This is all just so rediculous. Who would be on the Ballina CTAF on the other side of Lismore?
In any case, why would
not having a distance rule be any better (or the current 10nm)? The same problem still exists: aircraft potentially on the wrong freq and therefore alerted See and Avoid cannot function, depending on when the ace-of-the-base 100hr pilot thinks it is best to swap freqs.
What a great system; the safety of the whole system relies on the skill and ability of the lowest common denominator, the low-hour private pilot. The same pilot will be VFR swanning around in Class E a couple of miles from Ballina while jets are being messed about, probably micro-managed almost to the ground because there is another IFR in the area, by an ATC! So we have the two IFR crews (worse if only single pilot) running two radios and two traffic situations. Madness.
If Ballina is a worry, PUT IN A TOWER.
At a similar airspace at Bundaberg two professional pilots were performing an instrument approach at the same time in IMC. One had dialed up the wrong ctaf and the other thought the first aircraft had already landed.
And a similar scenario could never happen between an RPT jet and a bugsmasher in a CTAF just because it's VMC? Anybody who thinks that either the jet crew or the bugsmasher driver have any realistic chance of visually avoiding each other if they don't know where the other is is just delusional and quite frankly a menace to the safety of our skies. The skies are just as dangerous when it is 8/8 CAVOK and Class E won't fix that (apart from mandating transponders).
Originally Posted by Dick Smith
Do you really think we should wait for a fatal before copying the best?
There was almost a Fatal at Mildura IMO because of the too-small "10nm" CTAF. Had we "copied the best" it would have been 15nm (MBZ) or 20nm (AFIZ); Australian "creations".