How long will you let the radio be silent?

Depends on the type of flying. With Foreflight and VFR one could go a long time. At work and depending on location it could be seconds to hours. My longest trip without talking is Honolulu to Sydney, which is about 10.5 hours. We use CPDLC Data Link and are only in voice about 90 minutes.

One thing to remember s that just hearing chatter doesn't mean you are on the correct frequency.
 
MD11Pilot said:
One thing to remember s that just hearing chatter doesn't mean you are on the correct frequency.
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This. Plus, do all the rest of you really time how long it's been since they last spoke to you? Sometimes I don't hear anything for a while but as to the time which has elapsed, I couldn't even guess. We've occasionally flown out of range but have always been "found", either because someone calls on guard or the frequency we are on; we realize it's been too long and go looking for another frequency; we wonder why we haven't gotten a descent yet; or in one instance, we made our radio call to company and they said ATC had called on the phone and was looking for us. You will frequently hear ATC asking other airplanes to make a call trying to find someone so it's not that unusual.

I do the, "are you still there" call at times too.
 
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As a way of communicating, radio calls seem so archaic. It would be nice if you were automatically passed along from one radio tower to another, the way cell phones do.
 
I'll go about 15-20 if I'm with center.

Memphis is good about chatting with you when it's slow. I've had some pretty interesting conversations. Had one guy point out some military flight way above me and immediately heard him apologizing for pointing them out.

I wondered what could possibly be above Arkansas that's classified. :confused:
 
If the frequency goes from busy to silent without a gradual dropoff, I'll disable the squelch within 30-60 secs to find out what's going on. Otherwise, if the sector was quiet when I first checked in, I'll probably give it 15 minutes between calls before pinging the controller.
 
Dead Stick said:
Relatively long lapses between communications happen quite frequently, most often during late night hours. Whenever I think it might have been a little too long since I last heard anyone speak I simply ask ATC if they're still awake. By the way, all of you guys are using your #2 com to monitor 121.5 regardless of whether you're VFR or IFR right?
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Depends on the plane. The strobes in one of the 172s in the club put out noise about 121.5, so I don't monitor it when flying that plane. Really annoying listening to the interference.
 
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