I do it whenever I can't think of a better frequency to monitor. I even put
this habit of mine to good use once. Well, kind of.

I was once flying from Boston to New York when I heard some guy trying to
reach his airport's ground service on this frequency, apparently by mistake.
There was no response and the guy was audibly getting frustrated.

"XYZ Ground, Cessna 123AB... XYZ Ground, this is Cessna 123AB... XYZ Ground,
do you copy?" and so on.

So I decided to be a good samaritan. I keyed the mike and said "sir, this is
the emergency frequency." The 123AB guy obviously took the hint as there
were no more frantic calls from him on 121.5.

-- city dweller


".Blueskies." wrote in message
.. .
The Maydays post got me wondering. I don't monitor except during the long
flights, maybe ~2 hours or longer...