Usage of UNICOM

[Matei Miron]

Hi everybody!

I am flying a lot between LOWW and LROP and I noticed something relatively bothering.

On both airports, at night, there are many pilots performing takeoffs and landings without communicating over UNICOM (or tower). I am usually monitoring tower on my secondary radio and there, there was also no communication.

I think the usage of UNICOM reports in such situations should be more encouraged.

Also I would like to take the opportunity to ask the community what is the position regarding controllers that log in to quickly depart a friend, and the log off? I mean, while everybody is here to have fun and in their free time, this happened to me a couple of times already, when I already had my flight plan submitted, and just getting ready to get my clearance. 

 

Regards!

[Ruben Commijs]

9 hours ago, Matei Miron said:

 think the usage of UNICOM reports in such situations should be more encouraged.

I generally prefer to announce my intentions, One time me and my friend were ready for take off and i couldnt see someone on final (pilot just turned onto final) Thanks to him announcing on unicom we knew we had to wait with taking off, I always announce my intentions on unicom and everyone that i introduce to vatsim i will always tell them to announce their intentions on 122.8 if they are uncontrolled because there are so many benefits from announcing stuff on unicom. I kinda agree we need more unicom encouragement but we should not force anyone to talk on unicom if that may be needed. Some people have their reasons to use text or not talk on unicom. 

 

Quote

Pilots flying through uncontrolled airspace shall monitor VHF radio frequency 122.800 or other designated "UNICOM" frequency until they come under air traffic control coverage. Where another pilot may benefit, a pilot shall transmit their intentions on the designated unicom frequency.

This is what the COC says. But i dont have the experience to judge further. Just my opinion given above.

[Robert Shearman Jr]

The update to the Code of Conduct making announcements on 122.8 mandatory was only within the last six months or so.  For nearly 20 years of the network's existence, *monitoring* 122.8 was mandated -- however, position announcements were encouraged but not explicitly required.  I agree that more should be done to encourage compliance. 

Regarding someone jumping on an ATC position to work a friend in or out of the airspace before logging right back off again -- I agree, it's a pretty crappy thing to do.  I don't know of anything forbidding it, aside from local facility policies.  At ZDC in the US our facility prohibits ATC sessions less than an hour in length -- allowances are given for the occasional power failure or other unforeseen issue, but habitual short-session controllers are warned & then sanctioned.  I'd love to see policies like that more widespread (and I'm guessing more facilities' leadership who have such policies or have considered or abolished them may chime in) but my assessment is that right now it varies based on whose ARTCC or FIR borders you're within. 

[Mats Edvin Aaro]

To clarify, announcements on designated UNICOM frequency (122.800 or other where applicable) is only mandatory where it may benefit another member. If you're flying alone with no aircraft in 100nm vicinity, you're not required to do so. But if there is a traffic impact, you are. This is an amendment to an old rule which encouraged pilots to use UNICOM; Now it's mandatory where stated previously. It takes time for everyone to get familiar with that change. 🙂

[Matei Miron]

Hi guys,

Thank you for sharing your opinions about my question(s). It helped to read other points of view. To be honest I thought that the UNICOM usage was mandatory from the beginning. Now I get it why certain discrepancies exist.

 

Kind Regards!

[Mats Edvin Aaro]

This is what the CoC says about it:

Quote

B5 - Pilots flying through uncontrolled airspace shall monitor VHF radio frequency 122.800 or other designated "UNICOM" frequency until they come under air traffic control coverage. Where another pilot may benefit, a pilot shall transmit their intentions on the designated unicom frequency.

The last iteration of the CoC had the word "should", so people thought it was optional. But here you see that if another pilot may benefit, UNICOM usage is mandatory. 🙂 A good practice is to just do it all the time to get into the habit. It's like using the blinkers on your car; other cars don't always benefit from you doing it, but it's good to do it all the time so you remember to do so when you come across a situation where other cars benefit 🙂

[Robert Shearman Jr]

Actually, my recollection is that the paragraph on UNICOM only mentioned that it was mandatory to monitor, nothing about transmitting at all (neither in "should" nor in "shall" form). 

I am glad to see that, throughout the document, the whole should/shall controversy has finally been laid to rest as of the latest revision, though. 🙂

[Simon Kelsey]

Something which is worth noting, however: ultimately the Rules of the Air and see and avoid are always king when it comes to collision avoidance. Unicom is a useful aid, but it is not a panacea and it is very important that people don't get in to the mindset that making a transmission on Unicom = everybody must therefore get out of my way.

Interestingly, in the marine industry use of VHF for collision avoidance is strongly discouraged as it introduces great potential for confusion, misunderstanding and misidentification. Instead strict adherence to the standard right of way rules and collision avoidance procedures is considered far more effective.

Obviously there are differences in aviation and I'm not saying that Unicom etc is not a useful tool but ultimately see and avoid and the right of way rules are the best defence.

'If he's on the right, he's in the right...'

[Zachary Miller]

Is UNICOM for voice communication or just text?

[Daniel Mckee]

The use of voice on any frequency is not mandatory however whenever communication is required under CoC , either ATC freq or Unicom, text is the minimum required.

 

[Don Desfosse]

On Unicom, as everywhere on the network, voice is preferred.  It's easier and more realistic.  However, some members may not be able to use voice, which is why if anyone requires text for coordination, then text is required where a member would benefit from Unicom coordination and that member requires coordination via text.  On a personal level, likely 99% of my Unicom transmissions are on voice, but when another member transmits text on Unicom, I assume it's because they require text for coordination, and I revert to text coordination (or ask if they really need it -- amazingly, some members still don't know yet that voice is preferred on Unicom).  

[Tobias Dammers]

Thing to keep in mind: effective voice Unicom range is 30 miles (15 miles on either side), so announcing your intended landing runway and STAR on voice from TOD is not very helpful - those who might be interested may very well be at the airport, or arriving from the other side, so they could easily be 50-100 miles away, and won't hear your voice transmissions.

 

[Alistair Thomson]

Is text Unicom not similarly limited?

Edited November 5, 2021 at 09:22 PM by Alistair Thomson

[Tobias Dammers]

No, text messages have a much longer range.

[Frans DECHAENE]

I have found Unicom pretty useful, two recent occasions come to mind: an event in LEPA was ongoing with a fair amount of traffic still inbound, when ATC services stopped at exactly the announced time. The pilots in a very disciplined way arranged things amongst themselves. A second event was in EDDM when for a certain period the VATSIM servers stopped talking to one another and ATC was unable to see traffic and halted services. Thanks to Unicom we could separate and land safely. 

Did not know about the the 15NM radius, valuable info. 

[Alistair Thomson]

On 11/5/2021 at 8:22 PM, Tobias Dammers said:

text messages have a much longer range.

Thanks Tobias. I wonder why the network doesn't limit text UNICOM to the same range as voice...

[Tobias Dammers]

20 hours ago, Alistair Thomson said:

Thanks Tobias. I wonder why the network doesn't limit text UNICOM to the same range as voice...

Because that would make a lot of situations awkward.

Keep in mind that some usages of UNICOM on VATSIM are somewhat unrealistic.

Suppose I'm flying into an uncontrolled airport from the South, and someone else is coming from the North; we're both aiming for the same runway, and would arrive around the same time. With 15+15 miles comms radius, coordinating this would be quite challenging - we would both have to wait until we're within 15 miles of the airport to announce our intentions, and, assuming typical airliner operations, at that point we are probably about to turn final already. 15 miles is enough to report final, takeoffs, and runway crossings, and to coordinate pushback and taxi, but to sort out enroute conflicts, it's a bit tight.

IRL, we'd have ATC handle all that, and we don't actually need to talk to the pilot on the other side of the runway; all we need is talk to ATC. And we do this on a frequency reserved for traffic that is likely relevant to us, whereas Unicom is going to be full of chatter that doesn't interest us. As long as that chatter is text, it's fine, we're not stepping over each other, and we can just ignore everything that starts with neither our callsign nor the airport we're going to or departing from. 100-mile voice Unicom would be pretty terrible at times, but 100-mile text Unicom is fine.

[Alistair Thomson]

@Tobias DammersSo what you're really saying, I think, is that voice ATIS doesn't really work for commercial traffic on VATSIM?

[Don Desfosse]

Just my opinion and experience, but calling within 15 miles is plenty enough *most of the time*.  I can imagine it might not be enough *all of the time*, but I think *most of the time* is good enough for, well, most of us...!  🙂 🙂 

When flying airliners or bizjets, I typically make 10 mile final and 5 mile final calls.  So far, I've never had an issue.  Again, I'm sure it's not perfect, but I'm sure that it is good enough, most of the time, for most folks.

[Tobias Dammers]

13 hours ago, Alistair Thomson said:

@Tobias DammersSo what you're really saying, I think, is that voice ATIS doesn't really work for commercial traffic on VATSIM?

I think voice Unicom, in it's current form, is fine, but doesn't cover everything. It's good to have a way of communicating over longer distances when there's no ATC. It's unrealistic, but so is the absence of ATC, and we need *something* to make up for that.

[Robert Shearman Jr]

My opinion is that if two aircraft are in the air separated by more than 30nm, there isn't much coordination that needs to be done.

[Mike Teague]

yeah i really dont see why people are announcing top of descents, CLIMBS, etc. etc.

the FAA recommendation is only:

 

[Raul Ferraz]

tbf, although I agree that there is no need of announcing TOC/TOD and stuff really far from airport, from a controller perspective, on a STAR you already need to be coordinating with the other traffic around you, if you want to make things easier

Also, on a note on the above, I'd be quite surprised if you were able to find a recommendation on how to do self announcing at Higher levels, since there are no uncontrolled enroute airspaces around the globe...

[Alistair Thomson]

6 hours ago, Raul Ferraz said:

there are no uncontrolled enroute airspaces around the globe

That's true in RW, but as Tobias pointed out this is VATSIM and these airspaces and all others are frequently uncontrolled.

[Raul Ferraz]

please don't quote only partial parts of the message, I simply crossrefered that to the FAA Recomendation mentioned... so like I said, you won't find recommendation on something that doesn't exist