"Courtesy" ATC Calls
 

I'm only a student pilot, and recently during a group ground school lesson the instructor mentioned that it is against the FARs to give a "courtesy call" to ATC as you are not speaking your full intentions upon first communication.

For example, say there are multiple aircraft attempting to talk to Ground at a very busy airport. It appears relatively common (and maybe smart?) to simply call in "Anytown Ground, Skyhawk 1234A" and wait for a response instead of going forward with your entire spiel and canceling out another transmission.

Is this an example of real world versus the legal world?

Thanks

Listen before you leap
 

Real life: judge the freq congestion and xmit as little or as much as required to get you on ATCs radar (pun intended).

FARs: Not familiar (or forgot) if one exists.

It's not a good practice to give the "courtesy call". If you have a question, call up and say you have a question. If it's busy, they are hoping you are going to be as efficient as possible so they can move on to the next aircraft. I wouldn't say that it's "against the FARs", that's a little extreme.

You don"t want to "that person" in class but it would be interesting to ask the the instructor, "Hey, what page is that on so I can highlite it."

Radio contact procedures are outlined in chapter 4 of the AIM, which is not regulatory.
The basic who you're calling, who you are, where you are, what you want and what ATIS you've got. But they even say don't overload the controller. As pointed out above, go with the flow. All that being said, I can't count how any times I've sent the complete message only to get back, "Ah, who's calling?

Around Bravo airspace I will announce Cessna xxxx, and they will either say VFR traffic calling approach stand by, or go ahead. Never had any complaints from ATC.

We checked into Eielson AFB for a training detachment once and during the in-brief ATC informed us not to make 'courtesy calls' to them and to check in with all of the information they required of us on initial contact.

I told my students that we would try it and play by their rules, but that it was my experience that it would lead to missed calls and therefore more unnecessary radio traffic. After day two of making the initial calls without any heads up, and having to reiterate the string of information after numerous "Raider XX say again", we went back to doing things the *old* way.

You get a feeling for when such calls are required and when they aren't. I'll use my own judgement and not worry about being "that person". Real life isn't quite so neat. Of course I still fly with a few who still use "with you" too :D

That's a little different with class B/C. It's good to say "with request" when you can tell it's extremely busy, and they know you are looking for some kind of ATC service. In this case they are dealing with aircraft already in the air and flying. More important here is to call with plenty of lead time. :)

+1, I routinely use "cessna xxx, vfr request" when opearating VFR under, over, around, and/or in class B and want flight following with busy radios, no issues, the worst reply I got was, "cessna calling, remain clear of class B, I don't have time for vfr traffic!:)

another one........"at this time"

Different areas may have different feelings about this. In Phoenix, we've been told they prefer us to spit it all out on the initial call, if they need us to repeat it, they will. It wastes far more radio time if you do the whole "vfr request" thing. In California and Seattle, it seems they prefer "vfr request", but I'm not sure.

I wholeheartedly prefer--in all circumstances--the method James posted above, "Approach, N123, request," or "Approach, N123, for flight following." Giving the whole story on the first call usually means you'll have to repeat it.