On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 09:35:58 -0800, Ron Garret
wrote:

Does anyone know what it
would take to try to make this case to the FAA to try to get them to
change their minds?

The short answer, I suspect, is no, never, not on your life.

I am continually irritated by the assumption that Zero and Capital O
are the same thing. I think it arises from two factors: first, that on
the manual typewriters of the 1940s and 1950s that many of us learned
to type on, there was no zero, so we managed by typing a capital O.

And second, the dial telephones of the same era had 10 numbers on
them, including zero, but the zero also meant O for Operator.

I suspect the reason the FAA came up with this strange rule is that a
large proportion of the population would read Oscar as "zero", to the
great confusion of reporting miscreant aircraft.

(I know what you mean about the confusion arising from a
similar-sounding designator. I fly out of Hampton NH airport, which is
on the same freq as Sanford ME. Over the radio, it's often hard to
know which airport is meant. And at Sanford there is a Cessna whose
tail number ends in the same three digits as the J-3 I fly. So I am
always careful to specify that I am Piper Cub XXX, or in many cases
simply "the Cub".)


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
the blog www.danford.net