Hello All,

Here's another lesson of the basics of flying a plane! Today, I will cover the pilot's alphabet and reading a runway!

Know your alphabet and numbers!

Yes! When you are announcing letters and numbers to the ground or tower you have to be very clear, so we basically use words to not confuse certain letter sounds.

Letters	-	Numbers
Alpha	November	1-One
Bravo	Oscar	2-Two
Charlie	Papa	3-Tree
Delta	Quebec	4-Four
Echo	Romeo	5-Fife
Foxtrot	Sierra	6-Six
Golf	Tengo	7-Seven
Hotel	Uniform	8-Eight
India	Victor	9-Niner
Juliet	Wiskey	-
Kilo	X-Ray	-Other
Lima	Yankee	0-Zero
Mike	Zulu	1000-Tousand

Pronunciation is very important. You don't want to waste their time, they have a hard enough job directing traffic.

Runways

First of all, every road on a runway has it's own alpha-numeric designation. For example, the conversation with the ATC (ground, since you are one the ground) may go like this:
You: "Hankfield ground, Cessna One-Fife-Niner, on the East ramp, ready for take-off, with Sierra" (Who they are, who you are, your location, what you want to do, ATIS is a automatic weather service that tells you into and the code for the updated time (happened to be Sierra) you need to let them know you know this.
Them: They will give you directions for where to go, maybe will say "Cessna One-Fife-Niner to taxiway Alpha-Four to runway Two-Seven upwind." Saying take taxiway A4 to runway 27, which is also the direction of the runway. Here is a chart for pilot directions:

You also need to know this for when you are landing.

Lighting

Lighting on runways is also important to know. Most lighting is just the outline of the runway, but here are some things you need to know:

• Taxiway edge lights are blue.
• Hold short lights are yellow on a taxiway and white strobes on runways. Stop Here.
• Runway end lights are flashing white strobes.
• Runway center lights are white, every 50 ft.
• Landing Lights:
  
  The lights I circled in yellow are really helpful! White on white (long flight) means you are too high, red on red (you are dead) means you are too low, white on red, or vice versa, means you are good!

Hope you've enjoyed my friends. I try to give the best summarizations to make it easier for you to learn. Everyone needs at least their private pilot's license!

Happy Trails

Resteem and Follow, let's make STEEMIT a place for pilots!

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