And even used in real ops: “This is Bremen Radar on Guard, DLH123, if you read, contact me on 136.450”
Yep, they said “guard”. (But you’ll know this for sure 
)
The unprofessional real German ATCOs even do their radio checks every morning on 121.500: “This is Rhein Radar on guard, radio check out.”
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They do even more, they check every transmitter/frequency. But not sure if it’s each morning.
Why do you think that testing the equipment is unprofessional?
it was sarcasm, considering everyone above stating that the word “guard” is wrong 
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Damn, I missed that one
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I’d like to thank the community for the input on “guard” vs. “emergency frequency” nomenclature. That’s something that was missed/overlooked when the draft changes to the CoC were being reviewed at multiple levels over the last year (plus). CoC section A16 has been amended accordingly. Again, thank you!
A16 All voice and text communications frequencies are for operational use only. Account holders shall not carry out private conversations over any communication channels, frequencies, or resources, with the exception of private text messages. The international emergency frequency (VHF 121.500, also known as Guard) may be utilized in accordance with real-world procedures. Pilots and air traffic controllers should monitor the emergency frequency if able.
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Here’s a radical idea, release a draft for comment during the review stage rather than releasing the “final” version 3 days before it’s supposed to take effect.
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The update has been a work in progress for months. The draft was released for comment/input 2 months before final approval and implementation. And a Special BoG meeting was held 19 Sep, where feedback was reviewed, changes were incorporated, we finalized and voted on the release version and set an effective date of 01 Oct.
BUT… to your point… I had noticed on 26 Sep that the announcements had gone out. It was found to be a human error – the person responsible for getting the word out missed it… When I noticed it, I asked about it, and the announcements went out. Later than hoped.
So, yes, we take responsibility for it. The comms should have gone out on/after 20 Sep, one day after our meeting/vote. They didn’t. It was human error. We fixed it as soon as we realized it. And we will work to do better in the future.
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I feel like David’s main point was less so the short notice (errors happen, so it’s understandable if something doesn’t go perfectly every now and then, although it may have been prudent to push the WEF date back a little bit after the announcement was delayed - especially with a policy that has apparently been in development for so long, two more weeks or so shouldn’t really be an issue, no?) and more so the fact that the community at large hasn’t been involved in any feedback process.
While I’m sure everybody appreciates that it can take a long time and that various people put in a lot of time to create new policies and/or update existing ones, it seems at the very least very odd for a small in-group to draft these policies in such secrecy and then release them without ever even giving the community a chance to offer feedback. When I think about how often we, in local facility engineering, add a functionality that we believe will be very useful only for it to not be used, change something because we believe it will create more options for controllers only for it to also have the side effect of removing an option that some controllers liked a lot, only make a change because somebody in the community came up with the idea, etc., I find it incredibly hard to believe that a small group of people (even if it involves some representatives of the different divisions or even some subdivisions) can possibly consider all concerns and ideas on a network-wide scale - locally, it’s at least relatively simple to revert a change or quickly implement another solution (and even then, we usually run larger, more impactful changes by the local community before final implementation), but globally, that doesn’t appear to be the case. So one really has to ask themselves: why does network leadership seemingly refuse to “release a draft for comment during the review stage”, to say it with David’s words?
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Good points. With the exception of the tweaks that were made at the meeting where we met to approve the changes, the draft should have gone out for community review. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went out to divisions and subdivisions as they should have, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if there was some variation in that process. You’re also right that, I’m not sure how well that review is both from a controller and pilot side. I’ll start a discussion with the board to try to see how well we do that and as I suspect what opportunities for improvement exist in the process. Thank you guys. I appreciate the feedback , and we definitely want to continuously improve.
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