Short Final: Whisky Golf

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Several years ago, I offered to take my young adult son and two of his friends in my Cirrus and drop them off at the beach. After the required defueling (Ugh), we took off for the 30‑minute flight. My son let one of his friends, Brian, sit in the front with me so he could try flying. But before Brian got to try his hand at flying, I naturally was on the radio, with all the passengers listening. My tail number ends in 6WG. So, after one of my radio calls, Brian pops up and says, “Whisky and Golf, two of my favorite things!”

Dan Callow
Highland, Maryland

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Years ago, I flew N22WC–a Beech King Air 90 (“Twenty-Two Whiskey Charley”) for a corporation. We used it to bring customers to our plant in Minnesota–the owner said “I can sell anybody on our products that I can get in our plant, but I can’t get them to fly the airlines–that’s the purpose for the airplane.” As a result, we brought customers from all over the U.S. (the plan worked!) but rarely had the same customers on board often.

    Since the aircraft was full, a customer usually occupied the right seat. He was enjoying the flight, but on the return flight, he remarked “These Air Traffic Controllers seem to know you well.” I replied that we did fly a lot. After a while, he said “I thought you said your name was Jim–why do they call you ‘Charlie’? I explained that was our phonetic call sign.

    He breathed a sigh of relief–“when I heard “Whiskey Charlie”, I THOUGHT THAT PERHAPS YOU WERE A ‘RUM RUNNER’ FOR ILLICIT BOOZE–OR MAYBE THAT YOU HAD AN ALCOHOL PROBLEM!”

  2. I worked out of a Western American airport for almost 2 months a long time ago. One of the local airplanes was flown by a very colorful and well known local character with a decided anti-authoritarian attitude.

    He took an extreme dislike to one of the controllers so when replying instead of saying his call sign, Zero Four Quebec, he would reply Oh For Que with the words run together….

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