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spinfire

spinfire

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Dan
So do many of you get a lot of foreigners training at your home base? Sometimes the phraseology gets a bit funny. I generally found this person understandable relative to some clips I have heard.
 
That KTMB video was wild - how many times did the controller have to tell that one guy "This airport does not have a runway 39!"
 
There was a Saudi undergoing flight training at my airport who disappeared very, very soon after 911...
 
Matthew said:
That KTMB video was wild - how many times did the controller have to tell that one guy "This airport does not have a runway 39!"
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Just another day in paradise :D

I, personally, have very little problem with accents. Miami has a Latino majority so different Spanish accents are everywhere. I can kinda definitely tell Cuban from Mexican and can hazard a guess on a few more. KTMB has a large flight school that caters to folks from India so that is a common accent on the radio. We don't get many Chinese though I think there are schools in the middle of the state that do.

It is all good and good for the economy and the job market.
 
One of the highlights of any trip to Napa for my wife and I is listening to the JAL students wrestling with "Willows traffic" as we fly by. :)
 
Yeah, this was definitely not the worst I have heard. Later his pattern radio work was quite smooth too and each round around was a nice concise "downwind, Cardinal in sight, option". In my experience it is talking to approach controllers where the language barrier really shows up. He was flying an aircraft that rents out of Nashua and so obviously is familiar with Class D operations.

But at least in this clip there are also a few weird things like him calling the tower "Manchester Tower" and the initially confused sounding response of "traffic... number 3..." (sounded like the mic was not keyed at the beginning).

I have no complaints as long as they are flying safely. None of the cases in my clip were unsafe whereas the guy who couldn't manage the right turn in the youtube video... yeah, that's actually a safety issue. Mentioning the wrong airport "Manchester Tower" is not nearly as bad as doing that on a shared CTAF. Here in the northeast there are usually a lot of airports sharing a given CTAF frequency.
 
spinfire said:
Yeah, this was definitely not the worst I have heard. Later his pattern radio work was quite smooth too and each round around was a nice concise "downwind, Cardinal in sight, option". In my experience it is talking to approach controllers where the language barrier really shows up. He was flying an aircraft that rents out of Nashua and so obviously is familiar with Class D operations.

But at least in this clip there are also a few weird things like him calling the tower "Manchester Tower" and the initially confused sounding response of "traffic... number 3..." (sounded like the mic was not keyed at the beginning).

I have no complaints as long as they are flying safely. None of the cases in my clip were unsafe whereas the guy who couldn't manage the right turn in the youtube video... yeah, that's actually a safety issue. Mentioning the wrong airport "Manchester Tower" is not nearly as bad as doing that on a shared CTAF. Here in the northeast there are usually a lot of airports sharing a given CTAF frequency.
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Meh, I make (minor) errors like that, especially if I am behind the airplane a bit or just had a bad landing. I recently blew a landing in the Luscombe big time at KPMP and totally botched the ground call-up including calling the wrong airport name. The controller was not amused nor was he sensitive to the fact that I was still smarting from the landing. Maybe the ground controller did not see my landing.
 
alfadog said:
Which one has the accent to you? I understand all of them just fine. Controller has NY accent and the CFI, Canadian?
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I'm talking about the Chinese accent on the pilot flying the Arrow 208ND (the part at the beginning is me, and while I'm from Long Island, I don't have a strong NY/LI accent). I didn't have much trouble understanding but found some of the phraseology and pronunciation amusing. Each time around the pattern in pronounced Cardinal in the same way. He was solo, there was no CFI in the clip. I'm quite used to the Controller's voice because this is my home base but I've never thought of it as a NY accent.
 
spinfire said:
I'm talking about the Chinese accent on the pilot flying the Arrow 208ND (the part at the beginning is me, and while I'm from Long Island, I don't have a strong NY/LI accent). I didn't have much trouble understanding but found some of the phraseology and pronunciation amusing. Each time around the pattern in pronounced Cardinal in the same way. He was solo, there was no CFI in the clip. I'm quite used to the Controller's voice because this is my home base but I've never thought of it as a NY accent.
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No-one has an accent but the other guy. :D
 
Calling the ground controller with the wrong airport name is not as bad as calling 5 miles out to the wrong airport! The thing I will do after a shaky landing is to fail to fully parse the controller's instruction to "monitor ground .8 as you taxi to parking" even as I read it back. Once I am off the runway and done with my after landing stuff I can't be sure he told me to monitor so I call up the poor single controller who is working both frequencies and request to taxi again because I want to be sure. So of course the controller has to repeat the "taxi to parking" again.

They'll usually give you your taxi instruction as you exit the runway and then tell you to monitor ground any time there is only a single controller on duty which seems to be at least half the time.
 
alfadog said:
No-one has an accent but the other guy. :D
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True, true. It depends on what you're used to. I travel through NY Approach airspace often enough that there is NO WAY I'd call the Nashua controller a NY accent compared to those guys (and of course I grew up with NY/LI accents much stronger than mine). NY Approach is good for some seriously fast talking NYC accents.
 
spinfire said:
Calling the ground controller with the wrong airport name is not as bad as calling 5 miles out to the wrong airport! The thing I will do after a shaky landing is to fail to fully parse the controller's instruction to "monitor ground .8 as you taxi to parking" even as I read it back. Once I am off the runway and done with my after landing stuff I can't be sure he told me to monitor so I call up the poor single controller who is working both frequencies and request to taxi again because I want to be sure. So of course the controller has to repeat the "taxi to parking" again.

They'll usually give you your taxi instruction as you exit the runway and then tell you to monitor ground any time there is only a single controller on duty which seems to be at least half the time.
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None of this minor stuff is bad. People make errors. If someone calls the wrong airport 5 miles out the controller should simply ensure that the person is not on the wrong freq. No-one needs to get their panties in a bunch over this crap. My two Mi dos centavos.

And my experience is that, mostly, no-one does. Very occasionally a hard-ass will.
 
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Agreed. (OK, the guy who had trouble understanding "turn right" is maybe the unsafe exception). I actually like the flavor the funny phraseology and pronunciation adds.
 
XFL is used a for a lot of T&Gs by Embry Riddle students so I hear a lot of foreign students on the radio. I rarely here anything out of the ordinary although sometimes I wonder how the ATC understood him/her.
 
flightmedic said:
XFL is used a for a lot of T&Gs by Embry Riddle students so I hear a lot of foreign students on the radio. I rarely here anything out of the ordinary although sometimes I wonder how the ATC understood him/her.
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XFL looks like another one of those old WW2-era triangle airfields we were talking about in another thread.

edit: Nothing I love more than information that is of zero use to me :D
Flagler County Airport was first established in 1947 as Bunnell Auxiliary Airfield, a Navy World War II outlying field.
http://www.flaglercounty.org/DocumentView.aspx?DID=86
 
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spinfire said:
Calling the ground controller with the wrong airport name is not as bad as calling 5 miles out to the wrong airport! The thing I will do after a shaky landing is to fail to fully parse the controller's instruction to "monitor ground .8 as you taxi to parking" even as I read it back. Once I am off the runway and done with my after landing stuff I can't be sure he told me to monitor so I call up the poor single controller who is working both frequencies and request to taxi again because I want to be sure. So of course the controller has to repeat the "taxi to parking" again.

They'll usually give you your taxi instruction as you exit the runway and then tell you to monitor ground any time there is only a single controller on duty which seems to be at least half the time.
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If a single controller is working both frequencies there's no reason to have you change to the ground control frequency.
 
Yeah... I don't know why they do it that way. When they have single controller ops they broadcast on both frequencies. So if you are listening on ground you will hear half of the tower conversation. I guess having people switch keeps the other frequency slightly quieter if the taxiing pilot needs to request something :dunno:
 
spinfire said:
Yeah... I don't know why they do it that way. When they have single controller ops they broadcast on both frequencies. So if you are listening on ground you will hear half of the tower conversation. I guess having people switch keeps the other frequency slightly quieter if the taxiing pilot needs to request something :dunno:
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But then pilots on the slightly quieter frequency will call during the pauses they find there, stepping on transmissions to the controller on the other frequency. Saying "monitor ground .8 as you taxi to parking" also makes tower frequency a bit busier than saying "taxi to parking."
 
It is a contract tower, I do know that. Maybe I'll ask some time.
 
Could be a receiving antenna limitation. Ground reception may be poor on the tower frequency due to ATC antenna placement.
 
Threefingeredjack said:
One of the highlights of any trip to Napa for my wife and I is listening to the JAL students wrestling with "Willows traffic" as we fly by. :)
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Oh god I heard them at Napa one time and I got so scared I circled outside the pattern until they left. I was freaking out and didn't want a midair, it only cost me a few minutes, and I felt safer having the airport to myself.

A whole bunch of them on the CTAF and it was night and I had NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE SAYING AND COULD NOT SEE ALL OF THEM. I think I'd only had less than 3 flights as a PPL and I was green (I still am but this was worse).
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
Oh god I heard them at Napa one time and I got so scared I circled outside the pattern until they left. I was freaking out and didn't want a midair, it only cost me a few minutes, and I felt safer having the airport to myself.

A whole bunch of them on the CTAF and it was night and I had NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE SAYING AND COULD NOT SEE ALL OF THEM. I think I'd only had less than 3 flights as a PPL and I was green (I still am but this was worse).
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I've never heard more frustrated controllers than when I've been to KAPC with all of the Bonanza Boys (JAL trainees) in the pattern.

They ain't there no more though.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I've never heard more frustrated controllers than when I've been to KAPC with all of the Bonanza Boys (JAL trainees) in the pattern.

They ain't there no more though.
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You'd love KDVT with the Chinese students then. It's on the Internet on a live site for AZ area (not LiveATC). Worth a listen sometime just for the entertainment value.
 
I wouldn't complain too much about foreign students training here, it's about the only thing keeping the doors of GA open here as well, it's a significant portion of the industry.
 
Matthew said:
That KTMB video was wild - how many times did the controller have to tell that one guy "This airport does not have a runway 39!"
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This is pretty much the only other time I ever heard anyone use, um, optimistic runway numbers. The other one was my attempt to land on runway 45 at Haigh :D
 
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