Captain. No other country has such a system. Why do you believe we need to be different?
I'll answer this one: don't know, don't care. Captain Midnight's explanation makes pretty good sense to me; unique to Oz or not.
On a flight from Bankstown to The Kimberly and back in my caravan I monitored over 1000 calls while VFR en route in G and not one was of any significance to my flight. Would you consider that a bit of a “cry wolf “ problem ?
Yeah, about that...
I remember the last time you made this claim, and I did some arithmetic.
My little bugsmasher can get to the Kimberley and back in about 20 hours. Your Caravan is a bit quicker, but let's give you a bit of slack and use the same number.
That means you heard an irrelevant call, on average, every minute and 12 seconds, nonstop from when you left to when you got back. That doesn't include the ones that
were relevant, as you must presumably at some stage have conversed with someone using the same airport.
And I just don't believe it.
Even if true, you must have been a bundle of fun on that holiday: teeth clenched and temples gently throbbing as you logged every call in order to substantiate your later claims.
When someone tells whoppers in order to bolster their position, it's a pretty frank admission that said position is untenable. Even if the true number were a fraction of your claim, the fact is that aircraft radio is a party line. We all learn to filter out those calls not important to us, and accept that they matter to someone else.
Remember before I was responsible for the AMATS changes in 1991 it was a directed traffic service as IFR and VFR flew at the same levels when above 5000’. What was the use of changing to the ICAO semi circular rule if the old system was to remain?
Perhaps, to separate IFR and VFR, while allowing for the possibility that they might coincide when one of them was climbing or descending. Or that a controller, out of the goodness of his heart, might inform 2 VFR aircraft that they were getting uncomfortably close. Yes, I have personally encountered both situations, and not always above 5000'. Being on an ATC frequency might have saved my bacon, or it might not, but it sure didn't hurt.