Deciding which radio to replace my KY197 with. I see the Trig has a ‘Play’ button which replays the last message received. This sounds useful, but, where I probably need it most, in busy radio areas the message would get truncated when a new message is received.
Anybody using this facility, and how does it work in real life?
Many thanks
I have a similar facility on my GTN and have never, ever used it – playback stops if anybody says anything on the radio. I never used it when I had a clock with a repeater in my Saratoga, either.
Never once even thought to use mine.
I have flown several hundreds of hours with G1000 which does have this facility, and have never used it. By the time you have pressed the button, listened to the recording, understood it and are ready to reply, one of two things will have happened. The controller has repeated the message, or someone has taken the opportunity to break in.
My experience is exactly the same. Pointless feature.
What we need is text based ATC.
In a multi-crew environment and/or with a hyper-reliable autopilot, certainly… and fantastic for the reading end. I would love to just get the clearances as text, and the currently valid clearance elements displayed, and the ability to transfer that into the FMS at the touch of a button…
But when having to hand-fly in turbulence, just setting a new squawk can take half a minute, and that is only four digits. How long does it take to type “unable to maintain FL180, severe turbulence”, in turbulence?
Digital recording ATC would work brilliantly. It would just work exactly as it does now… except you could just transmit without waiting for a gap and it gets queued to receive. You could also filter out messages to other aircraft.
Pigs would probably fly before this happens! Love the idea though.
How would “read-back” work, to ensure I haven’t misread the text? Re-type? Or text-to-plane, voice-to-ground?
I can see a touchscreen with likely standard radio phrases, where normally you just got one, but is it certain you read the text correctly, AND hit the right button?
W10 and Android word prediction make very wary.
Is something like this already working with airlines en-route?
( Reading message before sending to check if any changes have been made automatically.)
I cannot imagine any context in which playing back a call made to me would do me any good, because any reasonably competent ATCO (basically any ATCO in most if not all* of Europe) will give me at most a few seconds to respond to his/her call and then will be onto me pretty fast.
London Control will give you considerably less than a few seconds 
There are “non clearance related” calls from ATC where a lack of pilot response would not be chased by ATC, but only if they are really busy. I just can’t think of a good example at the moment. Stuff like requesting 20 degrees left to avoid and getting it approved is generally not acked… I wonder if that’s really correct? I think ATC give pilots slack on those because anybody asking “to avoid” is probably working hard.
One scenario where I may want to listen to something over and over is a barely legible ATIS. Not uncommon in France, although I don’t recall a recent case. But one can just listen to the broadcast then… I suppose a local playback would save having to wait for the French version to done before you get the “English” one again.
* the cases where ATC issue a clearance and don’t expect a readback are where they can’t speak English and don’t want evidence on the tape
you send freetext and emojis
Makes me laugh to think of the 4-byte emojis which used to break the EuroGA PM system. I think it strips them out nowadays.
CPDLC has been a thing “with a great future” for about 20 years
