I've been procrastinating about making my first online flight for the last few weeks (although I only registered for my trial a day or two ago) and spent the last few days listening to the standalone receiver to get a feel for things and making sure I was prepared for roughly what to expect in response at each stage.
A little bit of background: I'm just a home sim pilot, with plenty of hours behind the screen, but sadly not able to get any real world experience, as for the last couple of years I've been intermittently bed-bound due to a worsening medical problem with my joints but I've been able to adapt a solution to let me sim from there anyway. One thing I struggle with still however, is my writing speed (due to my condition) and my ability to keep up with with high speed conversations (partly due to painkillers, partly due to being a muppet at times
) - the combination of which is what kind of led to my panicking and aborting my planned flight just now.So, back to today: I logged on, figuring it wouldn't be too busy if I start early during coverage, and listened for a bit, building up towards putting in my first call for clearance (which I managed to get right, so plus point there), but rapidly lagged behind on trying to scrawl down the modified clearance - which I managed to get down enough scribble to piece together but meant I completely missed my squawk + departure frequency. Due to a busy frequency, I was advised to stand by on my readback, so I stewed nervously for a couple of minutes, then read back and requested a repeat of squawk + frequency, managing to get squawk but again missed freqeuency (although this time due to a breakup rather than speed.) Final time got everything, and thanked the (amazingly patient!) controller, and got on with the rest of my preflight. Some time later after overcoming a second bout of nerves, I put my call in for taxi clearance, at the same time as a bunch of other calls seemed to also come in, and managed to end up entirely unsure of whether or not my reply had been in the jumble of traffic, panicked and logged off and hid.
Rather nervous about making a second venture, although I'd like to say again how patient the controller in question (I don't know him by name) was despite my repeated tripping over myself and missing things. I'd welcome any thoughts or advice (and/or feedback from the controller in question if he reads this)
