Radio & Airspace Etiquette

Radio & Airspace Etiquette

As a remote pilot, you won’t typically transmit on an aviation radio at all. When controlled airspace authorization is required, it normally happens through LAANC or DroneZone, not by calling up a control tower yourself, and attempting to contact ATC directly by radio can actually cause real problems: it isn’t how sUAS coordination is meant to work, and can violate both aviation communication procedures and FCC regulations, since aviation frequencies are FCC-regulated.

So why learn radio etiquette at all? Situational awareness. Some remote pilots choose to monitor a handheld aviation radio to listen to the CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) at an airport they’re operating near, not to transmit, but to hear what manned traffic is doing nearby. Understanding the basic pattern of aviation radio calls, who’s being called, who’s calling, and what they want, turns a wall of unfamiliar chatter into real, useful information about where other aircraft actually are.

The Phonetic Alphabet

The ICAO phonetic alphabet assigns one standard word to each letter, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu, so that letters and numbers stay clear over a radio connection that can be full of static, background noise, or a weak signal.

As a remote pilot, you’ll most directly use the phonetic alphabet to clearly communicate your FAA registration number, a location, a waypoint, or another identifier if asked by the FAA, or during a specialized operation where direct communication with ATC or another pilot is appropriate. You are not expected to memorize the entire alphabet for the Part 107 knowledge test, but you should recognize it and understand why aviation uses it.

Zulu Time

Zulu time is aviation’s name for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the single time reference used worldwide instead of local time zones. Aviation runs on one global clock because a flight, a weather report, or a NOTAM crossing multiple time zones would be genuinely confusing if everyone reported times locally instead.

Zulu time is written as a 24-hour clock followed by a "Z" (1830Z, for example). Converting between local time and Zulu time means adding or subtracting a fixed number of hours based on your time zone and whether daylight saving time is in effect. You won’t need to do this conversion often as a Part 107 pilot, but you will see Zulu time constantly once this course reaches weather reports, METARs and TAFs are both reported in Zulu, not local time.

The name itself comes from the same phonetic alphabet you just learned: the global time zone system assigns a letter to every offset from Greenwich, and "Zulu" is the letter for the zero-offset zone, Greenwich itself. You’ll occasionally hear GMT used conversationally for the same zero-offset zone, but aviation officially runs on UTC, referred to as Zulu time.

Airport Markings

You’ll never taxi a drone down a taxiway, so why learn airport markings? Two reasons. The Part 107 knowledge test expects you to recognize runway markings and airport signs, and the same knowledge tells you where manned aircraft will be when you work near an airport. Start with color. Runway markings are white. Taxiway markings, holding position markings (even when they’re painted on a runway), and markings for closed or hazardous areas are yellow.

A runway’s number comes from its magnetic direction, rounded to the nearest 10 degrees with the last zero dropped, as seen by an aircraft lined up on that end. Runway 33 points roughly 330 degrees magnetic. Use the same strip of pavement in the other direction and it’s Runway 15, which is why one runway always carries two numbers 18 apart. Parallel runways add a letter: L, R, or C for left, right, and center. Aircraft take off and land along the runway’s line, so the extended centerline off each end is where manned traffic is lowest and slowest. Before a job near an airport, look up its runways: the Chart Supplement entry for a public-use airport lists each runway by its numbers. Sketch the extended centerlines onto your planning map, because that’s where manned traffic will be climbing out and coming in, and where your scan for traffic matters most.

A few runway markings come up often. A displaced threshold is a white bar across the runway with white arrows leading up to it. The pavement before the bar can be used for takeoff in either direction, and by aircraft rolling out after landing from the opposite end, but nobody touches down on it from this end. Yellow chevrons mark pavement lined up with the runway that isn’t usable for landing, takeoff, or taxiing. Yellow crosses (X’s) painted on a runway mean it’s closed.

Where a taxiway meets a runway, four yellow lines are painted across the taxiway: two solid and two dashed. That’s the runway holding position marking. The solid lines are on the side where aircraft must stop, and at an airport with an operating control tower a pilot may not cross them onto the runway without an ATC clearance.

Airport signs sort by color too. A red sign with white lettering is a mandatory instruction sign: it marks the entrance to a runway or critical area, or an area aircraft may not enter. A holding position sign reading "15-33" sits at that hold line, with Runway 15’s threshold to the left and Runway 33’s to the right. A black sign with yellow lettering and a yellow border is a location sign, telling a pilot which taxiway or runway they’re on. Most yellow signs with black lettering point the way or pass along information: direction signs (with arrows toward the next taxiways), destination signs (toward a ramp, fuel, or a runway), and information signs. A black sign with a single white number is a runway distance remaining sign, showing how many thousand feet of runway are left.