There will be times in your IFR flying (or VFR with flight following) when you’re expecting some love from your controller, but you wind up feeling like a neglected child. Sometimes the frequency is busy; sometimes the controller is on another frequency or the land line setting up a handoff. Either way, you want to call attention to yourself, but you don’t want to waste frequency bandwidth unnecessarily. Former Instructor of the Year Doug Stewart, chairman of the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators (SAFE) has some sage advice on how to get the controller’s attention when you may or may not have slipped through the cracks. He suggests a simple ident on your transponder. The result on the controller’s screen will be attention getting enough, without requiring a verbal exchange.
Stewart suggested some situations when you might want to use this strategy:
