Sorry Mike, I'm not trying to make it like that.
Unfortunately without hearing inflection in voice etc, stuff can sound more serious over the internet than it'd be taken normally. I try to treat discussions as a learning experience for myself. If I posted a reg, it usually means I wasn't sure about something so I went and looked it up (if I'm already confident about something, I'm generally too lazy to do that
). Since I didn't know, I assume that maybe others didn't either and I always think it's good for everyone to have as much information as possible. In this case, I really didn't want anyone to get the impression that they had some type of obligation to mess with a transponder in an emergency, but I also didn't really know what the reccomendation was in that case.
With most of the captains I fly with, we'll have discussions about this type of thing periodically. We'll be talking about something and dissagree about what is technically legal or not in a given situation, but neither one of us can actually quote a reg on it. After the flight one or both of us will do some digging and we'll talk about it again the next time we fly together. I say most because there are always a few guys who don't really care what the reg actually says once they have an opinion formed about what it *should* say!
In some areas the regs are pretty gray, and some areas they are fairly cut and dried. If something about what a *reg* says comes up, I have a hard time not saying something if I don't agree with that interpretation.
I promise I'd say most of the same things in person, just that they probobly wouldn't be taken the same way and a lot of normal chatter you'd have in a live conversation gets lost in posts. That post wasn't meant to be a "I don't agree with you and here's why you're wrong" post as it was I didn't have any clue and got curious and looked it up. When I found what I figured was information that would indicate otherwise I put it up... and just didn't do a good job explaining myself. Unfortunately it just doesn't usually occur to me that everyone can't just read my mind so they know what I'm trying to say or how I got to that point. I can honestly say I didn't have any clue why you seemed to get worked up until I reread what *I* posted just now and a lightbulb *finally* went off.
Chris, I really owe you an apology as welll, did not intend at all for that post to come out like that.
