Zzz wrote:There's a distinction between "chatting" and discussing the mission at hand. Talking about Marv's hangar build is chatting, but comparing notes about what's on the ground, plans for approaching a backcountry strip, trading ideas for the approach, weather talk, or anything relevant to the plan in motion is OK in my opinion, as long as it doesn't impede CTAF communications. The actions I'm referring to are not CTAF communications around an airport, but any other type of coordination communication between aircraft flying together.

I agree with Zane. When flying with other aircraft as a group, there has to be a median of communication and coordination between each other. There are legitimate reason to discuss landing surfaces, approaches, plans of action, etc. Find a freq that is quiet and not locally assigned and enjoy.

Coincidentally this came up yesterday on one of my flights. I was on an instrument plan and a buddy wanted to talk with me. I got a call from center saying "another aircraft is requesting you on 123.45, report when you're back with me".

So I guess at least one air traffic controller thinks that's a fine use of a frequency.

EZFlap wrote:
Besides, airliners go by their flight numbers (TWA 800, etc) instead of N numbers I believe, the police rotors go by call sign ( "Police 4"), and the TV news rotors go by local TV station numbers ("TV 4") so there is definitely a precedent for call signs being OK. I believe the military also uses their call signs even when using civilian airspace and working with civilian ATC.

Those are registered call signs just like a general aviation N number.

EZFlap wrote:I believe the military also uses their call signs even when using civilian airspace and working with civilian ATC.

It depends. Military ATC in a military only environment: yes. Such as "Dakota 6" or "Palehorse 18"

Any time civilian traffic could possibly be involved: no. Just things like "Army Copter 12345" etc.

What about "Broomstick 1"?

123.45 is, as posted previously, used for oceanic air-to-air world wide as well as Africa and India.

122.75 is listed as domestic air-to-air for southern Canada (which is pretty much anything south of Whitehorse.)

This is from the Canada 1/2 high chart.

It seems there is some vigilantism going on.

I was landing at Ryan Field last weekend and there were some folks doing air to air near the field. Then someone was stepping on all the TXs as soon as they began. It was intentional, and for more than 5 minutes, I tried calling my arrival and pattern, and got stepped on by the vigilante each and every time. I landed, and discovered a gentleman in a Super Cub was angrily ranting about BS chatter on the radio and carefully stepping on them as they continued to coordinate a formation flight in the air, completely unaware he shut down my own legitimate pattern calls.

He then took off. I flew south towards Condon, and found the same gentleman was at it again, just ahead of me, and this time he was stepping on those same folks who seemed to be coordinating group landings...a perfectly legitimate use of the unicom. This went on for 10 minutes as I passed up the circus to get home.

Sometimes I feel like providing his tail number on request for embarrassment.

The feds seem to have little apparent reason to increase safety at uncontrolled airports by use of radio. When 360 chan. radios were outlawed, we all got 720 or 760 channels of available spectrum. I have landed at uncontrolled airports from coast to coast and Alaska/Hawaii. I find it a detriment to safety to have three airports in a region all using 122.9 or 122.8. Many pilots step on transmissions of others and may not even be aware of it due to altitude.
The FAA could restructure the assignments. There is no way anything close to capacity is reached with 760 chan. radios even if you include all commercial traffic and airliners.
The simple truth is, they can't be bothered. Airlines rule. We get the leftovers.
Air to air could be assigned by region with multiples as well. We could do formation and approaches in groups and just go "button six" like the fighter pilots do on UHF. But that would mean the FAA taking an interest in our living a long time. I don't believe they have that interest.
In the meantime.... I am red and white Skylane turning base for 17 full stop... and always repeat the airport name at the end. Many off us old folks have already forgotten where you said you were by the end of your transmission....no shit.

We used 123.45 (referred to as "come up on the big one") in Alaska for air to air back in the 70's & 80's. Every now and then we'd end up chatting with foreign carriers over the polar routes. Later in my career, flying the Pacific, we would, by procedure, monitor 123.45 while on the Tracts enroute. This allowed us to talk with other aircraft on the Tracks regarding weather, turbulence or "How ya doin' ". We also monitored 121.5 so that any aircraft departing their altitude or Track due to an emergency would allow us to be aware and take action if necessary to avoid them. Typically once over the CONUS, Mexico or Canada the procedure is to switch back to ATC Center frequencies.

This is why you normally don't hear any Airlines complaining about excessive chatter on the 123.45 since by the time they switch from Center they're a few hundred miles out over the ocean. BTW, once out of VHF range with Center all the Trans Ocean communications are by HF.

Was on a flight of two a couple months back. The other pilot requested we go to 123.45, so we did. Immediately got an up-high ship complaining about us on that frequency, so we switched to 122.75. Hadn't ever had that happen up here. He probably has a lot to complain about, as there are a lot of 123.45 comms between bush craft up here.

flightlogic wrote:The feds seem to have little apparent reason to increase safety at uncontrolled airports by use of radio. When 360 chan. radios were outlawed, we all got 720 or 760 channels of available spectrum. I have landed at uncontrolled airports from coast to coast and Alaska/Hawaii. I find it a detriment to safety to have three airports in a region all using 122.9 or 122.8. Many pilots step on transmissions of others and may not even be aware of it due to altitude.
The FAA could restructure the assignments. There is no way anything close to capacity is reached with 760 chan. radios even if you include all commercial traffic and airliners.
The simple truth is, they can't be bothered. Airlines rule. We get the leftovers.
Air to air could be assigned by region with multiples as well. We could do formation and approaches in groups and just go "button six" like the fighter pilots do on UHF. But that would mean the FAA taking an interest in our living a long time. I don't believe they have that interest.
In the meantime.... I am red and white Skylane turning base for 17 full stop... and always repeat the airport name at the end. Many off us old folks have already forgotten where you said you were by the end of your transmission....no shit.

Ha ha, for sure. And, another reason for repeating the airstrip's name at the end of the transmission, beside the short term memory loss of other pilots, is that many pilots hit the PTT switch at the same time they call out their destination, thus clipping the most important part as in where the hell they are! I hit the switch just a bit before I start talking. An ex girlfriend who flew with me who was an ex city cop and a long time radio DJ (and a stand up comedian and a few other things, point being a lot of time behind a mike) taught me that, NEVER clip your first word.

flightlogic wrote:The feds seem to have little apparent reason to increase safety at uncontrolled airports by use of radio. When 360 chan. radios were outlawed, we all got 720 or 760 channels of available spectrum. I have landed at uncontrolled airports from coast to coast and Alaska/Hawaii. I find it a detriment to safety to have three airports in a region all using 122.9 or 122.8. Many pilots step on transmissions of others and may not even be aware of it due to altitude.
The FAA could restructure the assignments. There is no way anything close to capacity is reached with 760 chan. radios even if you include all commercial traffic and airliners.
The simple truth is, they can't be bothered. Airlines rule. We get the leftovers.
Air to air could be assigned by region with multiples as well. We could do formation and approaches in groups and just go "button six" like the fighter pilots do on UHF. But that would mean the FAA taking an interest in our living a long time. I don't believe they have that interest.
In the meantime.... I am red and white Skylane turning base for 17 full stop... and always repeat the airport name at the end. Many off us old folks have already forgotten where you said you were by the end of your transmission....no shit.

Actually, in several cases that I know of in AK, it was the air carriers that wanted all the CTAFs in a valley/area on the same freq. When you're out there in bum weather, and you're looking for weather updates, either on your next stop, or the route home, it's REALLY nice to be on the same freq as nearby airports, so you hear someone come up on freq, you can ask for WX. Also, you'll know who may or may not be coming your way to his next stop, while you're headed to HIS last stop.

In fact, in Kodiak, the FAA did change a bunch of the CTAF freqs to different numbers around the island. One air taxi outfit just decided to use 122.8, though that was not a CTAF freq on the island. All the other "regulars" had to use 122.8 since if one outfits was using a different freq, it got dangerous around airports and sea bases. After considerable input from pilots on the island, FAA caved in and changed all CTAFs on Kodiak to 122.8. I believe something similar happened on the west coast as well.

I wouldn't support your comment at all about the FAA not giving a hoot. They do, but sometimes they get run over by users.

You are right, however, that if a bunch of Chatty Cathy's get on a CTAF freq and have loooonnngg conversations about what's going on in the pattern, things get pretty ugly at nearby airports. My favorite used to be the corporate guys, out of 140 calling Aberdeen CTAF asking to have the client's rental car warmed up and ready, and "oh, yeah, well need the lav serviced when we land".

Again, we can all take a lesson from military and airline pilots.....THINK about you need to say, keep it brief and to the point, then get off the freq. that does NOT imply you shouldn't share information on what's going on in your pattern, but that kind of comm should be REALLY brief.

FWIW

MTV

Many off us old folks have already forgotten where you said you were by the end of your transmission....no shit.

True.

Also at the start of the transmission the pilot might take a couple seconds to shift his train of thought to the incoming radio information, or be communicating with passengers and it takes a couple second to get them to shut up so you can hear the incoming message. Also turning the radio volume a bit higher takes a couple seconds.
So, yes, giving the relevant airport at BOTH the beginning and end of the transmission should be SOP.

Good point on NOT clipping the start of the transmission, CG. I'll have to pay closer attention to myself at the start.

Another thing that might be appropriate (IMO) is adjust your "speed of transmission/talk" to the local area you are in.
It seems a little out of place when in an extremely low density aircraft environment to zip the words out at a very high rate of speed like you are in high density class B airspace. I think some guys want to show/transmit how good/experienced a pilot they are with their "machine gun" radio work.
These old ears I'm wearing don't do well with that.

Also not all radios transmit "crystal clear", besides the ones that receive rather noise infested.
Some mics seem to pick up the transmitting cockpit noise better than the pilots speech. Mics are meant to be against the lips.

When I flew to Soldotna to get my checkride a few years back, as I passed Igiugig there was a plane announcing for Igiugig on 122.9. But the CTAF had just been changed to 122.8. I thought that was odd, and asked the examiner about it, and he said anytime you hear something like that you should correct it immediately on-air. So for the past few years I've been doing that when flying past Igiugig. I think sometime in the past year we hit the tipping point...I haven't heard an Igiugig transmission on 122.9 for at least 12 months.

When I initially mentioned it to a couple pilots, one of whom was a CFI, they knew the frequency had been changed, but they said they thought it was just for the runway lighting, not the announcements! User inertia can be a challenge.

The FAA is now trying to revise the CTAF assignments in the Palmer/Wasilla area to ease frequency congestion but at the same time ensure people can hear relevant traffic. It's a slow process. People get really attached to a radio frequency. The users in this case are quite a barrier to making changes even though they would likely benefit their own safety, though I think they will get it done sometime soon.

I used to do a lot of hang gliding before I got caught in a dust devil and was busted up pretty badly. That community uses 2 meter radios for their air to air and air to ground communications and that seems to work just fine. Operating on the 2 meter band only requires a technician's license, so no Morse code had to be learned. Just one more VHF option to consider.

Putting everything south of the parks HWY on 122.8 really helps when you are moving in or out from birch wood. You could never keep track if you had to change frequency for every runway you pass over. On busy days there are a lot of people training in the area but they usually are not calling every leg of the pattern and that helps a lot. If we are flying with a gaggle of planes we do try to use a BS frequency but also monitor whatever local frequency we are near. I really like my ICOM for that reason. FAA was talking about adding a frequency for traffic above 2000 AGL I hope they don't because you end up near that level sometimes due to winds.
DENNY

One thing that bothers me here at my local airport is that we share the CTAF frequency with another nearby airport (Grass Valley) that has the same runway heading. It can be confusing when pilots call "downwind for runway 25" and don't say the airport name at the end of the transmission. If you didn't catch the airport name at the beginning then you aren't sure which airport they're actually at, they might be in close proximity to you also on downwind for 25... at Rio Vista.

Please don't use 123.025 ( helicopter ops freq ). Its real important for the Choppa' pilots to be able to comm with the service landing or "LZ" during long line, sling ops, external load jobs, etc. The helo is flying back and forth, back and forth. Over and over all day on a job. While somebody in the service van is carefully listening for the pilot in case something go's wrong. Nobody is talking, but everybody is carefully listening.

As for the other 3 pages of replies, all good points of view. I'm going to keep doing what I do. Comm 1: on the published Tower, App/Dep, CTAF, or Center freq for the area I am in or near ( regardless of if I am getting flt. following or not ) Comm 2: on 121.5 because somebodies life may depend on it. 122.75-.85 for short message to fellow aircraft in my group and leave 123.45 to the airliners so they can do their job.
If I do that, how could I possibly offend.
Thanks.

PS. I do remember being told that the FCC busted a guy for using 123.45 to chit chat. See SanFran sectional, Livermore airport. Small black square 4NM NE "FCC monitoring station", but I think that is a super rare event, but it did happen.

Over

Flyhound wrote :

I used to do a lot of hang gliding before I got caught in a dust devil and was busted up pretty badly. That community uses 2 meter radios for their air to air and air to ground communications and that seems to work just fine

Years ago I used to talk on 2 meters in my car on 145.52 FM Simplex.

Is there any pilot to pilot chatter among pilot hams, and if so, where is it ? on 2 meters ie 145 Mhz ?? 200 Mhz ? 440 Mhz ??

I was thinking about Oshkosh for 2014. I know it requires at least a Technician level amateur radio license from the FCC.

Barnstormer wrote:As I get older my internal hard drive has less room and my CPU gets slower. There is no way I can remember N numbers called out in the pattern. But words like Skywagon, Piper, Citation, Mooney, Yellow RV, those I can remember.

For me it's just Skywagon or Stearman. Appended with the N number when I go into controlled airspace (almost never thank goodness).

I remember flying into San Marcos and calling "Skywagon 185DB" and the controller calling me "Skylane 185DB". That continued for our entire conversation. Probably never heard of a Skywagon before. Made me smile anyway.

They did the same thing to me when I flew through. Made me laugh too. I landed at new braufenls and turned off at the taxiway at the approach end. I got a wow that was short.