re ADSB and Ozrunways etc alerts of traffic... Last year I had a tower controller give me an urgent collision alert telling me to immediately go around when on mid final, (in class D, with lots of traffic doing circuits). I immediately did as told but was very confused, I had been sure sure my preceding traffic was already on upwind but assumed I must have misidentified it and my actual preceding was still on final and I had closed the gap, ie seriously stuffed up my SA.
Tower asked me to call after I landed. I assumed I had badly stuffed up.
I rang and the controller thanked me for calling saying he just wanted to apologise and explain - he said had glanced at his screen just before clearing us, (this D tower gets a feed from the radar centre), and there was another aircraft slightly lower than us, on final about 100m in front and although he could only eyeball our aircraft from the cab he thought had stuffed up his sequencing and immediately acted to separate us from the other aircraft. As we went round, that aircraft then disappeared from the screen. Turned out it was a ghost.
I asked him if this was something that had ever happened before and he said every now and again they do get spurious aircraft that suddenly appear on their display. Normally he said it is obvious it is not legit but in this case with the busy circuit he thought he had made a mistake and stuffed up the sequence so acted to try and avoid a collision.
I have no problem with technology but if it can falsely add aircraft, I suspect it can also falsely remove them. If we rely on the new gizmos do be our eyeballs and common sense we will stop being pilots and just be video game operators and trust the machine rather than focusing outside on the real world.
Use standard radio procedures and eyeballs (and, if available and suitable, backed up by other help) but eyes (and fingers) on screens in cockpits in busy GA terminal space is *not* what I want more of.
In defence of bad R/T procedures in CTAFs - I am sure a lot of the calls are made by students who are not confident and proficient (and often quite nervous) on the radio and by pilots who are similarly a bit frightened of talking on the radio. I would assume a large swag (perhaps most) of GA traffic at least along the east coast will be training flights with novice pilots.
That doesn't make bad R/T right but in most cases I am willing to cut people some slack. They are learning or at least trying to do the right thing. At Outerwoopwoop where there might be 2 aircraft in the CTAF and someone stumbles and adds extra words or umms and ahs, at least they are talking to each other.
Admittedly in a busy CTAF it is far from ideal but I know I have made (and will no doubt again make) some embarrassing radio calls. No excuse but human factors means humans make mistakes. Telling them to not mistakes doesn't seem to work that well. Setting good examples help. Encouraging people to look at the standard phraseology helps.
Calling people out just makes people nervous, the 3 fundamentals of instructing, sarcasm, intimidation and ridicule somehow don't seem to make most people that confident on the radio, particularly when those 3 fundamentals are expressed via the tone of voice or even the choice of words, on the radio in response to a poor call, as sometimes happens (not saying anyone here does that but I have heard it).
Certainly important to teach people to do the right thing but when students (and weekend warriors) get scared of talking at all in case they make a fool of themselves because they are not 100% of the right protocol or making a goose of themselves, that is worse.
my 2c