[efitz]

I have 30 minutes and 2 touch-and-go’s in my log book. I suck at Microsoft Flight Simulator.

In 30 minutes of the instructor sitting next to me, I successfully landed and took off in a Cessna 172, learned to trim power, elevators and flaps, learned how to transmit and how to “squawk ident”, and what channel to use in emergencies (1202 IIRC).

Operating the airplane was very straightforward. Without the instructor or someone talking to me, I would not have known what to do when, but I can completely see how someone reasonably smart, calm, and able to follow directions could land such an airplane in good conditions.

[e-clinton]

Flying is easy as long as weather is on your side. But still impressive for a total noob to land safely

[porknubbins]

Flying a single engine prop plane seems easy. Anyone who has played Flight Simulator has thought about this, I could probably land a cessna but not a commercial jet. What I’m sure I would get wrong is stuff on jets like multiple engine speeds, cowling settings etc.

[ngcc_hk]

Not sure I agree or not.

The question is she did not where she was, guess there is no gps map. And more importantly she has to fly the thing.

And in a commerical one you have gps and auto pilot. You can concentrate on those, as long as you have radio. Metuor has a video which is basically just use radio. You basically do not fly the plane. In fact the basic advice is not touched the yoke.

The responsibility is much higher of course.

[Sylveste]

>The question is she did not where she was, guess there is no gps map. And more importantly she has to fly the thing.

I would imagine she had a smartphone. Gmaps/Amaps is no match for Skydemon but it's a million times better than nothing.

[zitterbewegung]

Also don't forget gas.

[buildsjets]

A good memory jogger for the emergency transponder codes is: Hi Jack, I can’t talk right now, I’ve got an emergency.

7500 -> Being Hijacked 7600 -> Radio/Comms Failure 7700 -> Emergency

[mlyle]

I think 1202 is not intended to be a transponder code, but an approximation of 121.5.

[buildsjets]

Could be. I just assumed squawk. (121.5 is the universal emergency VHF audio comm frequency.)

[efitz]

Yes, I meant 121.5 but my memory is fuzzy after many years.

[santix]

There's also "7-7: we're going to heaven; 7-5: somebody else wants to fly; 7-6: radio needs a fix".

[antmldr]

If you mean voice communication channel for emergencies, it's 121.5 MHz, 243.00 MHz for Military (double)

[a-dub]

1200 is null as i understand i think 7200 is emergency?

as a curious stem type who used to fly with other curious stem types back in the day, i remember asking for all the details and being given them.

edit: 12xx is vfr no code assigned with various modifiers. 7700 declare emergency. 7600 radio out. 7500 mutiny.

[hodlfnejsnsz]

1200 is VFR, which generally means “I’m flying visually and don’t need ATC help”. If you’re squawked 1200 you show up as VFR on their screen, but you still show up. That doesn’t mean null. 7500, 7600, and 7700 are used for various emergency purposes, with 7700 being the most common, and almost always accompanying a mayday or panpan. Those are transponder codes, not radio channels. It’s a code returned by your equipment when the transponder is painted with interrogative radar.

0000 is closer to “null”, but still isn’t quite. 1000 also has some “null” like properties when it comes to ADS-B. Note that what I’m saying is North American centric and not necessarily ICAO nor other areas, which can differ somewhat.

[a-dub]

never ceases to amaze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transponder_codes

[hodlfnejsns]

1200 is VFR. That doesn’t mean null. 7500, 7600, and 7700 are used for various emergency purposes. These are transponder codes, not radio channels. It’s a code returned when the transponder is painted with interrogative radar.

[tialaramex]

This being Hacker News: The reason the digit 7 seems important here is that these are actually Octal. Under the hood this is a digital system, but the user interface is four octal digits ie 0000 to 7777 is a 12-bit value.

Most modern aircraft are capable of providing a lot more data over their radio transponder, including a system unique identifier, but it turns out that "squawking" a four digit code is a useful amount of discretion to give humans. If you could do it over maybe a decimal code would have been better, but too late now.

[a-dub]

when you look at all the reserved blocks, that's not a lot of usable address space. the internet says there are roughly 5k commercial aircraft in the air above the us during peak times. i get that these are regionally allocated, but still pretty tight i must imagine.

do modern mode 3 transponders also include tail number or some other unique identifier in a sideband?

[schoen]

Yes, the squawk code is not itself necessarily used to identify individual airplanes and distinguish them from one another and transponders now transmit significant amounts of data on top of the squawk code.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan...

(I don't know how much squawk codes are, or were, used to specifically identify aircraft in the past, but I believe that currently it's not unusual that many aircraft in the same region would be squawking the same number, which would not confuse ATC because of all the other transponder data that's available.)

[t0mas88]

This depends strongly on the region. The US still has a very old system in use for the center controllers which are the big regions. That system wants discrete codes for each aircraft in each area, so they make flights change code if there is overlap while flying into the next region.

In Europe some areas (but not all) have switched to using the Mode-s/ADS-B identification (which is a 24 bits unique code not configurable by the pilot but fixed to the aircraft) in their systems and setting the traditional transponder code to 1000 for all of those aircraft.

In the long term expect everyone to adopt that approach, but things in aviation move very slowly so it will be many many years before we're there.