John over at Aviation Mentor Blog blogged today that "All in all, a great day to be a pilot." He went on with a few examples of humorous exchanges with ATC that he overheard while flying a Caravan from California to Oregon and back.
While my flights today were nowhere near as long, I had the pleasure of overhearing one of those exchanges that just made us all laugh...
Today was my first IFR cross-country flight with my instructor and when we were returning from CRQ, ATC informed us that they were going to vector us from V23 across the approach course to the ILS of 19R at SNA for right hand entry to the approach. This is not too uncommon given that there are mountains to the east of the approach course that would make vectors to final from the south with a left-hand entry dangerous (as seen graphically in this approach chart).
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Shortly after crossing the approach course we overheard a conversation between ATC and a pilot for whom, English was not their primary language. Every time that ATC would tell the pilot that she could descend at her own discretion, she would reply
Cessna 1234 at 4 thousand 5 hundred."
The controller rephrased this close to a dozen times before she started to clue in and said something to the effect of
what altitude do you want me at?"
to which he replied
I don't really care where you put your plane"
to which she replied that she was going to stay at 4,500 feet.
The radio was dead silent as I'm sure all pilots in hearing distance were either laughing in their cockpits or shaking there heads when the controller came back on to anyone who was listening that he
want(ed) to see how she's going to land her plane at 4,500 feet."
Perhaps it was something that you had to be there to fully get. Perhaps it is time for me to start recording audio on my flights for later playback 'cause this exchange was priceless.
In case you are wondering how the flight went, my performance on the ILS at SNA was MUCH better than I did at CRQ. I don't know why but I think I was too tense at CRQ and just seemed to be too ham-handed in my corrections, and slow to boot.
I was spotting and correcting trends on the localizer and the glide slope much better at SNA. About the only excitement came as we were coming down the ILS 19R. Tower wanted us to move over to 19L and Ron asked if we could take it down to minimums before sidestepping and tower replied they were OK with that.
We got down to about 300 feet when Ron decided I should go ahead and come out from under the hood rather than waiting to hit minimums since as we were coming down, tower was positioning an airliner onto 19R. You can imagine them begining the turn from taxiway Lima to 19R watching this Cirrus continue down the glideslope right at them.
Making that sidestep means transitioning from a 5701x150 foot runway to a 2887x75 foot runway that is over a football field to the left of primary runway (as seen in this airport diagram from FAA)!
While this is not a dangerous manuever by any means, it does make for a rather quick transition to VFR flying. I ballooned a bit on the landing as I felt I was flaring too low and ended up overcompensating. I suppose most piplots are never as happy with their own landings. All in all though, any day you get to fly makes it a great day!
