Busy today

[joecool169]

I tried doing the first flight from L52 to KSBP. I did get landed, but it was hard, tons of radio traffic. Is there a quieter place to fly? Also I hear the same planes and controller on 124.00 KBSP Tower and 121.6 KBSP Ground. I assume that is normal?

[Kyle.Sanders]

There will Be busy days.
Reference this post on frequency isolation- viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4866&p=38065#p38065

[joecool169]

Yeah, I since read that post, thank you. It was just a little tough as a noob. That first flight is a short flight, the controller was so busy it probably took me 10 minutes before I could even get a word in. I'm not a noob to flight sim totally, but in the past I did not take it serious. Now that I am trying to take it serious I wasn't sure what I should do while waiting for the frequency to clear. Since it was a vfr flight I ended up doing some sight seeing.

It is more difficult than one might imagine to fly an airplane and address atc correctly I think.

When the frequency finally cleared the controller wanted to know where I was in relation to the airport I wanted to land at. I was a bit unprofessional in my response because I was turned around. Fortunately I had the gps map open so I was able to navigate back in the direction of the airfield.

[Kevin_atc]

Those are all great lessons learned. It may not be uncommon that your local class D airport could be slammed one day so much so that you just need to remain outside the airspace until you're able to get a word in. However, it's always important to maintain situational awareness so when you are finally able to talk, you know exactly where you are.

As Kyle stated the obvious that we all already knew, it can be busy. However, you can take a look on PE Aware at our traffic graphs to try to see what the busy/slow times are. While there are exceptions, we typically see the most traffic on the weekends. Weekday mornings are probably the slower times so if you are wanting to try the flight again with a big less going on in your ear, try giving a weekday morning a try.

[Keith Smith]

I once waited 12 minutes at JFK to even hit the PTT on the clearance delivery frequency. I've sat at TEB for 10+ minutes awaiting a takeoff clearance, and I've been at other Class D airports where, during a mad rush of traffic with only a single controller on duty (yes, happens real world), I've waited for 5-10 minutes as well. I've also heard controllers ask aircraft to remain outside the Class D while they clean up the mess up of planes they're dealing with.

What you experienced might have been frustrating, but it's not unrealistic.

Weekends are the busiest times on PE.

[joecool169]

Sure, I understand. Please don't take my thread here as a complaint..............more of a place to listen to what you guys say so I know what to do next time. It's not like I can ask the controller on PE what I should be doing when he/she is so busy.