ATC

To many student pilots the thought of talking to ATC scares them. They are very intimidating to beginner pilots, because they have the power to pull your ticket if you make a mistake. You must remember that they are not there to get you into trouble they are there to help you out and give you assistance. Most of them are vary caring people, and if you have a question do not be afraid to help you out. They would much rather help you out than have to fill out an NTSB (crash) report trust me. It helped me out a lot when I took an ATC course at school and had a controller at Toledo Express (KTOL) teach it. It helped me realize that they are very helpful and they do know there stuff, because we all know as pilots we think that we are the best and we can do everything ourselves, but we can't. If you are not getting the radios as fast as you thought don't worry, because you will in instrument trust me, that is all you are doing is talking to ATC. If you make a mistake don't worry most of the time ATC is very good about it, they come over the radios and give you a stern talking to and tell you that you need to think more. They know that you are a student and you are still learning. If ATC tells you to do something that you don't know how to do just be honest. There was a kid that ATC told them to come in a non-standard way and he ended up stalling to close to the ground and dieing. They are not going to get mad at you for not knowing how to do something if you are a student. Now if you are a commercial student and you don't know how to do an ILS approach they may have a pproblem with that.