New to vatsim and low amount of atc on my region

[Claudio Henrique Dos Santos Reis]

Hey guys, I'm pretty new to the whole civilian flight simulator thing, so I'm still getting the hang of it, but I think already am good enough with my plane to get flying on vatsim. 

The problem is, my region rarely have an atc online. I pretty much looked at it with my phone every 1 hour and I think I only saw 3 ATCs during the whole day.

So i was thinking about just going to Europe or usa since there's always an atc online there, beut here come the second problem: my spoken English is not that good, so combining that with me being new with the phraseology + not being that comfortable speaking english (i would rate myself around 4/10) would make things a lot worse.

What do you guys think, should I just jump into the pool and hope I get better or do I try to get some practice when I can on my own language first?

 

 

 

[Alistair Thomson]

Just jump in! But also know what the ATC talk will contain. So learn standard phraseology in your own language.

The fact is that, for better or worse, English is the globally accepted language for ATC and although many (most?) countries will converse in their native language, they will also be sufficiently fluent in English to be able to converse using the fairly severely reduced vocabulary of ATC. So get up to speed with standard phraseology in English too. From reading your post, I'd be pretty sure that your 4/10 English is quite good enough.

Imagine that you are flying over Uzbakistan or Uttar Pradesh. Would you expect the local ATC to speak in Spanish to you? No, they would revert to English, and so would you. 🙂

[Claudiu Dragomir]

From what I see, your written English is above the international average. I think you'll do just fine.

A few tips:

1. Turn off the realistic audio effects in vPilot/xPilot - you don't need the buzzing and interference for now
2. Listen on the ground: tune in to a few frequencies for 10-15 minutes, while prepping the plane, to get your ear adjusted to the accent and phraseology
3. Write down the key points of your transmission before you press the push-to-talk button
4. Don't be afraid to ask the controller to "say again"
5. liveatc.net

I personally prefer to stick to the English phraseology when flying locally: too lazy to learn two ways of saying things.

[Neil Enns]

Pick a smaller airport in the US with coverage that doesn't have a lot of planes for your first flight and in your flight plan notes put "New to vatsim, English is my second language".

I've had several pilots put notes about English being a second language in their flight plans and every time they do just fine. At a quiet airport there's plenty of time for the controller(s) to work with you.

[Claudio Henrique Dos Santos Reis]

I'll just go and do it then! It will probably help me to improve my english too, so that's another positive point.