Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1310785
Dave W wrote:Incidentally, do people here commonly take off the squelch on their radios if they transmit and hear no reply?


Yes of course, but I'm a radio ham so it comes naturally to me! :D And not just transmitting and hearing no reply, it's standard procedure for listening to a distant station.
By chevvron
#1357398
When I was at Farnborough (yeah earwigo again) I used to work hand in glove with London Info; knowing they weren't allowed to use their radar display, if I saw someone about to infringe or about to conflict and it was on 1177, I would always try to warn them.
The guys at Swanwick who do the FIR are after all only FISOs but they're well trained and do a good job considering they can't identify their traffic or monitor it on radar.
By James Chan
#1357408
or monitor it on radar.


So the last time I visited Swanwick which was about 2 years ago, I observed they were making pretty good use of a Traffic Monitor.

On long-distance flights across the Channel, besides calling out known traffic, London Info would ask me to call the next radar unit at an appropriate time, which I liked.
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By JonathanB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1357422
As far as I know (and I haven't looked at it for some time) it only shows traffic on the FIS squawk and as they are all the same no single aircraft can be positively identified. The large range is also such that it doesn't provide any meaningful use as a radar for separation or traffic purposes and the FISOs are not qualified to use it as such anyway. It's more to give them some sort of situational awareness of roughly where their traffic is more than anything else - hence your very last point.