You should always ask for a traffic service but often you won’t get it, due to ATCO workload or due to you flying below a specific altitude.
It is very hard to spot a GA plane at 4-5nm, unless the light and the contrast conditions are just right. A 737, yes.
A Basic Service is virtually useless, partly because most people flying in the same area are not participating. It is little better than a listening watch, for emergencies.
Thanks Timothy, that’s very interesting. So a great deal of GA chatter could be avoided by pilots just using listening squawks and transponding? I won’t jump on the radio in future but listen out and concentrate more on flying.
Timothy wrote: Timothy wrote:
in IMC, being told that there is traffic four miles away isn’t much help
Indeed, not much use at all, although it was drilled into my IMC training to always request ‘the best service available’. Not actually that helpful in reality.
If you don’t have TAS, and are in VMC, a Traffic Service is valuable to help you see stuff, but, in IMC, being told that there is traffic four miles away isn’t much help, unless you upgrade to Deconfliction, in which case you may never reach your destination.
DavidS wrote:
A Basic Service can save you a little time, when you suddenly feel short of it.
Sure. So the sudden withdrawal/loss of service during flight in a major GA corridor could feel somewhat disconcerting… especially when it’s usually provided.
I had a first today. I was north of solent at 4000ft, on a pointless service with Farnborough (asked for traffic service, got basic service), when they asked me to call up solent if I didn’t mind. Solent thanked me for calling them and just wanted to know my intentions so they could get some IFR traffic in class G in.
So, it benefited them and the world in general, so not pointless after all!
A Basic Service can save you a little time, when you suddenly feel short of it.
For example: if your engine loses power suddenly and noisily, then already having a Basic Service from a nearby RAF base with an “effing” long runway does smooth the diversion.
(Thank you, RAF Benson :-)
Basic service should give you an altimeter QNH settings?
Maybe no service is better than a bad service, unless you can hope for a “deconfliction service” this will require LARS to vector you in IMC (which they are less tempted to give: remember you are in class G, near CAS, just above MSA with other non-controlled traffic…), I don’t think it is the right place to fly in, even on a traffic service, best is to pull yourslef out of there without busting airspace, losing it or hitting obstacles (these has more “statistical weight” than a mid-air collision in IMC IMO)
A basic service will almost certainly never safe your life.
It may however help avoid the occasional “I did see that one”.
I can think of numerous occasions a basic service identifed me and another arriving at the same point in space and about the same time and height.
The listening squawk will help avoid infringements. It will also help with the unit knnowing you are on frequency and being able to pass any information they think useful, which occasionally they do.
The listening squawk will only help with infringements, nothing else.
But I do think that it’s worth thinking about what a Basic Service is for. I’ve never got it.
Thanks Dino, it does indeed… Presumably it was a shortage of staff or something? But this debate does (for me at least) raise the question of whether one should bother with the usual ‘basic service’ / ‘pass your message’ routine, as drilled into PPL training, if a listening squawk is sufficient and the need for an actual service, beyond emergency situations, is largely redundant?
