You guys whining about the practice PAN calls in the UK might want to read this posted by one of the ATCOs who works 121.5 D&D in the UK.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...hreadid=188874

This was discussed in some detail on the Private Flying forum a few months back where I stirred up a bit of 'a heated debate'. I've also seen comments on the Military forum lambasting us airline types for not monitoring 121.5 well enough.

I don't see how the ATC controllers saying they welcome training calls on Guard has any relevance. The problem is that important calls are missed and volumes turned way down every time someone starts gabbing on Guard. Some summer weekends above the UK it gets ridiculous.

Cheers

WWW

Granted that there may be benefit in "practice pan's", but I do not think it outways the importance of 121.5 being totally reserved for urgent/emergency tx's.
In my experience, it is only the UK that does this.
These ground tx's have a huge airborne footprint, covering some of the busiest airspace in the world. Airspace where freq. changes are frequent and where the tollerance of aircraft out of comms has to be short. The amount of "chatter" on guard seems to be is increasing, so is the frequency that fighters launch to interrogate us. The unthinkable has not happened yet, but "guard" really could be a crews saving grace.
There is no excuse for not having a good listening watch, but volume up, volume down, volume up, volume down, well, we are only human.
We all teach our kids about the use of 999, 911 or 000 etc. calls, but I do not imagine anyone would actually make practice calls to them to demonstrate what services will be at hand.

IMHO opinion any tx on guard should have us all scrambling for the volume knob to listen more carefully, not sighing and turning the comm volume down again.

BB

I heard this conversation on London Freq. The Continental chap was asking why he had a jet along side. He was informed of the radio handover that he missed. He asked if the Jet was on patrol and was told that it was scammbled just for him.

Said he was sorry and as far as i know that was it.

I have heard a rumour that airlines in future we be charged if this sort of thing happens. Only a rumour though!

BB

Rumor?
 

Not a rumor,

we got a message from german ATC two years ago, distributed to all pilots of the company, saying that in the future, captains might be charged with all the costs involved because of the too many unnecessary scrambles in European airspace. Basically, the message was accusing us of being "unprofessional"....no comment.

Besides this, thank you for the numerous replies, including yours f*** (you will recognize yourself).

In the event of a loss of comms in Europe, our company sent a message to some ATC agencies and an ACARS message is sent asap when one of our aircraft is experiencing loss of comms. This IMHO is the best solution to our problems.

I enjoyed the american reply about "real emergencies, beer calls and baseball results"..

Thanks to all.
:ok:

Thats all very well but in my company many of the prolonged loss of comms has been due to French ATC forgetting to hand the aircraft over to the next freq. Would the controller like to pay the costs then.

My point being that it is not always the pilots fault.

FMGC In a modern ATC system the controller's display shows a difference between "own" and "other" traffic. If a flight entering a sector has not called on the frequency this is immediately obvious to the controller and after calling the flight a couple of times his next action is to contact the previous controller who will then call the flight to check if he has not QSYed for any reason.
For some reason there seem to be periods when it is always the same operator whose flights are not calling. Some years ago we had Air France doing it on an almost daily basis; then for a while it was SAS.
It sometimes seemed that the only solution would be to refuse the flights as their equipment/crews were not up to standard required. Fortunately I don't think it ever got that far

Well lets all hope the system is modern! There are a couple of waypoints off the northern coast of Spain where the Spanish regularly forget to handover crews to the French, resulting in the Spanish calling an aircraft thats out of VHF range and the French trying to contact it on 121.5. It became so frequent that I always made a point of calling the Spanish for a "radio check" every time I approached these waypoints to remind them to hand me over.

Here's a sound file from Aireps thread from a few months back where a Delta 767 got intercepted by the two Dutch F-16s

Just go to the link and download the clip.
Kind of ominous to hear the Boeing being called 'the target' - and the 'switches safe' at the end.

http://www.zap16.com/Intercept%20f16%20B767%20Delta.htm

Rather chilling I thought. I wonder if the nationalities had been reversed would the outcome have been the same?

Exactly !

I tried to make that point here years ago, but for some people the only place where they can practice a `practice PAN`is on 121,5 :}
The rest of the world doesn´t do that, but who cares :*

When out of VHF range you are for sure out of radar range, too. Then a sophisticated ATC system is not of much help.

As late as yesterday I was flying through France when I was given a whole lot of abuse by the controller. So what was my error??? Well, he called us three times and I missed them all... fair enough you think, but the frenchie was calling us in FRENCH. I dont speak a word french but ofcourse it was my fault for not understandning, what did he expect???

One full minuit of pay attention bla bla bla bla. :* :yuk:


Ive noticed that some ATCOs are very quick to tell you off for the slightest mistake in a readback, or a missed call. Every call from an airplane is for the ATCO but only around 5% of the calls, if that much, on a frequencey is for yourself, so its naturally to miss some stuff every now and again, but still you have to feel like a criminal when you hear the sighs or raised voices. :(

maybe they are just their way of getting us back for "request this and request that" ;)


duece

slam_dunk Maybe time to adopt "Regional"guard freqs so practice pan etc. can be done there.
Three miles In Europe there is Radnet - a LAN linking about 25 radar sites. It's possible to select any of the radars at any linked unit, e.g. Rhein could select Pease Pottage - not that the info would help.
Some years ago, when developing the NewODS at Maastricht I suggested that the Supervisor's postion be equipped with a (then) 720 channel transceiver expressly for calling aircraft in our airspace but still on the freq. of another unit and out of their range This was refused as too expensive.

I AGREE that student pilots should be allowed to do a "a practice PAN call" BUT not on guard frequency!

They need to practice what to do if they get lost, and they can get a fix from ATC on an normal frequency.
If that frequency is too busy to do it on, of course ATC has a backup frequency to escort the guy.

Let's keep guard frequencies open for what they are intended for: emergencies only :ok:
That way, my volume isn't turned down (because of a practice PAN) when i really need 121,5.

its all been said before.....but all the practice pan crap just encourages one to switch off 121.5 until out of uk airspace. verbal diarroha. knocking off 121.5 closes a valuable safety net but theres only so much clap trap one can take through the head set with the best will in the world.