On Jul 22, 4:34*pm, Greg Arnold wrote:
The signal works perfectly - it can always be given and seen. *If the
human receiving the signal doesn't understand it, that's not the
signal's fault. *If the human can't understand a simple visual signal,
why would anyone suppose they could operate a radio correctly?

Perhaps you are perfect, but most of us are human, and human makes
mistakes with confusing signals under a stressfull situation.
The statistics confirms that.

Ah, the eternal argument between the Moralists ("Damn it, people
shouldn't make mistakes, so we should design our systems on the
assumption that people do not make mistakes"), and the Pragmatists
("People make mistakes all the time, so our systems must be designed to
minimize mistakes and their effects").

Nothing to do with morals or pragmatism but just people not learning
what they need to know to stay alive - which is very frustrating.

Radios are fine and I advocate them - but they can fail for a lot of
reasons. We will always need a backup visual signal and we have a
good one. Instructors need to do their job so pilots recognize it
when they see it. From now on it's the first question on a Flight
Review - if the pilot doesn't know the right answer, my signature
isn't going in their logbook.

No, I'm not perfect, I just read the manual - but that may be unusual.