Manchester Low Level Route
I had a similiar but not as extreme experience as vancouv's in an adjacent thread yesterday afternoon in the Manchester LLR. setting out on my QXC it rapidly became clear that to the south the haze was coming down (again!) and Wolverhampton was looking a bit doubtful. After spotting an aircraft coming north at no more than 5k range I did a 180 and returned to Barton.
My point is this: On our fam visit to Manchester ATCC we were told that Manchester Radar really don't want to talk to GA traffic in the LLR, the comment was "on a weekend day its a mass of squawks", and we should just monitor the frequency. But what happens if everyone just monitors? Manchester Radar was working like the proverbial one-armed paper-hanger and it was difficult to get a word in on the radio anyway. It takes roughly 9 minutes to transit the corridor, in that time I saw three other aircraft that I had not heard on the frequency, in vis that was certainly less than 10kms.
If everyone were to just listen instead of announcing their presence in some way then there's no point in monitoring the very busy APP frequency. Is there a case for a dedicated LLR GA frequency here? Any other suggestions as to how to make this area safer?