On the clarity of language.

As you may have noticed from reading this stuff, I like words. I like to read them, I like to write them, I certainly like to say them! I like to play with language, I like to mess around with words, and I like to explore the impact of phraseology. I’m intrigued how by how you can completely change the intent behind a phrase by subtly changing a word or two.  I have no qualifications in this subject, unlike my friend C whose first degree is in semiotics*. I guess I’m merely an interested amateur!

I like the clarity of well written instructions. At work people will write instructions for people to follow and give them to me first, to pick the holes in, to find the flaws, the ambiguities, the loop holes. I like this. I have a reasonable success rate, although I still stand behind the maxim “when designing a foolproof system, never underestimate the ingenuity of fools!”

In a bizarre way I think this is why I generally don’t mind the radio work and speaking to ATC**. Unlike speaking on the phone, which I hate. On the radio everyone has a very limited bank of very specific phrases that they use. The point is there should be no ambiguity at all. Contrast this, for example, to phoning flight services. I hate this, the call is unpredictable, they might be chatty, they might be hard to understand, they may be off topic. You may have to struggle to find a common reference point. It’s an unknown. I loathe it, I will actively avoid doing it if I can***

You may ask yourself, where is this going? Well there are a couple of communication points I’ve come across recently that have struck a chord with me. The first is my ongoing battle with the weather. Thanks to Bob’s minor bullying whereby every lesson he makes me stand in front of the computer and decode the raw METAR and TAF data out loud to him (to stop me hitting the decode button and “cheating”) I can now read them reasonably well. Occasionally I still have to look up the odd code or remark. Which got me thinking, why should I have to do that? It’s 2013. Even the smallest airfield I’ve been to has access to at least one computer with more processing power than was required to launch a mission to the moon. Hell, even my cellphone can decode METARS quicker than I can. Why, in an area where precision is important, are we still relying on (fallible) humans to decode something that looks like this?****

    METAR CYVR 281500Z 27016KT 15SM FEW040 SCT120 BKN180 OVC240 05/02
A3001 RMK SC1AC2AC3CS2 SLP163=

 

When a paragraph roughly the same size as the one above will give you all the same information but in plain English. With less chance of interpretation errors.
 

The second thought that occurred to me language-wise was what happens when ATC need you to overshoot for whatever reason. This happened to me last flight. Due to traffic still being on the runway when I was on short final, I was issued the following instruction “Juliet Papa Mike. Pull up and go around.”

This is perfect, textbook phraseology. Except it’s not what you should do.

If you “pull up” when attempting to overshoot, the chances of you becoming a smoking crater in the ground are quite high. Let’s think about this for a moment. You are on final; you probably have 20 degrees of flaps down at least and are flying at roughly 65knots. You pull the nose up. Your angle of attack increases, your airspeed decreases. You stall. You’re probably at less than 500 feet. You crash. Plain and simple.

What you actually do is apply full power immediately, without hesitation. Then you clean up the flaps in stages. You may actually have to ease the nose down a little for a moment, depending on how you are trimmed out, just to get that airspeed up in order to climb out safely. You DO NOT yank the column back but to me I can understand how you may instinctively do that if ATC yell at you to “pull up!”

So here ends my language rant for today. I’m lucky in that I’ve had plenty of experience in practising overshoots, both self-inflicted and ATC mandated. It really is instinctual now but I still spend time pondering over points like this!

 

* I had no idea what this was until she explained it to me!

** Apart from my old nemesis. He stresses me out.

*** Of course by admitting this on my blog. I’m fairly certain a call to them is on the cards for the near future courtesy of Bob!

**** I had to pull up the weather for Vancouver to make my point. CYTZ is currently in the midst of freezing rain and ice pellets, the METAR is actually about half a page long!