To Bill Harrelson, (and others planning to fly the north Atlantic)

Sounds like you're planning a north Atlantic crossing. If so, may I suggest
that if at all possible, you find a recent Scotch immigrant and spend some
time getting used to the accent. I had a friend do the crossing some years
ago and he said that the only folks (ATC types) he had problems
understanding were the Scots - and he flew across Europe and even down into
Egypt! He said they (the Scots) not only were almost impossible to
understand, they got quite p----d off and hard to deal with when he had to
keep asking for repeats of instructions.

Might also be a good idea to carefully check out how to declare yourself
non-hostile if necessary, too. My friend needed to fly to Israel when
leaving Egypt (his Piper needed an annual [why he didn't take care of that
before leaving the states, I'll never know]) and he ended up being escorted
by Israeli Airforce fighters the last hundred miles or so, even after much
radio palaver with Israeli ATC.