Clarie, you stated:
Bloggs I understood that Dick Smith wanted a straight copy of the US system which works well, but the regional airline pilots wanted so many changes made it no longer resembles any system at all.
You are 100% correct. The fascinating thing is that the regional airline pilots who wanted the change had absolutely no interest in finding out how the system worked in the USA – the country which invented aviation.
The current mixture of prescription and non-prescription is a disaster. The plan was to make the whole process simple and standardised to get greater compliance – as undoubtedly happens in the USA. What we now have is something more complex and more confusing. Whereas regional airline pilots may be able to follow the complex prescription, many private pilots would not be able to.
These regional airline pilots are not flying around in Australian built aircraft, they are in modern certified aircraft from other leading aviation countries. What they have developed with the CTAF procedures is a classic “Nomad” – a mixture of so many different systems and features that the whole procedure is confusing and less safe.