While I have no real arguments against the rest of Graham's post, this is a statement that I have seen before on other mailing lists and it simply aint so.
-----Original Message----- From: Graeme Cant Snip... The East European system - in fact much of Western Europe too - is that all airspace is forbidden unless specifically declared open. It is absolutely not true that West European airspace is "forbidden". I also suspect that it isn't true of East Europe too, but haven't been there so can't say. Bearing in mind that the rare countries where gliding is growing are in East Europe (Roake report shows this) and there is a strong sports aviation sector (ref Evektor Sportstar and similar). There are probably many factors working there but restrictive airspace would surely retard this growth? The airspace in France and Germany (having flown there) is alphabet airspace, no different in basic concept to ours. After all, one of the lesser drivers of our recent airspace changes was to bring us in line with the rest of the world (note ICAO = European, no matter how much we were compared to the US). In fact, their rules are much less stringent than rules applied in Australia. Yes they do have lots of airspace because they have lots of population and huge numbers of town/airports etc. A comparison that I noted earlier was Braunschweig, a state capital, equivalent to an Adelaide or similar which only had the equivalent of our MTAF. Holzdorf, a major German airforce base in the old East Germany (for fast jets) has a restricted zone 25x10km (aligned with the main runway) up to 3000'. Can you imagine a Williamstown or Edinburgh this size? Yes, there are examples of countries where it is difficult to fly, eg Belgium, because the Brussels control zone hangs over the whole country, but that's not cos the zone is big. The _country_ is small. We also read and hear about our UK colleagues complaining about going to the European rules cos they are more restrictive than what the UK has now, BUT the airspace rules systems used by the EU countries are less restrictive than ours! Regards SWK ********************************************************************** This email and any file attachments are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please tell us immediately by return email and delete the document. The information in this email expresses the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of ETSA Utilities. ********************************************************************** _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
