dublinpilot, if I've read everything correctly, you've mis-understood Holloway's question. I think he's asking about two separate things - radio, and navigation. He's not asking about radio navigation, which is what you're giving him (excellent) advice about! Sorry if I've got that wrong, though....
Holloway, first, radio. No one cares what accent you have, as long as they can understand you, so don't worry about that! As for what to say, Who's advice about engaging brain is definitely good. Your instructor will break you in gently, maybe by getting you to ask for airfield information before departure, for example, while he handles everything else. Once you're starting working in the circuit you'll need to announce your position, but again, there are only a couple of calls you'll need to learn, and they're very easy.
The hard part is once you're expected to use the radio away from your airfield. The reply to "pass your message" is the only difficult bit. Basically, when you're away from the airfield, you generally call up a ground station and give your call-sign, and that's it. Their reply will probably tell you to "pass your message", and that's your cue to give them all the information in the world. Or at least, it seems like all the information in the world at first, but in fact there's only a handful of things that you need to tell them, and the aim is to get them all the information quickly and precisely. I don't know if all instructors teach the same way, but my instructor didn't expect me to worry too much about this until I started doing cross-country flying. I found that quite handy, because I always have a flight plan strapped to my knee when flying cross-country. So, for me, the answer was easy - I wrote down everything that I needed to say on my flight plan! Then, whenever I got told to "pass my message", I just read all the information out off of a list on my knee - simple! By the time I needed to handle the radio at times when I wasn't on a cross-country, I'd done it so many times that it was pretty much burnt into my brain - a quick session at home of saying the same thing over and over for about 10 minutes was sufficient that I haven't had problems since.
The main thing to remember, though, is that the guy on the other end of the radio is human. If you can't remember the correct phrase to use, speak English - he'll understand, and reply in English. Everyone is there to help you, all you need to do is tell them what help you need.
Now, navigation. There are two seperate parts to navigation. The main navigation technique which you'll be taught is a combination of ded reckoning (short for "deduced reckoning", and sometimes (mis-)spelt "dead" reckoning) and pilotage. Ded reckoning involves working out what direction to fly, and for how long. Then you take off, point in the right direction, and start the stop-watch. Pilotage involves looking out of the window and comparing it to what's on a chart, and is used to correct for errors in your ded reckoning (e.g. because the wind forecast was wrong, or because you're not flying as accurately as you hoped). There are very definite, formal techniques for doing this, which your instructor will teach you much later on in your training.
The thing which always scared me, though, was just flying out to the local area for some general handling and finding my way back. After I'd gone solo, and done a few more hours solo in the circuit, my instructor sent me, solo, about 10 miles away from the airfield to one of our reporting points. I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to find my way back! Turned out to be easy though! I know that if someone tried to tell me, when I was at the stage you're at now, how easy it would be, I wouldn't have believed them, so I don't expect you to believe me. But by the time you're ready to venture away from the airfield alone you'll have spent so many hours flying in the local area that the landmarks will be burnt into your head without you even realising! It might help, though, to ask your instructor to point out the landmarks he's using to get you home the next time you're in the local flying area together. For example, maybe he always looks for the cluster of three tall buildings to identify a particular town (but he'll probably also know that you can only see two of them if you're to the north...) Maybe he just finds his way to somewhere that's easy to spot, then follows a road or a railway line. A bit of local knowledge really helps.
By the way, when I went to America to do some hour-building, I had exactly the same nerves all over again. Once I'd got checked out with an instructor at the club I was hiring from, I was terrified that, as soon as I left the airfield without a proper ded-reckoning plan, I'd never find my way back again. So I took off, flew 5 miles, then did a 180-degree turn to check I could still see the airfield. I could, so I turned away, and went another 5 miles. I kept repeating that until I couldn't see the airfield any more - but by the time I was that far away, there were other landmarks around that I recognised. Just as easy as it was a year or so earlier when my instructor sent me out to that reporting point - but that didn't stop me being nervous about it until I'd seen for myself!
FFF
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Last edited by FlyingForFun; 27th Aug 2002 at 13:26.