During a Q&A session at the Runway Incursion seminar on October 14th, Tom Williams laid out some guidelines on radio calls he would like to hear.

• If you want flight following, please ask for it during your taxi call. Gives us the needed time to work things out with Cascade.
• If you want to stay in the pattern, think about saying that in your initial taxi call.
• Or, even that you're a student pilot.
• Be sure to read (parrot) back any restrictions to your taxi operations.
• Be at the hold line when you announce you are ready for take-off. The time it takes to get from the run-up area is valuable when the tower is trying to get you airborne in front of an airplane landing. At the very least, be close to and moving towards the hold line.
• Listen for radio talk to/from the aircraft taking off behind you. You'll help things out by telling the tower you are offsetting or turning if it wasn't established earlier.
• Don't expect Medford to clear you "into position and hold" or "into position and wait" (Latest international terminology). They elect not to use this clearance. But, you may want to be ready for this at another towered airport.
• In the pattern, learn to be a parrot. It's the easiest way to ensure all parties know what's expected.
• Don't be afraid to ask the tower to repeat.
• During slower times when only one controller is in the tower, consider that they are sometimes working the "other" frequency. Wait for the tower to respond to someone reading back a clearance on the ground frequency.
• On your initial call-up inbound, please add your intentions if other than a full stop.
• Especially important for the instrument approaches. Cascade may not have relayed your intentions to the tower.
• If you are asked to make a low approach instead of a touch and go, deal with it. The tower has a good reason - probably to expedite traffic flow (departures, or some faster plane is on your butt).
• Requesting a long landing is a nice courtesy. Lets the tower know your intentions.
• Get off the runway safely and in good time. Don't exit onto runway 27 unless you have permission.
• Get ALL the aircraft past the hold line when exiting the runway.
• Either while airborne or after landing, let the tower know your intentions.

Jim Pieser, of PDX, presented a number of reasons for runway incursions. I'll call him when I get back into town and post them. Some of them were:

• After receiving and reading back instructions correctly, the aircrew didn't comply (I've done this!).
• Tower operators not seeing an incursion before it happens.
• Pilots not looking both ways before taking or crossing a runway.
• Pilots not checking their position accurately when on the ground.

So, this is what I had in mind.

I get a number of tips, ideas and notes as I stumble around. It seems that I need to share....

Let me know.

If I haven't configured this blog correctly, and you can't give feedback on it, e-mail me at don@aeroimages.net.

Happy Landings.