Canadian Break
I agree, the problem is that some of our "little darlings" can't cope with monitoring Guard and constantly moan about being distracted by PPL students making Practise Pan calls whilst they do their pre-decent brief over a coffee and a donut - so much for CRM (ie. the non-handling pilot can monitor Guard whilst the handling pilot can concentrate on the job at hand with the Guard turned down
). So there are most definately many aircraft flying on a day-to-day basis without VHF Guard (121.5) going through their shell-likes.
Now when "the Swiss cheese" holes start to line up in the Reason Swiss Cheese Model with an inadvertent selection of 7500 or failing to contact the next ATCRU on hand-over in controlled airspace and the inability to hear the calls on Guard - you have the
beginnings of raised suspiscions of unusual behaviour and a
probable call to the military.
I'm sure that Her Majesty's finest wasted 10tons of AVTUR on someone who had made an unfortunate and unintended error - or had suffered from comms failure or a transponder malfunction. But quite rightly they were sent to check on something that was confirmed as suspiscious/unusual as they have been for over 10 years since the Twin Towers.
And before the "outrage bus" fires up again about getting smoked with 7500 squawking and no radio - there are many more things that need to happen or be confirmed before engagement auth is given; those in the know will know what these are (eh, shytorque?
).
LJ