Hello Vilas,
We do exactly as I wrote. Seems weird but that’s the way we do. I think that procedure came into place after our airline suffered a very serious lost of communication end of 2013. About 1 hour without communication in China and all equipment were working properly... Both crew were immediately offloaded after landing.
I never done it differently so for me that procedure is normal lol. Yes, in the right hand side you have to bend over a little bit but it’s not that bad. If the guy on the left is nice he would set and swap the frequency for you. I always do that except in busy environment.
How do you guys do it when it’s the CM2 who is PM? Do you use « Sel mode »and use RMP2 to change frequency on VHF1?
But what if for some reasons CM1 has the communication temporarily? I’m just curious as I never done it differently than mentioned above.