...............Like these guys did in Brazil back in 1973 and flew southwest instead of northeast... whilst there was an ergonomic fault with the heading selector.... it was known that they were listening to Brazil v Chile which was a factor in them not spotting the gross error resulting in a crashfrom fuel exhaustion a mere 1300 kms from the intended destination

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_254

Funny how a thread similar to this pops up every 2-3 years

Surely you know the answer to that? Its rounders.... :)

Sports scores being passed over any frequency strikes me as a largely pointless exercise. The result will still be the same after the aircraft lands, whereupon the desperate can turn on their smart phones and find out for themselves. :rolleyes:

July 2016 was the last one
https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/...ighlight=121.5

We definitely need to keep 121.5 as open as possible. Because how on earth would Qatari pilots find the next ATC frequency if other Qatari pilots couldn't relay them to do so on guard?;)

The European Football Championships aka the Euros? Held two years after (or before, depending on how you look at it) the World Cup. Hence these threads popping up every two years.

By the way, I'm not into football myself but if a pilot came onto the P.A. and announced the result of a live sports fixture I was interested in, I'd be livid... because I'd be recording it on the DVR at home to watch later. It's not the 1970s any more!

As for using 121.5 to share the news around, well as humble pax it's not my place to comment, which is just as well as words fail me.

And a partial score: France 1

LOL hard ;-))) i see its no use to post in open section of pprune cause its entirly playground for computer captains . sorry... no offense, but with your statements you are an open book for the very few here who really have to work for their income sitting in a cockpit. the children . that was good .

i think the open sections here are just playground for a fake . indentify yourself with an ID and come to the locked ones so we can talk my captain ;-)

council van , in the case you are a senior first officer of an uk airline please just contact the locked forums admin and identify with your name and ID so we can share there opinions . i never saw you there . you can pm me .

when unable please do not tell who of us is a simmer and who is not...

I am absolutely dumbfounded, and disheartened, by the attempted justification that misuse of 121.5 is acceptable. It's not.

The technology exists in several en-route ATC centres in Europe to identify the aircraft responsible-is it not about time more was done to punish those involved?

You can find my mini resume by clicking on my name and reading my profile. I spent a long time at Scottish Centre working in Distress and Diversion where we were less busy but when people had a problem they were normally in a more parlous state and further away from help and radio receivers. The case I was quoting was a call in from a light civil aircraft near Malin head, the aircraft in the sea had some sarbe on 121,5 that we couldn't hear and back chat on 121.5 was not an assistance. We had multiple receivers and that meant we heard all the farmyard impressions from 'professional pilots' who could not hear what was going on 600 miles away from them. Luckily the light GA pilot an amateur was more professional in approach than the airline pilots and we got a crew out of the water.

Fully agree with you on that. It is too easy to think you are just having a local chat, but from the height of an aircraft you are affecting that frequency half a continent away.

Stay off guard! There's no justifiable reason to clogging it up with nonsense. To the gentleman saying that if any relevant conversation comes up on 121.5 everybody would shut up, how do you expect it to come up in the first place if some rubbish is being xmitted at the same time?

Please, stay off guard. As already said, it is the last line of defense when things are not going the way they usually do. Go talk to an FA or something if you can't keep yourself entertained in the cockpit

And there is a good chance you would not hear it anyway. A transmission from another aircraft could be well outside your reception range, but a base station in between could hear both. Or nothing if both transmit at the same time. An important message can be lost because some plonker will not shut up.

You could listen to Hanoi Hannah on the ADF.

Not surprisingly, her transmitter was bombed a few times.

I do not understand why SELCAL is not implemented at all ATC units to use it on 121.5. The technology is really simple. (A SELCAL signal can even be transmitted using a smartphone.) Almost all airliners already have SELCAL capability. (Yes, it does work on VHF!) Monitoring 121.5 continuously over Europe has become counterproductive and nearly impossible to maintain. SELCAL can be the solution! https://www.pprune.org/atc-issues/577965-why-isn-t-selcal-used-contact-us-121-5-a.html

I don't see how it would help in this situation. You want as many people as possible to hear an emergency message. Systems of this type in any case do not work well when a signal is weak/noisy.

I believe that the correct air to air comms frequency is 122.75. Using 123.45 for this purpose would get you in trouble with the FCC.

Guard was used in earnest last Friday when a mate of mine who after 50 minutes of normal flying suddenly had aileron issues, north of Newbury and luckily was close to a farm strip that he managed to skillfully land in with max right aileron and rudder to maintain semi level flight.... He called DnD as he was expecting to have to bale out.... luckily being an experienced stick and rudder driver it didn't end in a news story - when you need 121.5 you normally need it in a hurry..... don't be a dick and block it... especially for such a trivial matter such as football results please..!

Quite a lot of airliners still flying around without SELCAL. And not only that, the intent of the emergency frequency is that as many people can hear you or your ELT, so they can relay the information to the appropriate unit without delay. The issue with monitoring 121.5 in Europe is nobody else's fault but our own. If we would act a bit more like professional pilots and a bit less like 5-year old children, it would be very simple. I don't know how professional pilots, especially captains, can tolerate that somebody from their flightdeck is transmitting animal voices and similar sounds on 121.5. What purpose does it serve other than to show all the rest of us that the person making sounds isn't mature enough to sit in the flightdeck of an airliner?

Couple of days ago I heard German Air Defense trying to reach an aircraft that hasn't been replying to ATC calls and not even 5 seconds later some German voice was asking who scored the latest goal for Germany. Not waiting even long enough to give the crew opportunity to answer to call. Professional bunch of guys.

I have been flying for over 20 years now as an airline pilot. Never in those years have I heard a genuine emergency call on 121.5! However, several times EVERY week I hear ATC trying to call a lost-com-flight on guard in vain. Why? Most probably because the crew turned down or stopped monitoring 121.5 because of the constant useless chatter on it which interferes with the primary task of monitoring the active ATC frequency. If ATC would use SELCAL on 121.5 they would have a much bigger chance of getting in contact with them, because most probably they still have 121.5 selected in VHF 2 without monitoring it! Using SELCAL on 121.5 would definitely help in many of those cases! I fly over central Europe almost every day, and believe me, constantly monitoring 121.5 has become practically impossible!!!

Two things will solve this issue.
1. Almost all comms in future will move to data link and radio will be used a lot less. Aircraft will be following a deconflicted trajectory and the 'vectoring' given at the moment will be unnecessary. As radios will be VOIP there is no need to 'check in' as the system will tell both pilot and controller if the voice connection is there.
2. Multi-lateration on 121.5 easy to do - it is already available for some variants of data link, 243.0 and ADS-B. If you start using the frequency your position is immediately identified and associated with the labeled display giving your callsign. It would be sensible for the emergency frequency to be able to triangulate on aircraft in emergency, and of course as a byproduct identify the source of the animal noises.

To be fair, SELCAL could be used on the transmit from the aircraft. That would at least identify the source of any transmission and hopefully prevent the abuse of the frequency.

I agree people asking for football scores, as well as making farmyard noises etc on 121.5 is childish and unprofessional. However strangely it’s nowhere near as annoying as the North Americans and their obsession with ride reports. A few light bumps (they’ll call them moderate obviously) and the frequencies over the Atlantic become impossible to listen to.

Dear Sid,
You do not know what your talking about. You need to read this and then download the Android or Iphone app to generate a few SELCAL tones to get a better understanding of how selcal works. Transmitting a SELCAL signal does nothing to identify the transmitter.

And from that very Wikipedia article ' An individual aircraft is given a SELCAL code upon application to the SELCAL code registrar, '.

:ugh: :rolleyes:

That means that when an owner requests a SELCAL code for an aircraft, the a/c will get one of the 10920 available selcal codes assigned to it. Maintenance then programs this selcal code into the RECEIVER of the a/c. When someone then transmits the assigned SELCAL code ( = an audible tone (actually two tones, each lasting about a second, with a very short silence in between them.) on the frequency the receiver is tuned into (HF or VHF), the onboard selcal device will know that someone tries to call it, even when the crew is not listening out on that frequency. In the Airbus the pilots will then hear a buzzer (The same as when the cabin is trying to call the flightcrew on the interphone) accompanied with a light illuminating the corresponding transmitter selection button on his ACP. The crew can then reply by voice on this VHF or HF frequency.
Can you imagine what it would be like if all aircraft would transmit its own 2-second selcal code every time the PTT is pushed? :ooh:

Now install the selcal app, generate a few selcal codes to hear how those sound and get back to your MS Flight Sim. :rolleyes:

Sadly it came as no surprise yesterday to hear a constant stream of idiots asking, in a variey of accents, for the score. On the few occasions someone took the trouble to remind them of the frequency mis-use there followed the usual 'So are you's and animal noises.

Well done people, very professional. A shame your management can't hear recordings of your exemplary behaviour and invite you in for compliments.

I wonder how many comms tuned to 121.5 were turned right down or off yesterday afternoon to block out these clowns?

Yup,those idiots were at it too.