Clowns on 121.500
 

The clowns/comedians on 121.500 seem to be breeding. It is getting worse and worse!

Why is it that an aircraft in distress can be very easily located with a short pan pan pan call with triangulation, why cannot the same technology be used to locate people abusing 121.500? Time to start fining airlines for crew who are found to be abusing guard.

Not really an ATC issue; would be better off in 'Rumours and News' section, but the subject has been aired several times in this forum.
In answer to your question about auto trianglation, in the UK this only covers UK airspace and the offenders are usually over the ocean and hence out of range which of course, doesn't pardon them for getting shirty when someone has the audacity to call PAN or even MAYDAY.

If that were to be true there wouldn't be a problem...

I meant out of range of the auto triangulation, not reception.

Not to my knowledge; it's the province of D & D (Distress and Diversion cell at the ATCCs) which is why I said it's not really an ATC issue.

In-breeding, more like. They obviously think other pilots hearing them are thinking how "cool" they are.

Truth is, other pilots hearing them are thinking what a d***-head they are.

In the place I work, each sector in the room has to listen to 21.5. As soon as I hear "franco" or any other creation of a brilliant mind I need to turn it down to be able to hear transmission on regular channel.

whoever is playing that franco bull**** should be located and bombed.

I presume that there is at least one person sharing the cockpit of those pr¡cks. Are the other cockpit crew not telling them off for such an infantile behaviour? It has been said that "the actions you walk by are the standard you accept"...

Do those clowns also call 911 in their spare time to tell the operators "meow" or other stuff that is fun to no-one but those simple minds themselves?

Grr...

Very annoying indeed. We can often see who's initiated the transmission, quite frankly they almost all belong to the same airline. Problem is the so called "radio direction finder" we are using is not so accurate (although in reality it works quite well) to be considered as undeniable evidence. A couple of days ago the circus started over the Netherlands/Germany, I called on 121.5 one of the offenders (the one nearest to my transmitter) who, like a child, pretended he wasn't there...
I think I will be reporting them officially in the future, let's see if we get to something...

Well, if you (and colleagues) are not going to chase them, who will ? And not everybody has the equipment to track them down...

Wow that's progress. Inventing something which was in use in the UK for over 50 years and which most civil airfields have got rid of (don't know about the RAF).

I am no "policeman of the air" that's NOT my job.

And what has this to do with the topic?

Calling out the clown by his callsign might easily be the best method to shut him up and possibly, hopefully, get rid of such ill manners over time... This has nothing to do with policing, as there is no reporting to authorities involved, just with maintaining good discipline on the radio.

Now I do realize that ATC has other, more urgent tasks to perform than this, but if the general workload allows it, a well placed adress or two in times of low traffic would certainly do much good.

Without the means to officially deal with the issue would it not be an idea to just ignore them? In my opinion they are only attention seeking and the more “you are on guard” etc replies they get the better it makes them feel. Similar to facebook likes, twitter retweets etc. By not giving any reaction to their childish behaviour it will soon take the ‘fun’ out of it.

ATC in the UK does not (normally) monitor 121.5 in fact few, if any, civil units even have it on their comms panel; there are 2 dedicated RAF units for this purpose with receivers spaced all over the UK and the ability to select the particular transmitter closest to the aircraft which is transmitting.

It would be unfair to the Airline which has certainly nothing to do with it (besides employing a bunch of immature clowns who, I suppose, are looking for each other in the air in such a way).

I shall report it next time, workload permitting. Let's see what happens next.

I actually hope this thread might be more useful, letting them know that it's easy to track them down if somebody (much higher than me) one days decides to put an end to this.

Certainly shouting at them, calling them names on the same frequency only increases the noise (and their entertainment).