Friday, 6 December 2013

Join the club

As advertised, the Waterloo flight was tricky. There was a time when multitasking meant trying to work the yoke and throttle at the same time and maybe making a radio call. Now I’m trying to hold altitude, heading, map read and navigate all at the same time. As well as making coherent radio calls.

So guess who, when entering what was obviously a really busy control zone around Waterloo, managed to step on someone else’s transmission (despite the fact that I always listen before pressing the trigger to make sure that I don’t do that) and then put the icing on the cake by accidentally hitting the “standby” button on the transponder when asked to squawk ident. Thus ensuring that I wiped out my transponder code!

Cue one slightly tetchy ATC person. She was obviously unimpressed with my entire time in her airspace and let me know it. Her tone varied between talking  v e r y s l o w l y , like to a small child or scolding me like a school teacher would. To be fair I was probably deserving of her ire. I wasn’t exactly a smooth operator and she obviously had her hands full but it has been a long time since I managed to annoy ATC like that.

I guess I can add Waterloo tower to the list of people whom I’ve p!ssed off in the air.

The list is long but distinguished!


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