Advanced Radio Guide
By Sneo
“We need to talk.” - A Prelude to Disaster
The key to smooth a operation, not only in aviation, comes down to communication. No matter what you do, provided there are other human beings involved, will require communication and the difference between good and bad communication can quickly turn any result from disastrous to magnificent. When you're flying an aircraft, you have only one means of communication with other aircraft and ground stations and this is your radio. While the radio is an excellent tool, it provides a vast array of barriers to communication. Briefly mentioned, this includes lack of body language, background noise and the physical distance between the involved parties. Aviation itself provides even more challenges to this communication, combat aviation even more so. Having a quickly changing environment, very specialised vocabulary and phraseology and a variety of nationalities involved, aviation presents a communication environment which is ripe with misunderstandings and uncertainties. To mitigate this as best we can, there has been established an international standard of phraseology and procedures on how to best utilise our radios. This guide/course will (hopefully) give you a little deeper understanding and knowledge of how to operate your radios in a simulated military environment.
The guide/course will assume some basic understanding of phraseology and procedures, but I have tried to explain things as comprehensible as possible to make it digestible even if you are not used to operating radios. The guide is based on my personal experience and knowledge in civil aviation and some assumptions about military radios, it has been somewhat altered to suit a simulated environment where the utmost detail is not required and may deviate a bit from real life procedure and standards and is by no means an absolute authority.
Principle of THINK PUSH TALK
We start off with a principle which should be at the base of all your radio operation.
Think. Push. Talk.
It may seem obvious, but if you follow this principle consciously, you will greatly reduce Uuuhm and Eeeehm on the radio. Think about what you want to say before you push the button to transmit, push the button and give yourself a half second after pushing to say it, and it will come a lot easier. This is a trained skill and the more you do this the quicker you get, and eventually the time you spend thinking and the half second will shrink enough to become undetectable. This guide will not cover radio coms from an ATC or AWACS perspective, as that is a more specialised role which would require a whole other guide.
Basics
“Rome wasn’t built in a day” - Old saying
It’s important to recognize that radio operation and “correct” use of radios is a trained skill, the single most effective way to learn how to operate and use radios is to use them! The worst case scenario is that you sound a bit silly, but as long as you get the information you need to across, there’s no harm in making a mistake or two along the way.
Initiating a call.
Whenever you call someone, be it atc or another flight, you should always start with two things. Who you are calling, and who you are. First get their attention, then let them know who is trying to reach them. The first call can include more information, but it's a good idea to take it slowly as the other station might not be prepared for the call.
Once communication is established, you should end all your transmissions with your own callsign, it's not need to continue to call the other parts callsign, they know you're talking to them.
Do not interrupt someone else until the call is finished, if you're in doubt whether it is finished or not you can wait a few seconds just to make sure. There are however exceptions to this, which we will get to a bit later.
The 4 levels of Radio Comms
There are 4 levels of radio communications, and it is to do with priority. If you're listening to the radio, and someone is talking, when is it okay for you to interrupt that? How do you gauge which are the more important messages? This is where the levels of coms come in, they try to classify radio calls according to how important they are and outline the appropriate responses and relations between them. It's not always 100% clear which level a certain message falls into, but they provide good guidelines to help you judge the situation and help decide how you should act on the radios.
The 4 levels
If you learn and remember these, you have a good basis on how to judge whether or not what you have to say really is as important as you think, and by making the right decision you can help decongest the radio environment and help everyone around you deliver their information efficiently.
We will start by covering Navigation and Information calls, as these are low intensity calls which are easier to practice, they also are the most detail heavy calls in this guide.
Navigation calls
Navigation calls are messages in which atc or awcs give in relation to headings, climbs, descents etc. They also include any clearances you receive. These are things that you read back to the controller.
What is a readback and why do we read back?
A readback is your response to an instruction done by repeating the instruction back to the controller or AWACS.
We do this to make sure an instruction or clearance are received and understood correctly. It ensures that there is no confusion on what you heard and understood, and if you did mishear then atc has a chance to notice and correct it.
You should read back climbs, descents and heading instruction. And you do that by repeating the instruction (climb, descend or turn right/left) and the target (Angles 15, 15.000 feet, 150 degrees). This also applies on the ground, with taxi clearances.
Any clearances should also be read back, landing clearances, take off clearances and clearances for approaches are important calls which can be dangerous if misunderstood.
Good rule of thumb, if ATC says “cleared" you read that back!
Ex. “cleared to land.” “Cleared downwind.’’
The exception to navigation readbacks are in regard to AWACS BRAA and Popup groups, as these contain a lot of information which and doesn't require immediate action. (Although it won't hurt to read back the bearing only, for AWACS peace of mind). These calls are only classified as navigation calls when they are in relation to intercepts or if they are otherwise relevant to the progress of the flight, for example if they are likely to become a threat further along.
If you're ever in doubt how or what to read back, then Monkey see Monkey do. Even if it might be a bit over the top, just repeat back exactly what ATC told you. If you forget some parts of it, it's always better to ask atc to say again than to guess (you also sound cooler asking “say again" than reading back something completely wrong). You can always readback what you copied and then ask them to say again the rest.
Information calls
Information calls are calls that contain information used to plan further ahead than the immediate situation, in civilian flights this covers weather, runways in use, traffic etc, while in military situations it would cover AWACS pictures, target area information and information about friendly aircraft.
These are the lowest priority for a reason, as they are not linked to any direct action to immediately follow or that actions needed to be promptly executed.
Most information calls will not have to be read back
The good stuff
“Crossing the pond. At night. In the worlds smallest cockpit. And I gotta piss.” - Dos Gringos, 12 Inch Penis
Urgency
Urgency calls are as their name implies calls that need urgent attention but it might not be immediately life threatening. From a flight it could be asking a bogey dope on bandits outside fire range but with intentions to intercept or asking for a declare on a spotted bogey.
Awacs will use this type of call to inform flights of popup groups that could be a factor, give information about bandits turning hot or getting close enough to become a factor. This is usually urgent enough that it won't require read back, simple Roger or Copy will do. These are often the type of calls you will hear leading up to an engagement, and they can sometimes fade into the next type just as smoothly as this transition.
Emergency calls
These are top priority calls, these are used when the situation is very dangerous and could have life threatening consequences if not acted on immediately. If you have an emergency call to make regarding yourself and you need help, you start the call with MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY. This is to stop all non-crucial radio traffic on frequency. If you hear someone call this, you might have guessed it, you need to shut up unless you have an emergency of your own. Mayday calls are best used in non-combat situations, like critical fuel levels or engine failures
If you have an emergency regarding someone else, like you spot a missile launch, AAA fire or a danger close bandit you should start your call with BREAK BREAK BREAK, followed by the aircraft in danger, type of danger and any further information like direction, distance etc. It’s fully acceptable to leave out who you are, as that could take up crucial secconds for the aircraft in danger. Again to stop other traffic on the radio, and again if you hear it then shut up. AWACS will use this call to inform flights of dangerously close popup groups, a bandit switching target from one friendly aircraft to another or any other situation where AWACS has crucial information.
These calls will always vary in format as they will all have unique situations, but from atc or AWACS you can expect them to stick as close as possible to standard formats and phraseology as possible to reduce workload and keep things clear and concise.
Military Comms
“Knowing is half the battle” - G.I. Joe
Tactical Communication Channels
Combat is a messy thing, situations change rapidly and there is a lot of important information that need to flow back and forth between many stations, and often these stations will be under a lot of stress. Once combat ensues, the First sense to disappear under stress is hearing, and the first ability to disappear is talking. This makes it crucial to know the information to send, the phrasing to use and even to remember the right words.
In a military setting, there are two primary channels you will be using, the Tactical Channel and the Flight Channel. Flight Channel will be covered in more detail later, so we will look at the Tactical Channel here as well as some thoughts to keep in mind when you're expecting to be talking on Tactical. The key thing to remember if you're the one in charge of operation on the Tactical Channel, is how many people are actually using it. The scale of the operation will give you a hint, but in most cases it will be a large quantity of people who will be using this channel to communicate a lot of crucial information. In order to avoid information disappearing, and risk getting someone killed in the process, there are a few methods used to declutter and streamline the use of Tactical.
The first, and simplest, method is to limit the amount of people who will use Tactical. This is done by only having flight leads be the ones to operate on Tactical for anything but Emergency calls, wingmen should refrain from using tactical unless absolutely necessary or their flight leads are shot down. Secondly, the use of standard phrases and terminology to use less words to communicate larger quantities of information reduce the time each station will use on Tactical. Finally TPT principle and respect for the four levels of communication helps keep things efficient. (see beginning of this document)
AWACS/GCI Comms
One of the key players on the Tactical Channel is the AWACS or GCI controllers. The AWACS or GCI controllers are incredible tools on the battlefield, having a large scale radar overview of the aerial battlefield the AWACS controllers can provide flights with information to greatly improve every individual’s Situational Awareness.
The AWACS can provide you with information such as the position of friendly forces, directions to your mission target or, perhaps most importantly, direction and distance to hostile flights. They do this by radio communication, and at the core of this is the BRAA call. BRAA stands for Bearing Range Altitude Aspect, as these are the bits of information the call provides and in which order.
This call is standardised should follow this format to the letter every time. It will be prefaced with the subject of the call, letting you know exactly what the BRAA is reffering you to. This can be a friendly flight, a ground target, a hostile flight or anything else you’d require information about. The first bit of information in the BRAA call is Bearing, this is the direction of the subject in compass degrees from your aircraft. Secondly comes Range, this is the range to the target in Nautical Miles from your aircraft. Third is Altitude which is the altitude of the target in Feet, although can sometimes be expressed in ANGELS. Lastly is Aspect, while only relevant to aircraft this point covers whether the aircraft is moving away, towards or sideways relative to you.
Other types of calls an AWACS can give you include intercept calls. These calls are when you wish to get as close to the target as quickly as possible and provide you with a heading to fly in order to put you on an intercept of your target. This heading will often deviate quite a bit from the bearing of the target, but this is to account for the direction the target is going. You can expect the intercept heading to change as you move closer and the target maneuver, at the time of receiving the heading it will be the optimal heading to reduce separation. An intercept heading is prefaced with the words “Intercept heading” before AWACS tells you the compass heading to turn to.
Flight Comms
Communications between elements in one flight is the most frequent Comms you will probably encounter in a (simulated) operational environment. Your flight-members will be those you have to cooperate with the most, after all, making the radio frequency between you very heavily trafficked. To mitigate this, there is a series of Military Brevity Codes implemented, codewords which communicate more words than are said. Some knowledge of these codes will let you reduce traffic on the radios significantly as well as keeping your intended calls clear to the recipient. The better you know the calls, the better you will be able to use them!
Certain things will be more important than others in the Flight Comms arena, as soon as combat initiates it’s very common to lose awareness of the big picture and communications are the first thing to break down. As you lose the big picture, your ability to process and retain information about your situation quickly deteriorates so it is important that any information that is passed in these situations be as clear, concise and standardized as possible to make it easy and efficient. So we have a few standard ways to communicate certain information to facilitate this, while they can vary in content they should follow a standard structure.
These calls include, but are not limited to, calling out targets, missile launches and similar. The structure starts with the nature of the call, you’ve spotted a target, got a radar contact or spotted a missile launch, the first step is informing the recipient what they are looking for. Secondly comes the direction of the subject, giving the direction will let the recipient know which direction to look. Thirdly, you give the range and altitude of the target. Lastly comes any additional information such as direction the subject is moving or whatever else could be important to the relevant situation. As you might have noticed it’s essentially the same as a BRAA call, because it is! A good way to practice this is listening to AWACS BRAA calls, and trying to imitate them as close as you can.
Some definitions
“I have no idea what that means” - every pilot, sometime in their life
Some definitions and clarifications on content, particularly for the approach segment. I chose to add this to help pilots understand better what is going on during the RTB and approach phase of the mission. From my experience acting as AWACS/ATC there appear to be some insecurity about some terms and their implications, so this will hopefully clear up some of this and make this phase easier for the pilots and a.smoother operation as a whole.
Approach
We all have an idea of what an approach is, but what does “Cleared for X approach actually mean for the pilot? If you are cleared for an approach this means you are cleared to do all the things you need to do to land, up until the runway threshold. You can descend to get on a glidepath, you can turn to get on the centre line and you can slow down to configure as you wish. When and how you do these things are up to you unless atc gives you specifics instructions. Ex. Speed control or altitude limitations. When you’re cleared for an approach, you can continue all the way down until you cross the runway threshold. If you haven’t received a landing clearance by then you have to go around.
Pattern
A pattern is the flight pattern around the airfield, this includes crosswind, downwind, base and final (a landing pattern is easily googled, you will find diagrams and pretty pictures). If you are cleared to any part of this pattern you are cleared to continue past any previous parts of the pattern, but you should stay on the part you are cleared to until you are cleared further. Ex. You're cleared to downwind For runway 27, you come within a few miles of the runway and turn onto the downwind to heading 090. Unless atc clears you onwards, you stay on that heading. As you are cleared base you turn onto the base leg and as you are cleared final you turn for the final towards the runway. All the while you can descend as you see fit to set yourself up for landing. It's worth noting that it's acceptable to be little sceptical, if you're sailing down a 30nm downwind from the runway and you're not cleared back in you might want to ask atc what is going on.
Visual
If you are cleared for a visual pattern or maneuver, then the flight falls much more into your Control. You are responsible for speed, headings and altitudes as you position yourself according to the visual picture you have with your surroundings. Example if you are cleared a visual approach, you can process to final as you see fit, descending to an appropriate altitude and reducing speed as you wish unless atc gives you specifics. If you are cleared for a visual approach, but atc has given you, for example, speed restriction, you need to comply with it! Visual manoeuvres are usually granted once the pilot have runway in sight, so if this is what you want then reporting runway in sight is a good way to get the clearance as early as possible. You do actually have to be visual with the runway, tough!
Appendix: Black Tails Brevity Index
By Sneo
“We need to talk.” - A Prelude to Disaster
The key to smooth a operation, not only in aviation, comes down to communication. No matter what you do, provided there are other human beings involved, will require communication and the difference between good and bad communication can quickly turn any result from disastrous to magnificent. When you're flying an aircraft, you have only one means of communication with other aircraft and ground stations and this is your radio. While the radio is an excellent tool, it provides a vast array of barriers to communication. Briefly mentioned, this includes lack of body language, background noise and the physical distance between the involved parties. Aviation itself provides even more challenges to this communication, combat aviation even more so. Having a quickly changing environment, very specialised vocabulary and phraseology and a variety of nationalities involved, aviation presents a communication environment which is ripe with misunderstandings and uncertainties. To mitigate this as best we can, there has been established an international standard of phraseology and procedures on how to best utilise our radios. This guide/course will (hopefully) give you a little deeper understanding and knowledge of how to operate your radios in a simulated military environment.
The guide/course will assume some basic understanding of phraseology and procedures, but I have tried to explain things as comprehensible as possible to make it digestible even if you are not used to operating radios. The guide is based on my personal experience and knowledge in civil aviation and some assumptions about military radios, it has been somewhat altered to suit a simulated environment where the utmost detail is not required and may deviate a bit from real life procedure and standards and is by no means an absolute authority.
Principle of THINK PUSH TALK
We start off with a principle which should be at the base of all your radio operation.
Think. Push. Talk.
It may seem obvious, but if you follow this principle consciously, you will greatly reduce Uuuhm and Eeeehm on the radio. Think about what you want to say before you push the button to transmit, push the button and give yourself a half second after pushing to say it, and it will come a lot easier. This is a trained skill and the more you do this the quicker you get, and eventually the time you spend thinking and the half second will shrink enough to become undetectable. This guide will not cover radio coms from an ATC or AWACS perspective, as that is a more specialised role which would require a whole other guide.
Basics
“Rome wasn’t built in a day” - Old saying
It’s important to recognize that radio operation and “correct” use of radios is a trained skill, the single most effective way to learn how to operate and use radios is to use them! The worst case scenario is that you sound a bit silly, but as long as you get the information you need to across, there’s no harm in making a mistake or two along the way.
Initiating a call.
Whenever you call someone, be it atc or another flight, you should always start with two things. Who you are calling, and who you are. First get their attention, then let them know who is trying to reach them. The first call can include more information, but it's a good idea to take it slowly as the other station might not be prepared for the call.
Once communication is established, you should end all your transmissions with your own callsign, it's not need to continue to call the other parts callsign, they know you're talking to them.
Do not interrupt someone else until the call is finished, if you're in doubt whether it is finished or not you can wait a few seconds just to make sure. There are however exceptions to this, which we will get to a bit later.
The 4 levels of Radio Comms
There are 4 levels of radio communications, and it is to do with priority. If you're listening to the radio, and someone is talking, when is it okay for you to interrupt that? How do you gauge which are the more important messages? This is where the levels of coms come in, they try to classify radio calls according to how important they are and outline the appropriate responses and relations between them. It's not always 100% clear which level a certain message falls into, but they provide good guidelines to help you judge the situation and help decide how you should act on the radios.
The 4 levels
- Emergency - Mayday calls, close in BRAA or merge info, missile launches
- Urgency - close-mid range BRAA, pop-up groups
- Navigation - headings, climbs, descents, clearance to land/take-off, long range BRAA or popup groups, vectors to rejoin
- Information - Weather, picture, traffic, etc
If you learn and remember these, you have a good basis on how to judge whether or not what you have to say really is as important as you think, and by making the right decision you can help decongest the radio environment and help everyone around you deliver their information efficiently.
We will start by covering Navigation and Information calls, as these are low intensity calls which are easier to practice, they also are the most detail heavy calls in this guide.
Navigation calls
Navigation calls are messages in which atc or awcs give in relation to headings, climbs, descents etc. They also include any clearances you receive. These are things that you read back to the controller.
What is a readback and why do we read back?
A readback is your response to an instruction done by repeating the instruction back to the controller or AWACS.
We do this to make sure an instruction or clearance are received and understood correctly. It ensures that there is no confusion on what you heard and understood, and if you did mishear then atc has a chance to notice and correct it.
You should read back climbs, descents and heading instruction. And you do that by repeating the instruction (climb, descend or turn right/left) and the target (Angles 15, 15.000 feet, 150 degrees). This also applies on the ground, with taxi clearances.
Any clearances should also be read back, landing clearances, take off clearances and clearances for approaches are important calls which can be dangerous if misunderstood.
Good rule of thumb, if ATC says “cleared" you read that back!
Ex. “cleared to land.” “Cleared downwind.’’
The exception to navigation readbacks are in regard to AWACS BRAA and Popup groups, as these contain a lot of information which and doesn't require immediate action. (Although it won't hurt to read back the bearing only, for AWACS peace of mind). These calls are only classified as navigation calls when they are in relation to intercepts or if they are otherwise relevant to the progress of the flight, for example if they are likely to become a threat further along.
If you're ever in doubt how or what to read back, then Monkey see Monkey do. Even if it might be a bit over the top, just repeat back exactly what ATC told you. If you forget some parts of it, it's always better to ask atc to say again than to guess (you also sound cooler asking “say again" than reading back something completely wrong). You can always readback what you copied and then ask them to say again the rest.
Information calls
Information calls are calls that contain information used to plan further ahead than the immediate situation, in civilian flights this covers weather, runways in use, traffic etc, while in military situations it would cover AWACS pictures, target area information and information about friendly aircraft.
These are the lowest priority for a reason, as they are not linked to any direct action to immediately follow or that actions needed to be promptly executed.
Most information calls will not have to be read back
The good stuff
“Crossing the pond. At night. In the worlds smallest cockpit. And I gotta piss.” - Dos Gringos, 12 Inch Penis
Urgency
Urgency calls are as their name implies calls that need urgent attention but it might not be immediately life threatening. From a flight it could be asking a bogey dope on bandits outside fire range but with intentions to intercept or asking for a declare on a spotted bogey.
Awacs will use this type of call to inform flights of popup groups that could be a factor, give information about bandits turning hot or getting close enough to become a factor. This is usually urgent enough that it won't require read back, simple Roger or Copy will do. These are often the type of calls you will hear leading up to an engagement, and they can sometimes fade into the next type just as smoothly as this transition.
Emergency calls
These are top priority calls, these are used when the situation is very dangerous and could have life threatening consequences if not acted on immediately. If you have an emergency call to make regarding yourself and you need help, you start the call with MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY. This is to stop all non-crucial radio traffic on frequency. If you hear someone call this, you might have guessed it, you need to shut up unless you have an emergency of your own. Mayday calls are best used in non-combat situations, like critical fuel levels or engine failures
If you have an emergency regarding someone else, like you spot a missile launch, AAA fire or a danger close bandit you should start your call with BREAK BREAK BREAK, followed by the aircraft in danger, type of danger and any further information like direction, distance etc. It’s fully acceptable to leave out who you are, as that could take up crucial secconds for the aircraft in danger. Again to stop other traffic on the radio, and again if you hear it then shut up. AWACS will use this call to inform flights of dangerously close popup groups, a bandit switching target from one friendly aircraft to another or any other situation where AWACS has crucial information.
These calls will always vary in format as they will all have unique situations, but from atc or AWACS you can expect them to stick as close as possible to standard formats and phraseology as possible to reduce workload and keep things clear and concise.
Military Comms
“Knowing is half the battle” - G.I. Joe
Tactical Communication Channels
Combat is a messy thing, situations change rapidly and there is a lot of important information that need to flow back and forth between many stations, and often these stations will be under a lot of stress. Once combat ensues, the First sense to disappear under stress is hearing, and the first ability to disappear is talking. This makes it crucial to know the information to send, the phrasing to use and even to remember the right words.
In a military setting, there are two primary channels you will be using, the Tactical Channel and the Flight Channel. Flight Channel will be covered in more detail later, so we will look at the Tactical Channel here as well as some thoughts to keep in mind when you're expecting to be talking on Tactical. The key thing to remember if you're the one in charge of operation on the Tactical Channel, is how many people are actually using it. The scale of the operation will give you a hint, but in most cases it will be a large quantity of people who will be using this channel to communicate a lot of crucial information. In order to avoid information disappearing, and risk getting someone killed in the process, there are a few methods used to declutter and streamline the use of Tactical.
The first, and simplest, method is to limit the amount of people who will use Tactical. This is done by only having flight leads be the ones to operate on Tactical for anything but Emergency calls, wingmen should refrain from using tactical unless absolutely necessary or their flight leads are shot down. Secondly, the use of standard phrases and terminology to use less words to communicate larger quantities of information reduce the time each station will use on Tactical. Finally TPT principle and respect for the four levels of communication helps keep things efficient. (see beginning of this document)
AWACS/GCI Comms
One of the key players on the Tactical Channel is the AWACS or GCI controllers. The AWACS or GCI controllers are incredible tools on the battlefield, having a large scale radar overview of the aerial battlefield the AWACS controllers can provide flights with information to greatly improve every individual’s Situational Awareness.
The AWACS can provide you with information such as the position of friendly forces, directions to your mission target or, perhaps most importantly, direction and distance to hostile flights. They do this by radio communication, and at the core of this is the BRAA call. BRAA stands for Bearing Range Altitude Aspect, as these are the bits of information the call provides and in which order.
This call is standardised should follow this format to the letter every time. It will be prefaced with the subject of the call, letting you know exactly what the BRAA is reffering you to. This can be a friendly flight, a ground target, a hostile flight or anything else you’d require information about. The first bit of information in the BRAA call is Bearing, this is the direction of the subject in compass degrees from your aircraft. Secondly comes Range, this is the range to the target in Nautical Miles from your aircraft. Third is Altitude which is the altitude of the target in Feet, although can sometimes be expressed in ANGELS. Lastly is Aspect, while only relevant to aircraft this point covers whether the aircraft is moving away, towards or sideways relative to you.
Other types of calls an AWACS can give you include intercept calls. These calls are when you wish to get as close to the target as quickly as possible and provide you with a heading to fly in order to put you on an intercept of your target. This heading will often deviate quite a bit from the bearing of the target, but this is to account for the direction the target is going. You can expect the intercept heading to change as you move closer and the target maneuver, at the time of receiving the heading it will be the optimal heading to reduce separation. An intercept heading is prefaced with the words “Intercept heading” before AWACS tells you the compass heading to turn to.
Flight Comms
Communications between elements in one flight is the most frequent Comms you will probably encounter in a (simulated) operational environment. Your flight-members will be those you have to cooperate with the most, after all, making the radio frequency between you very heavily trafficked. To mitigate this, there is a series of Military Brevity Codes implemented, codewords which communicate more words than are said. Some knowledge of these codes will let you reduce traffic on the radios significantly as well as keeping your intended calls clear to the recipient. The better you know the calls, the better you will be able to use them!
Certain things will be more important than others in the Flight Comms arena, as soon as combat initiates it’s very common to lose awareness of the big picture and communications are the first thing to break down. As you lose the big picture, your ability to process and retain information about your situation quickly deteriorates so it is important that any information that is passed in these situations be as clear, concise and standardized as possible to make it easy and efficient. So we have a few standard ways to communicate certain information to facilitate this, while they can vary in content they should follow a standard structure.
These calls include, but are not limited to, calling out targets, missile launches and similar. The structure starts with the nature of the call, you’ve spotted a target, got a radar contact or spotted a missile launch, the first step is informing the recipient what they are looking for. Secondly comes the direction of the subject, giving the direction will let the recipient know which direction to look. Thirdly, you give the range and altitude of the target. Lastly comes any additional information such as direction the subject is moving or whatever else could be important to the relevant situation. As you might have noticed it’s essentially the same as a BRAA call, because it is! A good way to practice this is listening to AWACS BRAA calls, and trying to imitate them as close as you can.
Some definitions
“I have no idea what that means” - every pilot, sometime in their life
Some definitions and clarifications on content, particularly for the approach segment. I chose to add this to help pilots understand better what is going on during the RTB and approach phase of the mission. From my experience acting as AWACS/ATC there appear to be some insecurity about some terms and their implications, so this will hopefully clear up some of this and make this phase easier for the pilots and a.smoother operation as a whole.
Approach
We all have an idea of what an approach is, but what does “Cleared for X approach actually mean for the pilot? If you are cleared for an approach this means you are cleared to do all the things you need to do to land, up until the runway threshold. You can descend to get on a glidepath, you can turn to get on the centre line and you can slow down to configure as you wish. When and how you do these things are up to you unless atc gives you specifics instructions. Ex. Speed control or altitude limitations. When you’re cleared for an approach, you can continue all the way down until you cross the runway threshold. If you haven’t received a landing clearance by then you have to go around.
Pattern
A pattern is the flight pattern around the airfield, this includes crosswind, downwind, base and final (a landing pattern is easily googled, you will find diagrams and pretty pictures). If you are cleared to any part of this pattern you are cleared to continue past any previous parts of the pattern, but you should stay on the part you are cleared to until you are cleared further. Ex. You're cleared to downwind For runway 27, you come within a few miles of the runway and turn onto the downwind to heading 090. Unless atc clears you onwards, you stay on that heading. As you are cleared base you turn onto the base leg and as you are cleared final you turn for the final towards the runway. All the while you can descend as you see fit to set yourself up for landing. It's worth noting that it's acceptable to be little sceptical, if you're sailing down a 30nm downwind from the runway and you're not cleared back in you might want to ask atc what is going on.
Visual
If you are cleared for a visual pattern or maneuver, then the flight falls much more into your Control. You are responsible for speed, headings and altitudes as you position yourself according to the visual picture you have with your surroundings. Example if you are cleared a visual approach, you can process to final as you see fit, descending to an appropriate altitude and reducing speed as you wish unless atc gives you specifics. If you are cleared for a visual approach, but atc has given you, for example, speed restriction, you need to comply with it! Visual manoeuvres are usually granted once the pilot have runway in sight, so if this is what you want then reporting runway in sight is a good way to get the clearance as early as possible. You do actually have to be visual with the runway, tough!
Appendix: Black Tails Brevity Index