Originally Posted by
troddenmasses
you're supposed to be enjoying the flying - so long as you are out of the way of controlled airspace and other airfields don't talk to anybody and enjoy looking out of the window. On every occasion when VMC, not running into anybody else has been down to seeing them rather than being told about them over the radio.
Why not try turning it off? You'd be surprised by how liberating it is.
Bravo!
Never have understood why it is that PPLs in VMC feel the need to be constantly talking to someone. Can understand when you're transiting close to airspace/airfields (but even then, don't understand why airfields are used as waypoints!).
Justification for talking to a ground unit seems to be based on a couple of principles that are somewhat flawed: (a) that the unit can be provide you with traffic information that helps with deconfliction (issue here is they only report on other traffic that they're talking to, so can't advise on traffic that isn't talking to them - and statistically I'd expect there's a lot more of the latter than the former); and (b) that it means that in the event of an engine failure/emergency landing then there'll be a good indication of your last known positiion (true, but how often do you have an engine failure?).