys. And I’m thinking of y'all in a room somewhere with a bunch of dark lights and scopes everywhere. I swear I get told to contact. Houston departure sometimes. I get to told the contacts approach. What should I say in those situations. Clay that's probably more your field there honestly as far as an approach controller. We really don't care. I mean we. Don't we see you like unless you're calling for a VFR flight plan like you said. Said hand off or whatever we already see you out there. We know who you are so you just call Houston, you can call us approach departure. Whatever it is. But typically that I approach control. You talk to after you depart an airport. You're going to talk to Houston Departure but then later on down the line you might hear me call myself. Houston approach to somebody else. It's just it is what it is. It's one of those things but yeah for us. It doesn't really matter. How important is it that I picked Houston like for, I think early on when I started longer cross-country flights. I got real on Lake Charles. Am I on my Mississippi back to Houston is that is that critical for us pilots and is it important that we do it to be correct and not get lazy. I guess is my point. I think in general as pilots and controllers. We like to do things correct and for situational awareness It's probably good idea to know who you're talking to. But a lot of the we work the air carriers like the air France flies the A380s late at night and by the time they've come from France they've been in the air however. What is that ten twelve hours or something like that. They just call us control. I mean they've had so many different facilities and everything like that. But yeah if you don't know just you know just check on with Houston or Lake Charles or whatever it may be your ATC and then try to figure out where you are and get it correct. Next time I guess but it's not the biggest deal in the world. Wally do You have any questions. I got my personal out of the way. We're going to obviously record more with these guys. But what what's your thoughts as we wrap up to the. I do have one question and that has to do with the ident- feature on the transponder. What I see a lot of times on check rides coming into class D airspace and the applicant calls up Hooks Tower. Conroe tower whatever you know we're fifteen miles to the west inbound for touch and goes with information bravo and the controller say squawk one two three four he reaches down put one two three four and the transponder and hits the ident- button and so I actually looked up and it's not in the regulations but it is in the in the aim and basically it says don't push the ident button until the controller unless the controller tells you to ident. So what do you guys see when someone identity and is it a big deal. I think it's a big deal. Because I’ve seen countless number of applicants do it and we've haven't been yelled at yet so I don't think it's a big deal so what Do you guys see and do you care if somebody or do you want them. We'll just center. Because I’m sitting here next to Wally but I don't want to go against the aim. I feel bad doing it because people are smarter than me. Put that together for a long time. But I would say there's no disadvantage to throw the ident in the out there when you're first being radar identified. It's just something that if anything it's going to help the controller for us. It's three horizontal lines very small that come up over the target to just pointed out you know who you are on the scope Just always assumed by like bleed like now like a submarine on this bob squawking emergency or something like that or hijack is going to make a much bigger. You know notification if you will on our scope but I can't see any disadvantage to when your first being identified to throwing an ident out there a lot of times. When I fly out of habit I hit the button and I’ve never been yelled at for it and I don't mind so I agree. Same thing I mean you might have somebody ask you'd ident again. I'm just so it was kind of formal formerly done. But I don't see issue and most of the time I was going to squawk and ident at the same time. Get knock it all out so not a big deal. Well that'll wrap up this episode of behind the podcast with the ATC. We will have them back very soon. And ask them all the rest of the questions that we didn't even get through today as always fly safe and stay behind the prop.
Thanks for listening. Thanks for checking out the Behind The Prop podcast. be sure to click subscribe and check us out online at BehindTheProp.com behind the prop is recorded in Houston, Texas. Show creator and host is Bobby Doss. Co-host is Wally Mulhearn. This show is for entertainment purposes Only. and not meant to replace actual flight instruction. Thanks for listening and remember: fly safe!