Should Radios Be Required At Non-Towered Airports?

Should Radio calls be required at uncontrolled airports?

  • Yes - Via Regulation

  • Its a great idea, Yes but we do not need more regulations

  • No Radios for me

Results are only viewable after voting.
Radio communication is indeed a tremendously archaic and inaccurate system, as highlighted by the issues raised in this thread. Instead of discussing making it mandatory, we would be better off aiming to eliminate it, including at what are now ATC controlled airports. ADS-B is a good step in that direction, although making it mandatory everywhere would also lead to more useless bureaucracy.
 
denverpilot said:
And the position reports from people doing practice approaches who were already lost five miles prior to the FAF... those are fun... and even more useless... hahaha.
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or even when they DO know where they're at. I love people giving IFR position reports at a VFR field. "N666 is BAKKI inbound."

that's one of the few times I'll play radio NAZI and respond with something like "and exactly WTF does that tell a VFR pilot, especially one that's not from that area? put it in VFR terms, numbnuts."
 
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added a poll to the thread ... vote away
 
The poll is like the world today. Very polarized. Where is the answer that represents anything approaching a moderate position?
 
kyleb said:
The poll is like the world today. Very polarized. Where is the answer that represents anything approaching a moderate position?
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for example? happy to edit the poll
 
I like hearing the other planes on the radio as it helps me maintain situational awareness, but nobody needs another regulation IMO.

iamtheari said:
Moderate position: Radios are required on high wing, optional on low wing.
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I suppose the radios are optional on a low wing because no one really wants to listen to low wingers if they don't have to? ;)

(Ducking and running for cover as fast as I can...)
 
ktup-flyer said:
Happens all the time if you go fly in the MS delta. Almost none of the cropdusters have radios
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. The crop dusters here never use the radios either. They usually fly low and do straight ins. Drives a lot of people nuts. I decided to talk to a few of them to learn more. Beyond being darned good/crazy pilots they have a business to run and I think they great guys. Not much time to fly patterns or going up to pattern altitude because low winds at dusk leave only so much time. Crazy watching the super heavy biplane ones lumbering to take off. My favorite is the turbine still running with the prop spinning at like 3rpm while climbs out, takes his helmet off and helps them load or has his dinner while they load him up.

And they often have radios!!! But they are usually 2-way radios to work with the ground support crew.

Oh, and since they usually work in low ground winds they rarely use standard upwind takeoff. They minimize taxi time so will land one way and takeoff the other way.

I can see how it drives some people nuts. But their time is literally money. Not an easy job. Dangerous too.
 
WannFly said:
for example? happy to edit the poll
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Well, for one thing, the only choices if you don't want radios to be mandatory are "It's a great idea, yes but we do not need more regulations," and "No radios for me." That leaves me out because I don't think "it's a great idea," but I fly planes that have radios and I use them, so "No radios for me" doesn't apply either. There's no option for a simple "No."

There's also no option for "Yes, except for aircraft in which it's not practical." For example, in rental planes that have no electrical system, a handheld would not work because there would be no practical way to make sure that the radio's battery was charged for the next renter. And of course the problem of aircraft with unshielded ignitions has already been mentioned.
 
I have radios and I use them but I don't think they should be necessary. I have found ADSB to be a great benefit at my uncontrolled field. I can see most of the traffic on ADSB and correlate who is using the radio and who isn't.

The sad reality is that there are a lot of pilots that are very diligent about announcing their positions and intentions (sometimes even on the correct freq) but they don't LISTEN to the other pilots in the pattern which sometimes results in tragic outcomes...
 
ahypnoz said:
Anyway, I think that a radio with position reporting should be required at any airport with an instrument approach. No instrument, approach no radio required.
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One of my peeves is radio position calls from pilots doing practice approaches into uncontrolled fields. "Podunk Traffic Cessna 172 is at BONKR inbound practice GPS approach 28 Podunk". Other than the knowledge that there's another airplane out there (which should be assumed anyway) that radio transmission tells a solo private pilot student NOTHING useful at all. They have no idea where BONKR is. They have no idea how long it will take you to get to the runway. They have no idea what you intend to do (full stop landing, T&G, low approach/missed) once you get to the runway. You may as well have said 'Podunk traffic 172 is in the area somewhere, everyone else stop what they're doing and stay out of our way until we're no longer in the area Podunk'.

Go to a towered field and shoot your practice approaches or learn to make radio calls that mere mortals can understand.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
One of my peeves is radio position calls from pilots doing practice approaches into uncontrolled fields. "Podunk Traffic Cessna 172 is at BONKR inbound practice GPS approach 28 Podunk". Other than the knowledge that there's another airplane out there (which should be assumed anyway) that radio transmission tells a solo private pilot student NOTHING useful at all. They have no idea where BONKR is. They have no idea how long it will take you to get to the runway. They have no idea what you intend to do (full stop landing, T&G, low approach/missed) once you get to the runway. You may as well have said 'Podunk traffic 172 is in the area somewhere, everyone else stop what they're doing and stay out of our way until we're no longer in the area Podunk'.

Go to a towered field and shoot your practice approaches or learn to make radio calls that mere mortals can understand.
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As a CFI-I I wholly endorse this sentiment.
 
Palmpilot said:
Well, for one thing, the only choices if you don't want radios to be mandatory are "It's a great idea, yes but we do not need more regulations," and "No radios for me." That leaves me out because I don't think "it's a great idea," but I fly planes that have radios and I use them, so "No radios for me" doesn't apply either. There's no option for a simple "No."

There's also no option for "Yes, except for aircraft in which it's not practical." For example, in rental planes that have no electrical system, a handheld would not work because there would be no practical way to make sure that the radio's battery was charged for the next renter. And of course the problem of aircraft with unshielded ignitions has already been mentioned.
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well the topic is if people should spend $200 and get a handheld. the handheld stays with the pilot. if you are a pilot who has radio but choose not to use it, choose no
 
Juliet Hotel said:
One of my peeves is radio position calls from pilots doing practice approaches into uncontrolled fields. "Podunk Traffic Cessna 172 is at BONKR inbound practice GPS approach 28 Podunk". Other than the knowledge that there's another airplane out there (which should be assumed anyway) that radio transmission tells a solo private pilot student NOTHING useful at all. They have no idea where BONKR is. They have no idea how long it will take you to get to the runway. They have no idea what you intend to do (full stop landing, T&G, low approach/missed) once you get to the runway. You may as well have said 'Podunk traffic 172 is in the area somewhere, everyone else stop what they're doing and stay out of our way until we're no longer in the area Podunk'.

Go to a towered field and shoot your practice approaches or learn to make radio calls that mere mortals can understand.
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i have encountered a couple of them right after my check ride. once even with a CFI onboard in the other aircraft .... kept announcing they are doing procedure turns but didnt bother to say where the hell they were
 
WannFly said:
well the topic is if people should spend $200 and get a handheld. the handheld stays with the pilot. if you are a pilot who has radio but choose not to use it, choose no
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I don't think that a blanket radio requirement is practical or necessary. However I have a radio and I DO choose to use it. There is no answer that is true for me.

I guess you didn't mean it when you offered to edit the poll. ;)
 
Why would you *not* want a radio?
 
Juliet Hotel said:
Go to a towered field and shoot your practice approaches or learn to make radio calls that mere mortals can understand.
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YES!!

I was at Fallbrook a few weeks ago and this guy kept giving calls, but simply stating his tail number and "on the GPS approach"

*yes, I'm IFR rated
*no, I did not have the approach plates for Fallbrook up, and even if I did "on the GPS approach" doesn't really give me any value when I'm setting up for the pattern

I actually asked the guy for specifics on his location, intentions, etc., and his reply was simply "8 miles out on the GPS approach, low approach" .. not exactly what I was looking for

I thought this was pretty obvious to most people but apparently it is not
 
Tantalum said:
Why would you *not* want a radio?
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Someone mentioned above that there are planes that have unshielded ignitions that make a radio useless. Also, the pilot might have a radio but it fails, or the battery dies. How would you handle those situations in a regulation?

Other people might have other reasons. I don't see the need to impose my desires on them.
 
Palmpilot said:
Someone mentioned above that there are planes that have unshielded ignitions that make a radio useless. Also, the pilot might have a radio but it fails, or the battery dies. How would you handle those situations in a regulation?
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I imagine that to be the fringe case.. just looking at the volume of planes sold you are most likely to find 172/182/PA28 at various airports. I wouldn't require a regulation, more like a very strong ask, but if it were a regulation we already have protocol for loss of radio

Palmpilot said:
I don't see the need to impose my desires on them.
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True.. but it becomes my problem if I'm diligently doing my call outs and someone taxies onto the runway to take off when I'm on short final because they couldn't see me in their high wing and don't have a radio (or chose not to use it) at their uncontrolled airport

Which, is why I tend to avoid uncontrolled airports as much as possible. Especially in socal, it's a wildwest of everything you will find coming into French Valley and Big Bear
 
Stewartb said:
Snuck up on you, did it?
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Balloons absolutely can snuck up, thanks to the great rates of descent they can develop. A change in altitude is a common factor in mid-air collisions. Typically it happens with landing helicopters, but there were instances where a training aircraft on instructional flight smacked someone while practicing descents. Admittedly, the only time I had to dodge a balloon, I was aware of it ahead of time.
 
kyleb said:
The poll is like the world today. Very polarized. Where is the answer that represents anything approaching a moderate position?
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GA: Help! FAA is murdering me!
Karen The Pilot: So polarized. Why cannot we find a moderate solution? Maybe he can only murder you on weekdays. Or, we can require him murder you very slowly, and publish plans to murder you for a public comment for 30 days.
 
All right, I did a QUICK assessment of the midairs from 2008 through 2019. The NTSB database has a "Midair" flag, and I extracted 121 accidents (almost all involving two aircraft, one had three!).

However, of those 121, 20 were foreign accidents or being investigated by a foreign agency. No details available on those, so I left them out.

I assumed any "modern" aircraft had a radio, and looked for clues on classics/antique/homebuilts.

If the 101 midairs left, 74 of them involved aircraft which both had radios. There were ten accidents where one or both did not have a radio (and four where neither had one). The numbers don't add up since there are some listed as "unknown" in my output.

Of the ten where either or both aircraft lacked a radio:

- One case where BOTH agricultural aircraft involved were NORDO (they ran into each other)
- Two involved powered parachutes or ultralights
- Two involved drones (one with a balloon)
- One where a glider and its towplane collided on return to the airport (the glider had a radio, the towplane didn't)
- One where the plane had a dead battery
- One where an aerobatic Cub took off and flew formation with a friend, but somehow clipped him while flying acro

There were two cases, in twelve years, of "conventional" NORDO midairs... a Pitts Special in one case, and a T-Craft in the other. The T-Craft was actually being used for training, the Pitts was coming back from aerobatic practice.

Fourteen of the 101 midairs involved formation flying, Alaska saw 11 midairs....

Ron Wanttaja
 
And there you have it. Mandating radios for all aircraft at uncontrolled airports would have had zero impact in preventing the majority of mid air accidents in the previous 10 years. Thanks for the data Ron. You have confirmed what I think many of us suspected.
 
It was an interesting study; I'll probably take more time than an afternoon to look at things more thoroughly.

One of the interesting things is that midairs are surprisingly survivable; looked like about 40% didn't see a fatality. In these, the narratives are occasionally a bit chilling....

"...the pilot announced his intentions to depart and began his takeoff roll. As the airplane became airborne, he heard someone transmit over the frequency that he had someone above him. The pilot looked up and saw the right main gear of an airplane about six feet above him..." (SEA08LA057)

Of course, a lot of the survivable ones involve formation flying. I'd seen than in my homebuilt accident studies; 7 out of a total of 86 RV-8 accidents were midairs, and six of them were during formation flying. Others involved airplanes in racing..."Rubbin' is racin' " doesn't seem to limit itself to NASCAR. A couple were sailplanes.

In the non-formation case, some of the reports include a bit of finger pointing as to who was, and who wasn't, making position calls. There are also comments about radio distortion and busy frequencies. In one case, a plane was listening to AWOS instead of the CTAF.

One of the more unusual midairs was DFW08LA089, between an Ag-Cat and a Pawnee. It happened when both aircraft were on final. TO DIFFERENT AIRPORTS. The duster's private strips were one mile apart, and were perpendicular to each other.

One case where a glider collided with its own tow aircraft when both were trying to land (DFW08LA089) kind of implies that there wasn't much lift that day....

Ron Wanttaja
 
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