I have started a new thread on this because the complexity of the latest proposal seems to have covered up a most extraordinary situation.
By the look of it, those at CASA who have been involved in this most extraordinary stuff-up, and wasted the hundreds of thousands of dollars of CASA (and therefore, industry) money, still don’t seem to able to get their act together. I point out this following statement in the document:
“The use of 126.7 MHz for uncharted aerodromes will only be a recommendation and single-user aerodromes/ALAs may still use the area VHF frequency where airmanship dictates this is appropriate.”
This clearly means that there are going to be times when aircraft in the same circuit area could be on different frequencies – one who has decided by airmanship that the ATC frequency is the correct one to be on, and the other who has decided by airmanship to be on the MULTICOM 126.7.
It is as if the people in CASA (can someone give me some names?) are just not game enough to harmonise on a proven system.
Giving calls in the circuit area on the area frequency goes back to the 1950s (and before I made the AMATS changes in 1991) where there were no CTAFs and calls at aerodromes were given on the area flight service frequency, with flight service monitoring in many cases. That wasn’t a great problem because flight service just gave advisories.
Now we are going to have people transmitting calls which will go straight into the cockpit of a Qantas 787 overflying, say, the Gulargambone area, and potentially blocking out an important air traffic control instruction. Of course the controller won’t be able to hear the circuit area or taxi call, so will be none the wiser.
It is interesting – I am finding that more and more RAPACs are now happy with the idea of harmonising with the far simpler US system.