Humpty-Bump Pull Top, Diamond Loop, Reverse Shark’s Tooth, Hammerhead, and Goldfish from the Top are all names of aerobatic maneuvers recorded in the Aresti System, designed by Spanish aviator Jose Luis de Aresti Aguirre as a means of recording such aerial moves. You can see videos of pilots rehearsing such moves on the ground. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Like Dancing for Airplanes”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Humpty Bump Pull Top, Diamond Loops, Reverse Shark’s Tooth.
If you overheard people talking excitedly using vocabulary like this, you’d probably wonder what in the heck they were talking about.
At least you would unless you were, well, Grant Barrett, because Grant, you know what I’m talking about.
Yes, that’s some of the language of people who do acrobatic flying maneuvers.
Yes, yes.
They describe the movements of what these daredevil pilots do in the air.
It’s like, you know how dance choreographers have a system of symbols and terms to represent the movements that they do on the ground?
Well, pilots have them for their movements in the air.
And they can spell them out in this notational system that’s called the arrestee system.
It’s named for a Spanish aviator who developed a manual for pilots that described about 3,000 maneuvers,
And it’s since expanded to include thousands more.
But it includes picturesque terms like the ones I mentioned, and also hammerheads and goldfish from the top.
Goldfish from the top.
So it’s called that because if you were looking down from above the maneuver, it’s in the shape of a simplified goldfish, right?
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
And you know, what’s also interesting is that there are arrestee dances.
What are those?
Those are the movements that pilots do on the ground that help them visualize and practice for their flights.
You can watch videos of them on YouTube.
It’s really interesting.
It’s kind of these jerky movements where they look like they’re deep in thought and they’re thinking about what they’re doing,
But they’re doing all these, you know, hammerheads and goldfish from the top.
We will link to some of the Arresti dance videos and the Arresti dictionary of the acrobatic moves that pilots have.
And if you’ve got some other interesting language or form of communication in your trade or profession, we’d love to hear about it.
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