In response to my statement that Centre will ALWAYS give you traffic at the appropriate times,
The Green Goblin said:
Not always.......most of the time when i'm in class E on descent to class G i'll have to preempt centre as we need to run decent checklists, brief, do an all stations call and talk to the punters. If we have not received traffic by 10 mile to TOD I'll request it.
How about just using the phraseology as it existed before CASA removed it from the AIP. That phraseology allowed you to get the traffic well in advance of starting descent. That phraseology was:
Centre, VH-ABC, commencing descent XXX in 3 minutes
This is what I use. Instead of 3 minutes, I might use 1 or 2. Note that this was the documented phraseology that existed in the AIP before CASA, in their infinite wisdom, removed all the Australian phraseology and replaced it with the ICAO standard set.
Going slightly off topic now and onto the subject of airmanship. The post from
Wing Root reads as though he prefers to get traffic from Centre before he speaks on the CTAF.
That is poor airmanship. Good airmanship is to monitor the CTAF in advance in order to build up the traffic "picture". Then, when advising Centre of imminent descent, you can add that you have "copied VH-DEF, VH-GHI" etc. (You would only mention the IFR aircraft of course).