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.