Poll...Should Radios Be Required At Non-Towered Airports?

Should Radios Be Required At Non-Towered Airports?

  • Yes...and I'm under 40

  • Yes...and I'm between 40 and 60

  • Yes...and I'm over 60

  • No...and I'm under 40

  • No...and I'm between 40 and 60

  • No...and I'm over 60

Results are only viewable after voting.
They don’t work at towered airports either. A good many midair’s occur at towered airfields.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
They don’t work at towered airports either. A good many midair’s occur at towered airfields.
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So we should stop using radios at controlled fields to improve safety?

Perhaps a better way to say things is that they don't always work at towered airports either.
 
Morgan3820 said:
I agree, one cannot make things perfectly safe. We pilots all know that, more than anyone. Flying is a hazardous activity. Don't need to make it more hazardous than it already is. But the good pilots work at making it safer each flight. The good pilots do preflights. The good pilots visually check the fuel level. The good pilots perform a run-up. The good pilots practice emergency procedures. The good pilots communicate with the other pilots in the pattern. Good pilots know that making accurate position reports in the pattern, that we all share, is not an unreasonable expectation. The bad pilots say "I don't have to". I will call out every SOB that says that.

I get making mistakes, we all have. But NORDO is a deliberate act.

@SixPapaCharlie is absolutely correct. There is no defensible argument for not using all available means.
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All safety measures have some cost, in dollars, time, loss of other enjoyment etc.

The safest thing to do is never fly at all. We all choose to trade some risk to ourselves and others against our enjoyment when flying GA.

It is simply incorrect to pretend that is not what is going on in GA flying. Everyone will make somewhat different choices based on their values.

The only reason it concerns others is when there is risk to others. And there is always some risk to others in most GA flying. In our society, we ignore those type of risks when they are de minimus by some standard. That is hard to judge exactly, but these de minimus risks are not zero.

So there really is no exact answer here, other than trying to quantify what is a de minimus risk that can be ignored and then comparing the risks posed by an activity against that standard. I strongly suspect the additional risks of mid air collisions due to NORDO aircraft falls well below the de minimus standard of everyday life.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
You totally missed my point. It ain’t the radio that prevents accidents.
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This is binary. All else aside, either the use of radios improves safety of flight or it does not. If they do, use them. If not then turn them off. Yes or no, good or bad. There is no grey area.

Everything is fine , until it is not.
 
Listen to some of the midair’s from towered airfields....you’ll see the radio was not a safety mitigation....even when told where to look for traffic.
Morgan3820 said:
This is binary. All else aside, either the use of radios improves safety of flight or it does not. If they do, use them. If not then turn them off. Yes or no, good or bad. There is no grey area.
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timwinters said:
Okay, maybe a bit of an overstatement...he made sure I knew how to use it...I just wasn't allowed to during training and cross countries.

He hated GPSs...likened them to video games. He was an army aviator in both Korea and Vietnam and got by fine without at both.
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People have used all sorts of arguments to justify their ineptitude to technology. Some used to argue that flying without a headset made you a better pilot because then you learn all the sounds coming from the airplane.

It is stupid to be flying a crosscountry with the radio off when have the option of using it. Even if you are stubborn and don't want to communicate, at least keep it tuned to 121.5.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
Listen to some of the midair’s from towered airfields....you’ll see the radio was not a safety mitigation....even when told where to look for traffic.
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In that particular case. What about any midairs that were avoided with the use of accurate radio communication that never get reported because there was no crash?

Y'all keep talking particulars, when I talk generalities.
 
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Morgan3820 said:
This is binary. All else aside, either the use of radios improves safety of flight or it does not. If they do, use them. If not then turn them off. Yes or no, good or bad. There is no grey area.

Everything is fine , until it is not.
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In terms of the choices though, that ignores the cost of using the radios. In a long cross country, for example, the loss of quiet.
 
Who knew Gen X were such ninnies?!
 
Morgan3820 said:
So because aircraft accidents are inevitable, there is no point in trying to be safe? Really? because that is what I came away with.
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There's no such thing as perfect safety. One always has to determine the cost vs. the benefit.

Let's say that a given safety improvement will cost $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars) to implement, and will save one life per year. Is that cost effective? Should it be implemented?

As I mentioned before, there were 51 homebuilts involved in midair collisions from 1998-2018...51 out of about 4400 total accidents. Twenty-six resulted in fatalities.

Of the fatal accidents, there was only one involving a NORDO vehicle in the airport environment (SEA99LA129A/B). And the vehicle was an ultralight. Would a radio have helped? Maybe. But the ultralight took off in front of the gyro. You'd think he'd have looked.

So there's one accident out of the 4400 in my homebuilt database. Seems like the cost/benefit ratio wouldn't be that good.

There was one other accident between two aircraft that might have been NORDO... no mention of radio equipment. Two gliders working the same thermal outside the airport environment.

So, explain to me how many people will survive, who otherwise would have been killed, if radios were required at uncontrolled fields.

Keep in mind that 15 of those 26 fatal accidents involved aircraft flying in formation. You'd save more lives if you banned formation flying.

Biggest take-away I got from reading those 26 accident reports is how STUPIDLY people used the radios they had. Wanna save lives? Then institute formal communications training for pilots.

Morgan3820 said:
Car crashes at night are inevitable even with headlights, so I am just not going to turn them on at night? This is what I am hearing from your line of reasoning. Do I understand you correctly?
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A better analogy might be cars owned by people living in the desert. They can keep their cars cooler by applying heavily-tinted plastic to their car's windows, but then they discover that they can't see other car's headlights at night unless they're super-duper, quartz-halogen gigacandlepower units.

So: Is it fair that the people who don't tint their windows have to pay to upgrade their headlights? THEY don't need them. THEY don't get any benefit from them.

I added ADS-B to my airplane at a cost about one quarter the value of the airplane. I don't get any benefit from it.

If you see a NORDO pilot and you feel unsafe, there's a simple solution. Pay the money to have a radio installed in their aircraft. YOU'RE the one who feels endangered.

I don't argue that having a radio produces a safety improvement. I just don't think the amount of improvement is justified by the cost. If you feel different, then provide a list of accidents and identify which probably could have been prevented if a NORDO aircraft had had a radio.

I'll go first. Here's the fatal homebuilt midairs from 1998 through 2018:
CHI98FA096B
CHI98FA096A
SEA99LA129A (the one involving the ultralight, the only case in the airport environment involving a NORDO vehicle)
MIA00FA190B
LAX00FA093A
ATL02FA074B
SEA04LA063A/B (the one with the two gliders)
LAX04FA301B
NYC06FA025B
CHI06FA010A
NYC05FA117A
NYC05FA117B
CHI06LA157A
CHI06LA157B
CHI07FA243A
MIA08FA070B
MIA08FA070A
ERA09LA302A
ERA10FA180B
ERA11FA468A
CEN11LA573A
CEN11LA573B
ERA14FA459
WPR15FA010
ERA19FA183B
ERA19FA183A
CHI98FA096A
SEA99LA129A
MIA00FA190B
LAX00FA093A
ATL02FA074B
SEA04LA063B
LAX04FA301B
NYC06FA025B
CHI06FA010A
NYC05FA117A
NYC05FA117B
CHI06LA157A
CHI06LA157B
CHI07FA243A
MIA08FA070B
MIA08FA070A
ERA09LA302A
ERA10FA180B
ERA11FA468A
CEN11LA573A
CEN11LA573B
ERA14FA459
WPR15FA010
ERA19FA183B
ERA19FA183A

Ron Wanttaja
 
Morgan3820 said:
I get making mistakes, we all have. But NORDO is a deliberate act.
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I’ve been NORDO non-deliberately many times. I’ve even been NORDO with a waiver somewhere it would normally be required. And handhelds are an enormous pain in the ass and really don’t work properly without an airframe mounted antenna.

Not that you’d know it today by the way people act when it happens but the entire IFR system is ENGINEERED to work with literally everyone NORDO.

People are mostly just spoiled by modern radios that don’t fry themselves. Think they’re some kind of primary safety device instead of a SECONDARY device.

There’s a reason ground based nav approaches are supposed to have transition routes from the airway enroute system published on them. The system is designed to fail SAFE.

The tech is slowly flipping peoples priorities backward. Which I’m fine with it the system is designed to fail safe, but it isn’t.

If an uncontrolled field doesn’t have enough operations to warrant a tower or other mandatory radio airspace, it simply doesn’t meet the numerical concern point for traffic not to be able to see and avoid. Well not beyond, engineering reality of acceptable losses per dollar.

That’s just the way it is. Don’t like it, fly in controlled airspace and participating at all times. The vast majority of the traffic does, honestly.

Nobody is mandated to go where the scary Cubs are, if we’re talking mandates...

It’d be incredibly dumb to mandate someone buy a radio to do laps around Alliance, NE. Or Miller, SD.
 
Stan Cooper said:
Right; a Sporty's PJ2 is $199. J3 or Champ without electrical system? No problem.
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The cost to install a shielded ignition so a radio is actually usable? Could be big problem.

woodchucker said:
I’m sure there are relatively few nordo planes/pilots out there.
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At busier airports, probably you're right. At many smaller fields, it's quite common.
 
I voted YES because the FAA has (somewhat) recently allowed downwind entry legs from both sides, inside and outside, closing on the same spot at a near head-on 135° angle. In Canada, you need to have a radio to do that.
 
I've always flown out of deltas where two way radio communication is required. My handheld has saved the day on more than one occasion.
 
Dana said:
The cost to install a shielded ignition so a radio is actually usable? Could be big problem
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Yep; could be, but I wonder how many A-65s, C-65s, A-75s, and C75s flying still have unshielded ignition wires.
 
Stan Cooper said:
Yep; could be, but I wonder how many A-65s and A-75s flying still have unshielded ignition wires.
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Probably not that many. Which begs the question...how common are NORDO airplanes? Flying from my uncontrolled field, it's probably been 20 years since I noticed one.

People using the wrong CTAF are probably more common. Every few months, it seems, I have to point out to someone that Thun Field is on another channel.

We are also seeming to see a rise in IFR arrivals and departures that don't bother to use the CTAF.

Ron Wanttaja
 
I hear plenty of people on the radio that have no idea what to say, or how to say it. Many of those same people tie up the frequency for minutes while delivering no pertinent information. I suspect the people flying without a radio are probably more aware of their surroundings because they know that no one is listening to them.

I fly one airplane that has no radio. I avoid using the airport when its busy, but sometimes I go out in the morning early and when I get back there is a full pattern. I admit, I watch out far more than when I am in something with a radio. I am also ready to do whats necessary to avoid a problem because someone did not see me. I run an "ultralight" pattern in that bird, its pretty slow and looks like an ultralight. But, that gets me out of the regular pattern elevation where I am more likely to get run over from behind, I can't see behind me, but I can see above me. Without a radio, I think it pushes someone to be more vigilant with their scan and technique. The others, that ASSUME everyone is on the radio, well??
 
Home airfield uses NORDO planes for training, and there's a bunch of other local Cubs, Champs, etc that don't have radios based there. You just look for planes and try to fly standard patterns.
 
I understand why people are not wanting one and all that, but it's close to crazy to not have a way to communicate in this day and age.

I've seen experimental that are no more than a guy flapping his arms with a radio.

Why not eliminate risk when you can? It's counterintuitive on many levels.
 
Do I sense some age discrimination at work here?

I learned to fly, thirty years ago in an Aeronca Champ with no radio. It was at a retired bomber base with almost no traffic at all, especially on a week day. It worked quite well. I get in and out of that airport a good bit today and with GA declining there’s not much, if any, more traffic there today.

It worked quite well then and it could probably work okay now. That said, I really doubt that anyone goes in there NORDO these days. As far as REQUIRING a radio, I expect that there are plenty of requirements now like Class A, B, C & D airspace. If an uncontrolled field is so busy that they need a radio requirement, maybe they need a tower.
 
Flyabetic said:
I understand why people are not wanting one and all that, but it's close to crazy to not have a way to communicate in this day and age.

I've seen experimental that are no more than a guy flapping his arms with a radio.

Why not eliminate risk when you can? It's counterintuitive on many levels.
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your point is great, but the discussion is about REQUIRING a radio.
 
Seriously! If your going to fly NORDO, at least call on the radio and let everyone know! ;)
 
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More rules is what we need LOTS more rules. So while we are at it how about, every plane should be required to have a BRS, two in fact in case one fails. No let's make it three, oh and air bags too. After all it's for the children.
 
I started flying in a J3 Cub in 1969 and honestly, at that time, I don't know how you could have had a radio in that thing. Also I don't think my 15 year old brain could have handled it as I tried to figure out how to control that contraption without being able to see a damn thing out front past the wide shoulders of my instructor.

But honestly, with the tech we have nowadays there's really no excuse for not having a comm onboard even though I voted NO because I don't think it should be mandated. I still fly a few J3's now and then but none of them are NORDO anymore, everything has a t least a small battery because who can fly without a Garmin x96 these days? How could you possibly know where you were without the magenta line? LoL :)
 
Even if you have a radio, you could go NORDO. There's no guarantee that the other guys in the pattern tuned the right frequency, or didn't lose their radio for any number of reasons.

This is why I don't believe it should be a rule. You should always be expecting that there may be someone NORDO nearby. It has nothing to do with being tech adverse.
 
I have had way more problems with pilots calling wrong runway, um um um um um, calling ten miles out when two, weird conversations between planes with cfis doing touch and goes, stuck mics etc. i would much rather be in pattern with someone silent and competent than talking and messing everything up.
 
The closest I've come to a mid-air was at the home drome - a Class D with an operating control tower. Needless to say, the radio was on and being used. I was taking off and turning right cross wind (at the direction of the tower) and the other plane was entering the pattern from the opposite direction. Other than knowing that he was there the radio didn't really help. Keep your eyes open and outside the cockpit.
 
NORDO guy is probably no turn signal guy too. But, using turn signals is actually required! I’m not saying it should be though.
 
luvflyin said:
Shouldn’t the question simply be shouldn’t radios be required to fly? What goes up must come down and the only place to come back down is an airport.
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Not out here on the east side of the Rockies . Rural roads work fine for the coffee drains needed once in a while.
 
In between our idea of an uncontrolled field and a class D airspace in Australia (probably other Commonwealth countries) is the Mandatory Broadcast Zone (MBZ). These are fields where traffic reports are obligatory though there's no ATC involved.
 
flyingron said:
In between our idea of an uncontrolled field and a class D airspace in Australia (probably other Commonwealth countries) is the Mandatory Broadcast Zone (MBZ). These are fields where traffic reports are obligatory though there's no ATC involved.
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Many Canadian airports have that. It’s listed as MF, for mandatory frequency. But what is the consequence of breaking that rule, compared with the consequence of violating see-and-avoid?
 
iamtheari said:
Many Canadian airports have that. It’s listed as MF, for mandatory frequency. But what is the consequence of breaking that rule, compared with the consequence of violating see-and-avoid?
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I don't understand the point you're making, but the "consequence" of not using a radio at an MF airport is a collision with aircraft entering downwind on a 45° angle. Standard entries in Canada are across the 'drome in the middle, of course. Canadians seem to understand (FAA doesn't) that heading toward the same spot in the air from opposite directions is unwise unless radios are utilized to yield the right of way.
EDIT: To clarify, the 45 entry isn't allowed up north except at MF airports.
 
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