“Christ on a bike how hard is it to dial 121.5 and say the words "Pan Pan Pan I am lost"?!?!”
On an aircraft I fly, with a new Narco box, if you select 121.5 they can hear you fine, but you cannot hear them. The same problem arises with Gatwick. I gather the reason is that D and D as Gatwick use multiple aerials and their frequency is not as tightly controlled as Narco would like! Pulling out the volume control to prevent the frequency clipping on transmission solves the problem. Now whilst that particular problem might be unusual it equally might only come to light on a practice fix.
Also it is surprising how many pilots have never done a training fix. As you well know D and D if asked and can accommodate you will go on to give you a series of steers. In my opinion it is worth refreshing yourself on the whole procedure again from time to time, maybe in poor viz and with a safety pilot to see how a non instrument rated pilots gets on. After all that is exactly the circumstances in which you might want to use the service in earnest. It is no good saying that is the sort of thing you should only be doing with a FI because there are a lot of very good groups out there where the pilots do continuation training together and it works very well.
I also agree it is one thing to be seriously lost (which hopefully very rarely happens!) And to not be as certain of your position as you would like particularly when navigating tightly controlled airspace. As others have said surely it is better to make use of the service without declaring a Pan.
My real point earlier though was why an earth propose yet another regulation as if pilots call for training fixes with the sole intention of making a nuisance of themselves. I can not imagine that very many do. Surely it is far better to educate pilots in the correct use of both training fixes and “I am lost” than expand yet further the law book as if it was a panacea for every perceived evil.
Finally it really concerns me when these sort of suggestions are put forward when it would seem they appear to have been so ill thought through. Before I wrote suggesting a change in the legislation I would want to have some idea what D and D actually thought of the proposal and whether they REALLY find all these calls a nuisance, how many so called training fixes do they get from pilots really lost, how many airline captains are complaining about all the chatter on 121.5 etc etc. I don’t know any of the answers but I would want to find out before posting that I am writing to ask the ANO be changed!
Legislative impact assessments - poppy cock - we will sort out the mess latter!