In the summer months, I am increasingly finding myself using French to talk to my family in Supermarkets due to the embarassement factor of the odd "Brit Abroard" charachter wandering around talking loudly, so I try to go incognito...
Guys, Please dont make me have to pretend to be French in the air?
Our aeroclub is a typically friendly french affair, especially to visiting Brits, possibly due to myself being in residence and the couple living there having served several exchange postings in the UK with the FAF. But I must say, that in the last couple of years there have been a few incidents which raised eyebrows at the club, and the following stick out in my mind as they caused much hilarity st the club....
...like the guy that attempted to land a PA-28
R on the 5m x 100m Aeromodellers runway (he actually touched down!!
) instead of our 900mx30m grass runway the other side of the ditch - how do you do that if you have looked at the airfield plate!!
......And the gaggle of microlighters which pitched up and caused havoc in the circuit & parking on the ground, then asked if there was a chateaux close by they could visit - a club member offered to show them around his place, offered wine tasting, gave lifts to hotels etc., and none of the dozen of them bought even one bottle of wine (that is the height of faux pas around here!!
) off of the guy.
And honestly, I think the Wine rejection raised many more eyebrows than the PA28 incident!!!!
OK, Maybe the initial poster was a bit harsh, but in all seriousness, British pilots dont want to start getting a bad rep here in france like some other sections of the "great" British public when abroard, do they?
You definitely DONT need to be fluent in French to visit the smaller French only airfields here. But please read the airfield plate and make calls saying who and where you are, and what you are doing, in French!! If the frequency is busy, how about trying to figure out what is going on before just blundering into the circuit with a OHJ? If you wouldnt do it in the UK, why do it abroard?
And finally, if you do F*ck up, for godsake say sorry !!!