The other day I was flying to St Augustine, FL and heard this:
“Pilatus 9AF cleared to land runway 24… Hey Paul, where you at?”
paul, I guess, “yea, I’m just about on the left downwind now”
“a’ight, report turning base”
“turnin’ base, got it”
“get any good shots?”
“yea we got a few good ones”
me, “uhh…9AF cleared to land runway 24”
I was listening to San Fran’s tower the other day and the pilot was trying to have a non aviation conversation with the controller.
When its not busy it isn’t that unusual to chit-chat with the controllers sometimes, it breaks up the monotony. But he didnt even give me a chance to reply to the landing clearance before asking the other ‘dude’ “where you at?”. We were practicaly on the ground before I got a chance to reply.
Sometimes when I havent heard anyone in a couple of minutes I’ll say, “still there?”
They usually come back with, “Yup, its just quiet today”
Although the other day Denver Center forgot to hand us off to his next frequency. I didnt realize until I could hear other traffic’s responces without hearing the controller’s call. I looked up his next freq (was actually the same guy) on the GPS and got a hold of them again.
Its always funny when I can heard people yelling and carrying-on in the background of an ATC communication. Sometimes they’re watching ‘the game’ and you can tell when the home team scores a goal.
I know what you mean by the background noise, SFO has a lot of it. There is one controller that can not multitask there. They will contact her but she will get sidetracked and they will have to contact her again. Almost with any plane trying to get landing clearance. But when they were trying to carry on a conversation, it was evening rush hour in San Fran.
Don’t know about the others but I know I have a lot of down time at work so I fill my time by making snide, rude, non-politcally correct, and, sometimes, helpful (shudder!) postings.
Note: This is posting number 747 for me. Sounds like a nice number for an airplane. Think I’ll patent the number and sell it to Airbus for their next airplane.
Sounds like a great name for a forum. For some reason there is a voice in my head telling me that the name 747 has already been used. 
I hear voices in my head, too. They are nice voices. They tell me neat things to do. Oh! There’s a voice now. Yes, master, I hear and obey…
FREAK!
I know we poke fun at the controlers sometimes but I could never do their job. It’s all I can do to keep up with my 1 airplane. There is no way I could keep track of 20 or 30. I guess my processor is not powerful enough.
Ahem…If I DID have “plenty of time” on my hands, why would I have complained about having to SPEND TIME digging through topics such as this one to figure out what exactly the “question” was all about? I read this thread in an attempt to be a “nice guy,” then offered some well-intended advice, which obviously went unheeded. 
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…YOU’RE WELCOME!!!