"Requesting lower"

Mxsmanic wrote:
Jose writes:

Situational awareness of where other aircraft are.

If you are talking to ATC, you have separation services from them plus
your windows in VMC, or all separation services from them in IMC. If
you are not talking to ATC, you have the windows. While hearing from
other aircraft might help a little, that presumes that other pilots
know where they are, which might be stretching things a bit if your
own situational awareness is poor enough that you have to depend on
other pilots. There's no reason to assume that they'd know more about
the big picture than you do.

Additionally, if you're talking to ATC, chances are that nobody on the
frequency is reporting his position, since ATC already knows their
positions. So listening to other pilots won't tell you any more about
where they are.

The only time hearing other pilots might help is if ATC makes a
mistake. In such rare cases it doesn't hurt to be able to hear
everyone, but that's considerably less significant than saying that
you actually need to hear other pilots.

Let's say you are approaching a uncontrolled airport with overcast at 1500
ft AGL and there are VFR pilots in the pattern. Do you think that just maybe
this is why there are more than one radio in most aircraft and in virtually
all aircraft that fly IFR regularly?




Degraded digital is very hard to make out, and easy to make out in
error. Degraded analog is still easy to make out. It has to be very
degraded before it's hard to make out.

I must be missing a magic talent, because frankly I can hardly make
out what people are saying on the radio even under good conditions.
I'm continually amazed that more mistakes are not made. My guess is
that pilots assume they've heard something through force of habit, and
since radio communication is pretty consistent (and deliberately so),
they are lucky enough that their presumptions are usually correct.


I have little doubt you are missing many talents and not all of them
magical.