Nobody freezes on the flare. They freeze on the transmit button, with four aeroplanes on frequency and no idea what to say first.
So practise it where nothing bad happens if you get it wrong. In your kitchen, on a work break, with the kettle going. The radio trainer runs in your browser, it is free, and there is nothing to install (no account either).
Two airfields in the free version, Rangiora and Christchurch. One unattended, one controlled, which between them cover most of what a student pilot has to get right.
Hold the button. Say it out loud.
Pick an airfield and a scenario. Hold the transmit button, make the call the way you would in the aeroplane, and let go. The controller answers in a voice you have to listen to rather than read, and the call gets scored against the four things every radio call needs.
| The four pillars | Sounds like |
|---|---|
| Who you are talking to | Rangiora Traffic |
| Who you are | Cessna ZK-DEF |
| Where you are | five miles north, two thousand five hundred |
| What you intend | inbound, joining overhead for runway zero seven |
Closing with the station name again is the New Zealand convention. It signs off your broadcast and clears the frequency for the next caller.
Real fields, real frequencies
Two of these you can fly right now, in the browser. The rest are being built for the iPhone app.
| Field | Code | Where | Why it is in there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rangiora | NZRT | Free | Busy unattended field. Where you learn to broadcast to traffic rather than talk to a controller |
| Christchurch | NZCH | Free | International and controlled. Ground first, then Tower, and every clearance read back word for word |
| Matamata | NZMA | App | Gliding operations in the mix, so your calls have to be clear and short |
| Tauranga | NZTG | App | Controlled. Clearances, readbacks, and doing what you were actually told |
| Ardmore | NZAR | App | One of the busiest training aerodromes in the country. Frequency discipline or nothing |
Where your voice goes
Worth being straight about this, because the two are not the same.
The browser trainer uses your browser’s own speech recognition, so in Chrome your audio goes off to Google to be turned into text. If you would rather it did not, there is a typing box on every scenario and it scores exactly the same.
The iPhone app does the lot on the phone. Speech recognition, the controller’s replies, the scoring. No account, no server, no upload, and it works at the field with one bar of signal, or none. That is the honest reason to prefer it.
The iPhone app
It is not out yet. If you want a nudge when it lands, send me an email and I will put you on the list.
It is built to make the ground study stick. Your instructor and the AIP are still the authority on what to actually say on the day.