Agrajag. Don't you have any worries about the 747 incident I quoted where the controllers attention was taken by VFR announcements?
Of course I do, though I must confess I've never heard of it. And, in the day job, I've never yet had my comms with ATC interrupted by a lightie down low.
Obviously the controllers have to listen to all these VFR calls- are you convinced this can have no effect on there proper job of keeping IFR airline aircraft apart?
If so. Hope you are correct. Love to see the evidence.
I think you're asking me to prove a negative there; clearly impossible. And I'd dispute that ATC's "proper" job is just separating heavies. Whilst it may be their priority, in my experience they do a pretty good job of keeping the rest of us informed as well. Again, when in the jet I've never felt they were not paying enough attention to me as a result. In most cases that's because the Class G area frequencies are different to the ones we're on.
By the way. When you fly through the training area west of BK or up the light aircraft lane do you rely on radio arranged separation? Do you make position reports every few minutes in these areas? If not how do you avoid a collision?
I keep my eyes & ears open, and speak up if I need to coordinate with someone. But if there's a private strip I don't know about in such an area, and someone is about to launch from it as I go by, I'd sure appreciate it if he let me know.
Or are you going to tell me that where the collision risk is greatest your system of radio calls does not work?
Hang on... Weren't we talking about a midair between a couple of jets in the flight levels?
As an option to my previous suggestions, perhaps we need a separate range of frequencies on which the low-level traffic could communicate, not bothering ATC at all. There could even be operators on the ground monitoring these frequencies and passing on relevant information.
Oh, wait...