"Jacob" wrote in message
. com...
I've actually wondered about stuck mics. With the thousands of ancient GA
aircrafts flying in this country, I would think a mecahnical failure on
the PTT switch would not be very unlikely.

It does happen, yes.

If somebody's mic gets stuck on a class B frequency (either the pilots
fault or the mic breaking), would'nt that be a big problem? How would they
even track it?

It could be a problem. For the airplane with the stuck mic, it is
definitely a problem, since it effectively disables communication for that
airplane. For other users of the frequency, it just depends on how close
they are to each other and to the airplane with the stuck mic, and of course
the relative power of their transmitters. Many of the other users may still
be able to communicate with each other, at least in limited fashion, while
some may not.

I believe this would be a bigger problem at an uncontrolled airport, where
the users of the frequency are all very close to each other. In Class B
airspace, I can easily imagine situations in which the aircraft with the
stuck mic is far enough away from other aircraft that other transmissions
can get through to those other aircraft.

But yes, even in Class B airspace a stuck mic can be a big problem. I don't
know what you mean by "track it"; ATC would probably notice that they were
constantly receiving, and so would understand there's a stuck mic out there
somewhere. As for identifying the aircraft with the stuck mic, that might
be harder.

Theoretically, one could use direction finding equipment, but I doubt that's
practical in most cases; I think the DF information obtained through the FSS
would have to be correlated with radar data somehow, and I don't know how
well -- if at all -- those systems are linked. It could come down to
old-fashioned process of elimination; figuring out which aircraft can still
communicate, and eventually whittling the number of aircraft that can't
communicate down to one.

Pete