Hi Tom

This is RAS - so the advice is only guaranteed to be worth every cent you pay, but here is my opinion for what it is worth.

I believe the adage is Aviate, navigate, communicate (My corollary is - and know the consequences.)

Having aviated into a hazardous situation - however we got there, the thing to do is to fly the aeroplane, to as safe a
location as possible under the circumstances (minimise the risk of damage and injury), and communicate the situation
(location and risk of damage or injury) as clearly as possible.
Part of mitigating risk to yourself and others is to ensure the people at your home airfield and or SAR know where you
are, and what your intentions are. The cost and risks associated with a large scale search when there is limited
information available is much higher.

So -


You're in a remote area, you're high enough to make a radio call, but
don't know how much lower you can be and still communicate, so you
want to notify *someone* of your predicament.

So you tune 121.5 and say...????

My call is -
PAN PAN "... I have the following situation."

But my understanding is that the controllers / SAR / contest directors would like to know the situation whatever you
call it- as long as you explain the situation. If you mistakenly use "Mayday", the person you are talking to "should"
ask if you really want to declare an emergency.
Then remember to tell the same people once you are down what the new (hopefully - "no problem") situation is.

Even in remote areas you may be able to relay via an airliner - who should be listening for your call if you made a PAN
announcement.

If they don't hear from you cancelling the PAN (Possible Assistance Needed )call all the expensive stuff will start on
the assumption that it is no longer a possible, but an actual "assistance needed" situation - but you won't be on the
hook for futile expenses.

I you cry wolf - You will, of course, aggravate a lot of people you might really want on your side in a real emergency.
And they will bill you.

Communicating anything can save a lot of aggravation - Consider the contest pilot who got too busy to call landing out
in the middle of nowhere on a contest day that developed massive storm fronts. Last contact on the radio was around two
hours before eventual landing. That is a lot of ground for a modern 18m ship.
On the ground , he had no cell reception, deserted farmhouses and too little radio range (flat battery) to reach anyone.
Having lost track of exactly where he was in the excitement he was unaware/unsure of how to reach the nearest town which
was 13km away. Out of options and ideas he slept uncomfortably in the cockpit while the storm blew itself out - which is
more than can be said for a lot of others who spent much of the night up and arranging a search at dawn. Then seven
aircraft started a grid search, with most burning two hours of tach time by the time the aircraft was located, and they
got back home. Then the issue of cost comes up...

The take away from that one for me was - have decent battery endurance available, and try to have two cellular phones so
that you may be able to get alternative comms working. The field we found him in had reasonable cellular coverage by the
alternative network, not his service provider. Could/should have been a simple retrieve.

Sometimes abuse is preferable to non-use.

5Z wrote:
On Jun 19, 2:33 am, Ian wrote:
That would be a gross misuse - an abuse - of the MAYDAY call. You are
NOT supposed to use it on the off chance that something might go wrong
later.

You're in a remote area, you're high enough to make a radio call, but
don't know how much lower you can be and still communicate, so you
want to notify *someone* of your predicament.

So you tune 121.5 and say...????

-Tom