What the Hell is Beta?

For the past 6 months or so I have remained in my own little air zone of comfort; pretty much within 25 nm of the Fargo's parking spot. It's cozy and not the least bit intimidating. I know the people around me. I'm pretty sure the controllers know me and I've made an ass of myself on the radio enough times with them that I just don't care anymore. However, I've been thinking it's time to leave my little 25 nm circle. And so, I did leave it, just the other day, which made me realize I've got a lot of learning/review to do!

It wasn't that I was going very far. Just to the next airport over. But this airport is a little bigger...as in, it's got a tower with a controller inside (not like mine, which has a tower, but it's empty inside. Which is nice. Knowing they can't see you and your ugly landings is rather comforting) and it's got 4 runways instead of two and taxiways. Two taxiways to be more precise, which is what led to my final flub, but I'll get to that later.

So, I decided I should just fly over to that other airport. Enough with flying around, I needed a destination. I didn't really plan anything, there was someone on the other side of the destination expecting me so I didn't need to file a flight plan, and I've driven that way so many times I knew where I was going. If anything, I thought, I'd have my GPS to help me along. Or so I thought.

The batteries died on my GPS as soon as I called airborne. Good thing I had my map. At least I could situate myself and the airport into my line of flight. The problem is, my judge of distance kind of sucks and that runway creeps up a lot faster than you'd think. No later had I called into the tower than I found myself on Left Base ready to turn final. So I panicked, called in final, and then realized I was way, way further than I thought. Either way, I made it, but the controller I'm pretty sure was starting to wonder about me. Since this was after he asked me a questiond previously and I couldn't remember how to say yes and I'd forgotten which was the preferred runway he'd just told me a moment earlier.

If he thought I had no idea what I was doing when I was coming in to land, I confirmed his wonderings once I called down and then had to ask where to go. But calling where to go wasn't probably too big of a deal, the thing was, I had to call where to go, then how to get there. And how did I ask to get there? I asked if I should take taxiway Beta. Yes. Beta.

I parked. Picked up my passenger. Then went to leave, once again asking if the best way to get where I was going was taxiway Beta. He said yes. So, I started to go, then called in that I was entering taxiway Beta and it hit me. Bravo! Taxiway Bravo! What an idiot! There is no Beta in the phonetic alphabet. At least not in the one I learned. Where did that even come from? And I knew I was wrong when I called it, in my head I had just convinced myself that they called taxiways different than anything else. As in, Alpha was the Greek number one so Beta was the Greek number two. I was making things up in my head just to convince myself I knew what I was doing, which obviously, I didn't.

Regardless, I made it out of there. I did call in Bravo once before leaving, just so that the controller knew I wasn't a complete idiot, but I doubt that convinced him. I think from now on, at least until I do some much needed review, I'm going to stay in my little circle of comfort. At least the people in that circle expect me to be completely scatterbrained, but I don't need to let others know that too.