Scott, There are multiple benefits beyond 'big planes and towers' seeing you.
As I said: I've found that air traffic control is frequently helpful to VFR and IFR aircraft, in that they will call you up proactively and advise of the presence of transponder-equipped unidentified traffic in your vicinity on a pretty routine basis. They're as interested in avoiding mid air contacts as the rest of us are. ... i.e. ATC will often actively notify other VFR traffic they can see, of the presence of conflicting traffic they can see. They will happily notify any little plane about threats they should act to avoid, they are not just there to help the big planes and/or passenger planes. They're frequently alerting VFR traffic about other VFR traffic on a proactive basis, too. This includes traffic flying outside of controlled airspace, and nowhere near where 'passenger planes' are present. The devices you can choose to fit in your own glider that can respond to transponder transmissions and provide alerts back to you directly include readily available units like the Zaon and Power FLARM units: http://www.lxavionics.co.uk/traffic-monitor.htm http://www.zaon.aero/ Returning to the point of running a transponder even if you can't actively receive data from other transponders around you, the whole system is designed (amongst other things) to help ATC to assist in helping pilots avoid killing each other. If ATC can only reach the Cessna driver and get him to avoid slamming into you, and you have no idea that this just happened, trust me, its still a benefit to all concerned ;) Regards, Simon On 20/04/2012, at 9:16 PM, Scott Penrose wrote: On 20/04/2012, at 9:37 PM, Simon Hackett wrote: I will say that while I appreciate its an issue that more than a few glider pilots seem passionately opposed to for their own reasons, the notion of regularly operating transponders in gliders is one that I personally believe would be of active assistance here (I certainly do so). I think it is a great idea for us to do transponders. The power requirements are not what they used to be. One question though, how does it help these situations? Can't only big planes and towers see the transponders. I believe there are now some small devices, but mostly planes only transmit - ie. the whole system is to protect passenger planes from everyone else. Scott _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
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