Does anybody know if there is a prohibition on the use of HF radios while flying in US domestic airspace?

Never heard of that one. Not sure why you'd want to, though.

Negative, no prohibition. Or, more correctly, I'll say if there is, USAF is violating it every day.

who are you trying to talk to anyway? while flying no less....

We are not supposed to use the HF to talk on the CB channels, because the radios are much higher power than is allowed for CB. You override the truckers for three states. I think many airlines, including mine, have blocked the CB channels from use on the installed radios.

There are times that the HF has been useful domestically, but much less now that we have SATCOM.

Joe

The military would have uses for using HF radios over mainland USA. But I doubt if airlines would ever need to since most have ACARS and/or ground stations to call directly to their company. There is no prohibition on the use that I know of.

However, most serious truckers have CBs that are well above the maximum 4 watts limited by the FCC. They even use HF themselves to talk to their trucker friends in other states while driving. The Connex 4300-300 pushes well over 300 watts straight out of the box. And if you take it to a CB shop and have it tweaked, well, you end up with one loud motherf*cking radio!

After a quick search on google, I found some Bendix HF radios that were $36,000 and they were rated at about 150watts. So those truckers out there could very well be using radios much powerful than we have.

Channel 19 is the common channel most everyone uses to talk on and the frequency is 27.185 MHz.

-Fatty

Company procedure was to check HF radio on the ground prior to an overwater flight requiring its use - just not at the gate !!

A note in the AIRINC operating handbook about this subject perked my interest. I read it awhile back. Of course, it came up in conversation and I couldn't remember where I had read about it.

Finding the regulation took a bit of searching. It was at least a good exercise in online information research. I found the FCC regulation that stipulates the prohibition against HF usage in domestic airspace, except Alaska. I suppose it makes sense to restrict HF communications domestically, because VHF is readily available and won't cause interference with HF frequencies.




(b) Domestic HF service. (1) Regular

use of high frequencies for aeronautical
enroute or any aeronautical mobile (R)
communications in the domestic service
within the continental United
States (excluding Alaska) will not be
authorized.