I am a bit confused about the difference, when flying in the US, betweem UNICOM and CTAF. My questions are:
- What is the difference between UNICOM and CTAF?
- Does it matter?
- Why do some airports have both a TWR and UNICOM frequency?
My rough understanding is that both CTAF and UNICOM are used to make blind-calls, as we do here when TWR / RADIO etc. is unmanned, in order to get arifield / arrival information, which the Yanks (a term of enderment!
) seem to refer to as "traffic advisories", i.e. who is in the circuit, wind, which RWY is in use etc. I also understand that the frequencies allocated to these services are shared amongst a large number of non-TWR'd airfields, and thus you are likely to hear traffic and circuit calls from multiple airfields - hence use of the airfield name at the beginning and end of each transmission to avoid condusion. But I still don;t appreciate the difference between the two, hence my questions above.
Thanks PPruNers!
Andy