If you are sitting in a police car I assume dispatch is constantly chattering about various problems that need dealing with (at least in a big city). Same with pilots coming in to a big city. Presumably ATC at sending instructions to lots of pilots.
I have listened to ATC chatter and I doubt just calling out my flight number would instantly lock me on to what they are telling me. Yet, clearly, pilots do that sort of thing all the time with no problem.
Do you have to train to hear that stuff? How do you pluck out that one bit from the chatter that you need to listen to?
It’s the flight number for me. The company name gets my ears primed and then the flight number triggers full listening mode. That said, it is quite common to have a “was that for us?” moment on the flight deck, mainly during en-route cruise when we might be eating breakfast, having a chat, etc. During arrival and departure with the approach controller we are much more attentive.
It has been mildly annoying that our two subsidiary regional airlines have recently changed from unique company identifiers to the same as ours.
I’m neither a pilot or cop but I had one job where I had to listen for fishing boats on marine band radio and even though there’s a constant babble on the radio once you’ve done it for a while your own call sign will immediately trigger you to listen, you can be reading, having a conversation, even napping and your call sign instantly attracts your attention
During my college days, I worked night security on campus and we shared dispatch with the police. It wasn’t nearly as busy as during the day shift, but it would get some traffic at times. We were called by our badge numbers with security officer badge numbers in the 80s and 90s. The campus police has numbers in the 50s and 60.
I had badge 82 and my ears would perk up anytime dispatch would start of with a 80-something number.
I was a CATV maintenance tech 30 years ago. The only thing I remember about radio codes and protocol is my old call sign - 103. If I ever hear or read that number, it gets my immediate attention.
Security here. We’re called by our call signs, mine is Lakeland 2. If that’s did I listen intently. For all other tragic I might listen for interesting keywords to see if it piques my interest, but unless my identifier is said first I mostly ignore.
It did take a while to get used to listening to a busy radio. But soon you’ll realize how to pick out what’s important or not.
I get that but when watching videos of planes or police and listening to the chatter happening on the radio those call-signs whoosh right past my ears.
Obviously pilots and police and whatnot twig to it but it really is all an audible blur to my ears (good thing I am not a pilot or any of those other things).
Yeah, you pick up on it pretty quickly. Part of that is you’re generally expecting communication, so you’re listening to hear if someone calls you. The other thing is humans have a tendency to tune into their own names; like when you’re in a crowded room and you hear your name, it gets your attention.
I think part of it, for me, is there seems to be nothing to make the callsign standout. It is all just a rush of info with no seeming inflection to distinguish one part from another.
For police radios I’m a supervisor so all of the chatter I have to pay attention to. It’s not like NYC or a big city. We have 5-14 cars on the road depending on the time of day. The call signs are easy enough to filter out what is happening. Generally we are only using/monitoring one frequency so only one person can be talking at a time. Dispatch has multiple frequencies to monitor but they work as a team and don’t have things like driving to distract them.
When I was an aeroscout in the Army it was more difficult. We had a UHF radio, a VHF radio and 2 FM tactical radios. All were going at the same time and it could be very confusing. Mostly we broke up the work load between me and the pilot. He would handle the non-tactical portions and talk to ATC and I would mostly be on the FM speaking to tactical units.
This. For airline people it gets pretty simple. After awhile the company callsign is burned into your brain. That callsign is the first thing out of the controller’s mouth. Most folks fly an entire career for just one company using just just one name.
A few years ago my employer got bought. So mid-career we all had to simultaneously change to listening for a different company name. On Monday we were OldCompany 1234 and on Tuesday we were NewCompany 1234.
It was surprisingly hard at first. Lots of calls had to be repeated to get our attention. But after a couple of weeks most of us had it down most of the time. Though for the first few months you’d very occasionally hear an exasperated controller who just wasn’t getting through calling out something like “Hey OldCompany 1234, listen up when I call for NewCompany 1234. That’s you!” D’oh!
After the company callsign the very next thing out of the controller’s mouth is the flight number. That of course changes from day to day and from flight to flight.
At the outset of each flight everybody writes it down someplace obvious in big bold letters. Some late-model airplanes even display it on the instrument screens. During the start, taxi, and takeoff phases you end up saying it a lot of times and also hearing it a lot of times while you’re less than busy. Which helps burn it in. At least for me, by halfway up to cruise altitude I’ve thrown away that piece of paper; it’s now in my head.
Quickly memorizing short runs of digits on demand then later forgetting those same sequences on demand is simply one more skill & one more necessary aptitude.
But …
After 4 days on the road and 12 or 14 different callsigns it can sorta turn into digit stew. Yesterday afternoon was 2673 and right now is 2745. That can lead to some silly mistakes. I’m mostly prone to glue them together wrongly as e.g 2645.
A different mistake is when both Company 2673 and Company 2765 are on the same frequency and either the wrong plane or both planes think the call was for them. ATC screws up once in awhile too, either mishearing who made a request, or intending to issue an instruction to one while saying the callsign of the other.
All of these can be messy to correct.
Which is why we listen to every radio call, not just our own. The ideal goal is to have a mental model of what you’re doing, what you’re expecting to hear next from ATC when, and what everybody else is doing too. That way any misspeaking by them or mishearing by you will trigger that “this ain’t right!” feeling that leads to seeking confirmation / correction rather than blindly doing something dumb.
In the 1980’s our fire dept. shared one radio channel with 8 or 10 others. After awhile you could sleep through fire or ambulance calls for all of the others and instantly come awake when they used our dept name. After the 90’s arrived each dept had a separate tone to open the channel on your dept pager so life at home became much quieter.
I can’t add anything to the above, but I will mention that when I was in right seat to my brother, I was continually amazed at how he did it. Especially the time we were landing west into the setting sun in Atlanta with a crazed windshield.
