rottydaddy
En-Route
I want to say that listening is better than nothing, but if everybody only used their radios for listening, they'd be pretty useless. :wink2:
But I still don't think monitoring only, or "going full NORDO" even, is some kind of breach of safe practice or etiquette.
I've never , ever been confused by what I've seen in the pattern, and many times I have worked out some challenging pattern problems without exchanging a word with the other pilot... but man have I heard some stuff that did not make sense (and to be fair, I have said my share of dumb things)! All those extraneous words, cryptic locals-only landmarks, pointless queries, idle chit-chat, arguments, pilots on the wrong freq or at the wrong airport with the right freq... bad radios... hasty trigger-fingers stepping on everybody... stuck mics... and the fact that at 2000 feet above my home drome I can hear identical CTAFs 50 miles away... etc., etc...
Not saying the radio is a bad thing, but even with controller oversight, even in radar environments with everybody squawking and talking, looking outside trumps all. At little grass strips, big tower-controlled airports, in controlled airspace, or even on the airways. I believe that because it has probably saved my life more than once. And every damn time I was squawking, listening, and talking, and so were the other pilots involved.
It's technically possible for a third party to alert two pilots converging in each others' blind spots, but that's a very rare event, in my experience.
Far more common are collisions in or near the pattern caused by pilots not looking while the other traffic might still be in view... because hey, they called their 45-degree entry six miles out, now it's time to stare at the runway or fiddle with stuff inside the plane.
Anyway, that's my POV, and my defense of it.
You might feel better if you just state your apparent POV: that using the radio is safer than looking outside and thinking about what you see.
