I enjoyed the Flight Safety Forum in Sydney on Saturday. Very professionally organised, with some informative and important safetly lectures but some intersting anecdotes as well.
One of the questions posed in the QA session at the end was something like this:
'I've been using the GA lane at Banksotwn for years and have been concerned about the gorwing number of pilots making radio calls as thy fly up and down, in the mistaken belief that this makes the lane safer. Why are these calls being made?'
Well as a regular user of the lane, and someone who uses the radio at the same time, I was surprised at this. I got my PPL in the UK, and when I did training and local familiarisation with NAVAIR, I was encouraged to make one call at PRT when heading north; and one call at BBG when heading south.
Safety wise, the importance of these calls was demonstrated by a flight I did with my old man a few months back. He no longer flies but in his younger days had a PPL. I was glad he was there that day, for as I approached BBG at 2200, he said to me: 'there's another PA28 slightly behind you, at your height and converging from the right'. I'd never have seen him from the left hand seat. Anyway, at that point I made my radio call, to which the guy behind immediatly responded, by making an orbit and then confirming he had us in sight and would climb to 2.5k. He obviously hadn't seen us at that point, and had we not seen him, that radio call could have been the difference between a pleasant flight and a near miss. Why would you want to lessen communication between aircaft that are at low altitude and all converging?
