TransWorld

When I was in college, I DJed on the college radio station. I automatically dropped my voice an octave and made it smooth. Just followed what I heard growing up, on the radio at home. Thanks for the psychological explanation.

flensr

2 reasons. Like I said in my first post above, if you sound like you're calm cool and collected, everyone assumes you know what you're doing and everything is good, nobody questions you. Get excited or raise the pitch of your voice and it just gets everyone's attention like something's not right. Then you get people questioning your call, your decisions, everything you do. This is a nearly universal truth. Morgan Freeman could read just about any nonsense and people would pay to hear him say it without even processing the words he's saying, because he just sounds like he knows what he's doing and everything is right with the world when he's talking. People pay to hear James Earl Jones tell people to do stuff, because his voice has a uniquely confident command quality that makes people simply not question what he's saying. You hear him say something and most of us kind of assume it's ok, he's in charge and everything is fine.

The second reason is that you never know when you're gonna be on the news. If you're calm cool and collected on the radio, you instantly get the benefit of the doubt in the public arena especially from people who have absolutely no idea what it's like being a pilot. If you sound cool, you clearly must be cool and doing it right. Stutter, get squeaky, high pitched, anxious, panic, all that sticks out in a radio call and our brains just highlight it as something going wrong, and since the pilot is the MFWIC (mofo whats in charge) it must be his fault or he must suck if he's squeaking in panic on the radio.

So... every single radio call, slow it down, drop the voice an octave, throw in a little drawl without slurring the words. Don't forget, one of our role models growing up was the story of the Edwards test pilot who was stuck in a wildly out of control aircraft with no way of ejecting. He knew that this particular malfunction had killed pilots before, and he knew he was the next to die. Yet he hopped on the radio and in as clear of a voice as he could manage he continued to read out test parameters hoping that the information he transmitted would save the NEXT guy. Listen to Sully's radio transmissions again. He's speaking clearly without slurring, his voice is low but within a normal range for a guy who is not panicking, and the only hint that he's in the fight of his life is that his transmissions start getting shorter and ever so slightly faster. Cool competence under stress. If you don't do it every radio transmission just to establish the habit pattern, the first time you really get in a world of poop inflight your radio transmission is going to sound like a teletubby on fire being chased by a tiger. Not a good image, and again you never know when you're gonna be on the news.

tnkrdrvr

“the first time you really get in a world of poop inflight your radio transmission is going to sound like a teletubby on fire being chased by a tiger. Not a good image, and again you never know when you're gonna be on the news.”

So hilarious and so true. Controlllers, other pilots, and the general public have no idea what’s going on in your cockpit. Cool, concise radio transmissions will get you what you need faster and convey that you are already doing everything that can be done.

TransWorld

And if that second pilot is on the ground, how are you going to communicate effectively?

My mom used to go to the doctor. He asked how did she feel. Not good. What’s wrong? I don’t know. Where does it hurt? I don’t know. What is your symptom? I just don’t feel good. It turned into a game of 50 questions. She came home, and she said her Doctor didn’t fix her. She eventually died, of natural causes, at age 94. She wanted her tombstone to read, “I told you there was something wrong with me.”

Such is the problem of a lack of effective communications.

tnkrdrvr

Freaking out on the radio won’t advance communications. Calmly and succinctly explaining what you are dealing with will. However, the issue with having one pilot remote will always be that a pilot is taught to aviate, navigate, communicate. The remote pilot is just some guy in a dark room sipping coffee with no more skin in the game than ATC. I won’t really care what he or she thinks. I’m effectively single pilot (in your scenario) and my job is to fly the airplane, point it towards a good airfield, and then communicate my intentions with whoever needs to know.

METO Guido

Meanwhile, behind L1, "He did say 25L, RIGHT???"

viewfromtop

Hey folks, I don't check this much except when I post my cartoon theses days, just busy you know? Honestly delighted my little cartoon triggered such a cool dialogue! The only other other point I'll throw in there, is my cartoon was pointing out the "weathered mumble" more than the "Wolf-Man Jack" radio DJ voice. The weathered mumble that the Living The Dream cartoon made fun of kills me!

Good stuff!

Any-hoo, a little late...

https://www.coffeeandpretzels.com/

Beech Dude

On point and perfect! Oh the sacrifices we take...

highfarfast

Yeah, a lot of wolf man jacks completely missed that.

And on this one, yeah, I completely avoid talking about where I'm going. It doesn't even have to be something like Hawaii. A 10 hour overnight in Cincinnati sounds like a vacation to my wife for some reason.

viewfromtop

highfarfast,

Ha! Now THAT is a potential cartoon! Well done!
(Goes to support that half my stuff is written by people mumbling something off-the-cuff at work! I just draw a crummy picture to go with it!)

Here we go...

https://www.coffeeandpretzels.com/