411A - whilst I normally refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man on this occassion I will make an exception.
As a JAA instructor teaching people to become commercial pilots I ALWAYS made my students learn morse code even though it had been removed from the syllabus requirements.
It is Sooooooo easy on test to mis-dial a freq or press the wrong ident button. If all you are doing is listening to the beeps and muttering "thats idented" the examiner will fail you with relish.
And good on him.
A few weeks ago I was flying into Nice. Its a bitch of an approach as there is a complicated noise abatement (The Riviera) that uses several nav aids. ATC often give unhelpful vectors and restrictions and on this occassion threw in a runway change with a circle to land.
I tell you that in the space of 2 minutes I had to tune and retune 7 different navaids. As well as monitoring how the other guy is getting on, running checklists and talking to ATC.
Without a good working knowledge of morse I could not have verified the idents in those conditions. In fact I twice cocked up a frequency only to catch it on the ident. Its a BASIC SKILL and I cannot for the life of me understand why it was dropped from the JAA syllabus.
Referring to a chart to find that ident would have overspilled my capacity during that approach no doubt about it.
I once listened to a VOR called TNT radiating as TST. Easy to spot when your ear jars with what you were expecting. Hard to spot if you are having to process audible info into visual...
I find it curious your jibe at Europe being... behind the times. Most often we accused of being to far ahead re Airbus technology. Not to forget it was us that invented the jet engine, jet airliner, supersonic airliner etc. etc.
Not sure about having just discovered GPS. We are not keen to use it as a sole reference nav system and stop maintaining the NDB VOR network. The DoD do retain the ability to turn it off. Do you imagine they would have a moments hesitation in doing so were the US being attacked with GPS guided munitions?
Additionally as you read this a salvo of nuclear weapons may be airborne above Kashmir. What effect the EMP on civilian GPS signals?
But thats really another thread.
Every trainee pilot who is serious about being a professional will arm himself with the simple ability to understand morse by ear.
Download for free one of the many programs and you can master it within a fortnight doing an hour an evening. I did and it has stood me in good stead.
Cheers,
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