Aviation English for a trans-Pacific balloonist

Read this post in Japanese (日本語)

Michio Kanda is a Japanese town office employee planning a world-record-breaking attempt to fly from Japan to North American in a hot air balloon.

Kanda-san is well prepared, with world records for altitude, distance and time in the air under his belt. But when they met to discuss preparations, the ground team was worried about one thing: How would Kanda-san communicate with Air Traffic Control when got to North America?

To help out, we hooked up with Australian Aviation English specialist Mike Smith of Aerospace English who set about creating a customized language course designed to teach Kanda-san the things he would most need to know, in the shortest possible period of time.

We mocked up Kanda-san’s balloon in Second Life and built a simulation, along with the instruments that he would need to control based on instructions from the control tower: A transponder to adjust the the frequency on which he would talk to the tower, and an altimeter on which he would base the his reports to the ground.

Here’s a clip from the lesson, featuring Mike Smith in the control tower and Michio Kanda in the balloon: