I'm learning to fly at a super rural Southern California airport. Uncontrolled field barely any traffic midweek and most days I have the whole place to myself. Like today I went out and did some solo pattern work and was then working on my soon to be new airplane and over the 9 hours I was at the airport didn't see one other person, forget another plane coming in. Zero activity.

That said the plane I've been training in is pretty bare bones. Transponder doesn't work. No ADSB out. And prior till today I didn't have ADSB in. However my radio comms are on point. I make calls for each leg of the pattern, taxiing, runway crossing, everything. Whether or not anybody's out there or not doesn't matter I'm doing it.

I've also flown into class Delta, again with no transponder, communicating just fine with the tower. I've flown into busy uncontrolled fields that tend to have 5 to 6 people practicing, no problem making calls on the way in inserting myself into the pattern and just getting into the flow.

Point of the story is it doesn't take much and it's a bare minimum and increases safety for everybody. Once in a while we get some putt putters come in to my rural airfield where I practice and they do straight ins with no comms and honestly they can go fuck themselves. It's just selfish behavior, bottom line.

And yes the plane I'm about to get, a Cherokee 140, we'll have a working ADSB out which I've already bought, fully working transponder, and I've got my iPad with ADSB in which is great.

When I talked to other student pilots that are training in normal areas and busy areas like Orange county or LA or San Diego area they just can't wrap their heads around how empty and uncontrolled some of the more rural airfields are. Like where I train. And they can't imagine had not have an ADSB in, or out. But not doing radio calls, that's just absurd and again in my opinion pretty damn selfish.