I love it when someone's PTT is stuck

[Colonel]

It used to piss me off, when someone's PTT would get stuck, and all of us
on the frequency would get the benefit of their cockpit commentary.

But now, I look on the bright side. Their radio is burning up, transmitting
continuously and internet "experts" that lecture endlessly and piously on
the "essential" safety value of a comm radio are shown to be ignorant idiots,
because anyone experienced knows that when you really need it - when it
gets busy and a lot of aircraft are trying to transmit - the comm radio becomes
a useless distraction, stopping pilots from flying their airplanes close to the ground.

Use your eyeballs. If you're too lazy to look outside, TCAS.

I'm sure everyone here flies surface acro at 400 knots, and everyone also flies
NORDO antiques, but we used to mix them at an uncontrolled airport all the time
with no problem, because people would

LOOK OUTSIDE

I'm considered a moron by Canadians, but try riding a motorcycle in busy traffic
sometime. You will learn the value of keeping your head on a swivel. Same
thing in an airplane. Or, learn to play poker. You don't spend the whole game,
staring at your cards. You spend all your time thinking about what the other
guy is going to do.

[Liquid_Charlie]

Truly a lost art. I have explained to many young pilots that when I started flying for a living and even while earning my licenses we didn't have radios and yes we looked outside and in fact that was the tag line for the air radio wx broadcasts "keep alert and watch for other aircraft". They are gob struck and in disbelief. I had a cpl of what would freak present day folk - cruising along at Norseman max summer altitude of 800 feet to look down a see a T33 cross below me on a low altitude training flight out of Gimli and also a some kind of 4 engine aircraft up around fort severn chugging along low level - no radios just a set of eyeballs

Best story of a stuck mike was a 2Otter flying to Sable Islands and the captain reaming out the F/O on centre with perfect colloquial english to always take the time from the captain's clock or aircraft clock and never his personal time device. Haha kinda makes those fancy pilot watches useless except for trying to impress the local ladies Ya I know Chuck what you had rimes with clock --

[Colonel]

In the old days, many pilots rode motorcycles. These days, very few pilots ride
motorcycles and recoil in horror at the thought, claiming they are "unsafe", and
that helmets ruin their hairdo.

Sigh. It's the operator, not the machine that's the problem.