Radio & Radar in Airplane Aviation

"Okay, what we were just listening to there is the automated weather observation station here at the airport. A big factor in flying safely is obviously communications. So that's why we have a couple of radios within the aircraft. And one of the things we'd be checking prior to flight would be the ground-based conditions here that we would get over an automated station at an airport such as this. If we're going, going into a tower-controlled airport, there might also be a frequency there where they would be giving us similar information, but it would be updated by an actual human observer about once an hour. The radios that are in this aircraft are pretty representative of a lot of general aviation planes. We have one GPS receiver, and we have an additional NAVCOM radio in the number two position. The aircraft is also equipped with distance measuring equipment, and of course our transponder is a fairly important piece of equipment as far as ATC's concerned because what this does -- this allows us to put a series of numbers into the unit which can be seen on a radar scope. So when we are traveling en route to another airport and we're going to be in radar coverage, a controller can simply have us put in what's called a squawk code -- a four digit code -- and he can identify our position, our altitude, and he knows what our intentions are. And, of course, that in turn makes flying so much safer."