What is the most difficult part of pilot training? Almost everyone will say: “Talking on the radio.” However, even beginners can sound good on the radio if they apply a few simple rules. I’ll first discuss those rules and then I’ll give some tips that all pilots can use to improve their radio skills.

The four Ws of radio communication

Usually the most difficult radio call for a pilot is the first one: the “initial call”. However, each initial call (and many subsequent calls) only needs to remember the four W’s:

• Who am I calling?
• Who I am?
• Where I am?
• Where am I going, what am I doing or what do I want to do?

Let’s take two examples of this, one for an uncontrolled field and one with a control tower.

As you prepare to enter the traffic pattern in an uncontrolled field, you will typically make an announcement like:

“Milltown traffic (who am I calling?), Cessna 12345 (who am I?) entering 45 Lee (where am I?), runway 22 to land at Milltown (what am I doing?).

With a control tower, you could say instead:

Ocala Tower (who am I calling?), Cessna 12345 (who am I?) eight miles north at 2500 with Charlie (where am I? — and add ATIS), landing in Ocala (what do I want to do? ).

Once you’ve established communication, you don’t need to use all four Ws for all your communication. Instead, it will simply read the critical instructions back to the controller so that it knows it has received them. For example, if the controller asks you to enter right downwind for Runway 24, you would respond: “Cessna 12345 will enter right downwind for Runway 24.”

Try out different scenarios with your friends or a flight instructor, and pretty soon you’ll know what to say every time.

Advice

Even when you know what to say, speaking on the radio still takes some practice. Here are some tips that will have you talking like a pro in no time.

1. Listen to ATC communications. If you don’t have a radio that receives aviation frequencies, see if you can borrow one from another pilot or your flight school for a week. Hear what pilots tell ATC on their initial call and how they respond to ATC instructions. Try to listen for ground, tower, approach and center frequencies if you can.
2. Write down what you are going to say before making your initial radio call. You can even create fill-in-the-blank scripts to do this. After a few weeks of this, most people can make calls on their own, but you may still want to write down the complicated calls.
3. If you are a student pilot, be sure to say so on your initial call so that ATC is more careful how they handle you.
4. Don’t worry if you forget something. Even experienced pilots sometimes forget to tell the controller their altitude or that they have ATIS. Don’t worry, the drivers will prompt you for something if you have forgotten it.
5. Study Chapter 4 and the Pilot/Controller Glossary in the Aeronautical Information Manual for recommended phraseology.

If all else fails, use plain language! Not all situations lend themselves to recommended ATC phrases or you may simply forget how to say something. Once I was leaving an unknown airport, and when I called to ground, I suddenly realized that I had no idea where I was in the airport. The call went something like this: “Littletown ground, Cessna 12345, ummm…” (at this point I was looking around like crazy) “I’m at the Chevron sign, ready to roll with Delta, leaving for the west.” Ugh, saved by the Chevron gas sign! Ground found me and let me roll.