During an IFR flight it quite often pays to ‘take notes’ as you go along.
Prior to take off we always get the IFR clearance and sometimes using a form, or just personal shorthand we copy our clearance and ‘read-back’ the information at the controllers direction.
Many instructors will recommend that you keep track of assigned headings and altitudes along the way on a flight log or even just a piece of paper on the kneeboard.
In the ‘olden days’ when radios only had one frequency display (and sometimes only one radio), it was wise to write down the frequencies prior to the changing in case the frequency did not work, or nobody was there when you called.
With newer communications units, we can tune the standby and then flip-flop the display for the new active frequency and usually have the ability to store many frequencies. This modern convenience should have eliminated the need for taking notes and scribbling on kneeboards.
A couple of years ago while flying a state of the art glass-cockpit corporate jet I ran into a situation that undermined my confidence in some of our ‘modern conveniences’.
It is a beautiful day for a flight, drop off the passengers in South Florida, and now it’s just the crew aboard for the return trip north. The departure airport uses a Unicom frequency for the airport and when the avionics are powered up it is the first frequency displayed in the number two radio unit. After a normal departure and climb out we reach cruising altitude and are in “…empty airplane…full cup of coffee…lunch in the galley…going home mode”.
Somewhere along the way after the usual number of frequency changes, all using the number two radio (and of course not writing down any changes), the radio frequency changes back to the powered-up frequency, which was the Unicom at the departure airport. At FL410 a typical Unicom picks up a lot of airports and airplanes so the unselected change was quickly apparent, however neither of us could remember the last ATC frequency assignment, and the other displayed frequencies did not work.
We were able to regain contact with the enroute facility after a little searching on the paper chart.
Lesson learned…keep a running record of the frequencies used, even with ‘high-tech’ radios. The airplane that we were flying had three comm units, telephone, and ACAR’s, yet a paper scratch pad and some consistent note taking would have prevented a few stressful minutes of digging through charts and trying to re-establish contact with the ground.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear PilotWorkshops: Regarding writing down ATC frequencies as Brian recommends, I’m absolutely in favor of it! Twice a year (October and May) I fly, VFR, my Piper Arrow between Beverly, MA and Naples, FL in three hops. Going south I stop first at Suffolk, VA to fuel up; next at Whiteville (Columbus County) NC to top the tanks; and lastly on to my destination at Naples, FL. An Arrow is not the fastest aircraft, so my total flying time is usually around 10-plus hours over the 1300+ nm trip, since, as you know, tailwinds are never present when you need them most.
I’m not instrument-rated (PPSEL/Commercial), so these long cross-country trips invariably utilize ATC Flight Following, and involve, on average, 30-40 frequency changes along the entire route. In my opinion (and it’s no more than that) a solo pilot in a single engine plane flying long hours inadvertently flirts with aperiodic distractions and encroaching fatigue. It simply makes good sense to an “oldster” like me to physically do something (apart from the occasional tweak of a knob on the panel, or the hourly switch of fuel tanks, while the autopilot keeps you on today’s GPS heading) — like jotting down the announced ATC frequency as soon as the controller instructs me to switch to the next one.
Ahhh, that makes a LOT more sense….. and we’ve all done that. I still don’t think I’m going to go back to writing down. The avionics failure is really rare… I’ve never had one like that, unless I lost power on that bus.
There can be many reasons one looses contact with the ground, and can’t always be solved by writing it down. Sometimes we just out fly the freq after missing a handoff. Fortunately, rarely a problem getting back to the right guy. Yea, some times we have to pull out a chart… chart? what’s that anyway?….
However, good points…..
As always there is a bit more detail…the clearance was obtained by telephone so first ATC contact airborne was local departure control (as written down from the clearance). The ‘problem’ actually occurred 60 minutes or more after takeoff. We had gone through multiple frequency changes (one or two departure sectors, a couple of center frequencies, and so on) on that radio and for reasons unknown it changed back to the frequency that it had ‘memorized’ during our shutdown and then re-start at the departure airport.
My honest point was that even with very sophisticated avionics systems (the system in question was a Honeywell Epic equipped airplane) there can be situations that could be resolved by keeping track of what is happening on a simple pad of paper.
Brian,
Sounds more like a check list or briefing item.
You don’t say, but looks like you picked up your clearance somehow, switch (or had unicom dialed in), took off and didn’t have ATCs freq handy. If you had received the clearance over the phone, Im sure your wrote it down. And if you received it in the plane, you had to be on the right freq, and if assigned a different on for departure you would have dialed it in or written it down.
That should have been covered in the takeoff brief, which I’m sure you did, right?
While writing it down “may” be appropriate, it isn’t always. It’s probably more important to know one’s equipment and have a procedure in place. How you could get to 410 without solving a minor freq issue is beyond me.
Maybe there’s more to the story….