Military Pilot English
Take me downwind
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: FCO
Age: 54
Posts: 261
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
For anyone who cares...
Thanks again, all of you,
I appreciate the responses. Today went well. I have dug broken parts out of the local training airport's trash bin
and took my findings with me to class (bits of brakes, a pedal with wires coming out of it, an odd piece of something metal that had five different colored wires coming out of it-looks a bit like my hair in the morning 
)and a couple of other foreign and unknown articles). One student on the phone (in separate rooms-this to simulate the radio, non face to face situation) had to describe the pieces as though they were FOD. It went well. We studied physical characteristics like shapes, colors, surfaces (rough, greasy, matt, as well as; corrosive, inert and hollow. This followed by materials and substances.) before they had to do the exercise. The target language was formulating question forms asking for a description and actually describing something to someone who couldn't see the object. Happily, both groups were successful.
Then on to making complaints in a shop (non-aviation English subject) and later a discussion of how to "complain" on the radio. Intonation here is the key, always polite, but firm!
We also studied word order, check valve versus valve check; air bleed and bleed air.
I have still not been able to explain feathering the propeller properly, anyone care to help me here?Tomorrow; build an airfoil just by voice instructions (this is difficult because I also have the speaker on the opposite side of the room while the sound system is playing live radio traffic from various airports
). The theory is that in the cockpit the radio is almost always on and a pilot's attention must be on many things, multi-task.
Then lastly for tomorrow, build a balsam wood glider by listening to another students instruction. Let's see how it goes....
Best,
PE
I appreciate the responses. Today went well. I have dug broken parts out of the local training airport's trash bin
and took my findings with me to class (bits of brakes, a pedal with wires coming out of it, an odd piece of something metal that had five different colored wires coming out of it-looks a bit like my hair in the morning )and a couple of other foreign and unknown articles). One student on the phone (in separate rooms-this to simulate the radio, non face to face situation) had to describe the pieces as though they were FOD. It went well. We studied physical characteristics like shapes, colors, surfaces (rough, greasy, matt, as well as; corrosive, inert and hollow. This followed by materials and substances.) before they had to do the exercise. The target language was formulating question forms asking for a description and actually describing something to someone who couldn't see the object. Happily, both groups were successful.Then on to making complaints in a shop (non-aviation English subject) and later a discussion of how to "complain" on the radio. Intonation here is the key, always polite, but firm!
We also studied word order, check valve versus valve check; air bleed and bleed air.
I have still not been able to explain feathering the propeller properly, anyone care to help me here?Tomorrow; build an airfoil just by voice instructions (this is difficult because I also have the speaker on the opposite side of the room while the sound system is playing live radio traffic from various airports
). The theory is that in the cockpit the radio is almost always on and a pilot's attention must be on many things, multi-task.Then lastly for tomorrow, build a balsam wood glider by listening to another students instruction. Let's see how it goes....
Best,
PE
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: wherever
Age: 53
Posts: 79
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I thought you were just looking for the translation..
Feathering props means to decrease the pitch of the prop blades (angle by which they hit the airstream flow) to the minimum so they offer minimum drag to forward motion. In case your engine fails and cannot be restarted, you'd want that drag lowered to the minimum.
That's it in a nutshell.
Feathering props means to decrease the pitch of the prop blades (angle by which they hit the airstream flow) to the minimum so they offer minimum drag to forward motion. In case your engine fails and cannot be restarted, you'd want that drag lowered to the minimum.
That's it in a nutshell.
Take me downwind
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: FCO
Age: 54
Posts: 261
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Thanks for the info. I don't think this is messenger chat, no.
For the personal questions I sent you a private message earlier.
Thanks a bunch,
PE
For the personal questions I sent you a private message earlier.
Thanks a bunch,
PE
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: WORLD
Age: 53
Posts: 1,038
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
?
Originally Posted by bounce'em all
PE,
no advice from me to you: your classes sound like a heck of a lot more organized than most formal training classes I've been through...
the one needing serious advice would be the Italian Air Force or, better yet, the IT government itself, still not requiring English as a second official language for such recruiting purposes.
One question though, if I may: are you already involved with a language school within the ItAF ? or were you just approached as an outside source? Obviously, I will understand your reluctancy to answer if you'll judge my question as excessively nosy.
Just trying to find out if we've met already.
Thanks.
P.S.FLAPS62 still missing..?
no advice from me to you: your classes sound like a heck of a lot more organized than most formal training classes I've been through...
the one needing serious advice would be the Italian Air Force or, better yet, the IT government itself, still not requiring English as a second official language for such recruiting purposes.
One question though, if I may: are you already involved with a language school within the ItAF ? or were you just approached as an outside source? Obviously, I will understand your reluctancy to answer if you'll judge my question as excessively nosy.
Just trying to find out if we've met already.
Thanks.
P.S.FLAPS62 still missing..?
Nonetheless all the pilots and nav arrived in my squadron since 1994 always had more than a working knowledge, most of them have been us or canada trained. All the pilots that came through the italian flight training system were sent to language school an to the uk later on for school and family staying.
I guess i'm the living proof beeing on exchange withj raf and my english beeing average.
So what you said is not really correct, which is my english understatement exercise of the day really meaning "It's incorrect"!
We must have pissed off a bunch of people winning the world cup!
Cheers
P.S.
At a csar lesson some raf regiment guy who didn't notice me said that the worst nightmare would be eject and beeing rescued by italians having to go all the csar chit chat.
I told him the real nightmare would me for me, and my english is decent enough to be here, the real nightmare would be beeing shot down and beeing picked up by someone from Liverpool or Newcastle!
Take me downwind
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: FCO
Age: 54
Posts: 261
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Well we did it. We finished our two-week intensive session. They did wonderfully. I appreciate the help you all gave.
They were very enthusiastic and motivated. We focused on specific target language and feel they got it down very well. They were pretty beat at the end of the 13 days poor guys.
I don't know if they are on this forum. I asked them to sign up but am not sure if they did. I showed them the responses on this thread more than once.
Bounce'em all, I turned your response regarding feathering the props into a lesson. We broke down the langugae and worked on pronunciation and stress patterns with consonant/vowel sequences. They were very appreciative, as I am.
They gave me a book from the academy, a "yearbook" of sorts and signed it for me.
Take care and keep cool,
PE
They were very enthusiastic and motivated. We focused on specific target language and feel they got it down very well. They were pretty beat at the end of the 13 days poor guys.
I don't know if they are on this forum. I asked them to sign up but am not sure if they did. I showed them the responses on this thread more than once.
Bounce'em all, I turned your response regarding feathering the props into a lesson. We broke down the langugae and worked on pronunciation and stress patterns with consonant/vowel sequences. They were very appreciative, as I am.
They gave me a book from the academy, a "yearbook" of sorts and signed it for me.
Take care and keep cool,
PE
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Summer
Posts: 54
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Originally Posted by airborne_artist
Por favor puedo comer dos cervezas. Mi amigo pagará ellas.
Get a map, locate Spain. It's just on the left side of France, yes on the other side of the sea. Spain is where many British people like goes on vacations, they do bullfights, are you with me?
Well, they do speak 'Spanish' there. Sometime, (it doesn't matter if you won't remember that in the future), 'Spanish' is also called 'Castellano'. This word, think like a 'castle', is used to refer to the spanish language that is spoken in central and south-america, except Brazil. That would be everything south of what you probably call america.
Now, I hope you're still with me. Locate Italy on the map, it's on the opposite side, right and below France. I'm sure you know where France is. Now, they speak Italian there. It's easier to rememeber than the weird Spanish situation because Italian is officialy spoken in Italy only.
Now for the surprise point, Spanish and Italian are two different languages, albeit similar. What you uttered above is almost Spanish, but you do not 'comer' cerveza, being beer a liquid, you 'tomar' or 'beber'. These two words are synonimous.
I hope these two bits of language trivia can be helpful to your future attempts to be funny or get drunk in a foreign situation.
