November 435 Sierra Romeo is cleared to Bravo Tango Victor airport, via: On entering controlled airspace, expect radar vectors to Westminster VOR. Here’s how the IFR directions from an ATC could sound for a flight like the one we recently flew to Burlington Vermont from the Washington DC area: Turn left on Foxhall Road right on Nebraska straight through the traffic circle at American University through next intersection at Wisconsin another few hundred yards and the pool is on your left. When we fly on instrument flight plans (IFR) the ATC will issue an explicit “clearance,” or set of directions on the route to follow, akin to how I might give someone directions on the ground from our house to the great new 50-meter indoor public pool where I swim in Washington DC: This is the lexicon of waypoints, which are the road markers in the sky for directing planes on a course. An old-rules air traffic controller might stick to the absolutely disambiguating pronunciation for, say, distinguishing 9 and 5 with Niner and Fife.īut there is one special set of aviation jargon, more alien than the concocted vocabulary of Esperanto and more bizarre than patterned wordplay of Pig Latin or Id. A cool one might swagger through litanies like Maverick or Iceman in Top Gun. The variation in style is pretty small: a grizzled pilot might slur rather than enunciate. He never said that before he became a pilot. In place of the more colloquial (at least to me) “What was that?” Or, “I didn’t quite hear you,” or even “Sorry?” he now says “ Say again” in all his normal conversation. One day, I was surprised to realize that a little linguistic tic that I thought my husband had acquired was actually aviation talk for “repeat”. Or there might be a request for clarification. An ATC might request the pilot to “Say type of aircraft,” since there are different types of Cirruses or Cessnas. Sometimes you hear a request for elaboration. Pilots: “ Light chop at three-five-zero“ or “ Moderate turbulence at 5000 feet." You might hear a little looser back and forth when, for example, the ATC is inquiring from pilots within his space about favorable altitudes to assign: Reinvention and resilience across the nation Read more
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |