I was recently flying Mildura to Wagga. About a mile in front of
me, at _exactly_ the same level, I saw another aircraft zoom right to
left.
A few minutes later the helpful ATC person came out with "Traffic
alert Narrandera area, two aircraft converging tracks."
Yeah, thanks, ATC. Despite having transponders, had been 30
seconds earlier and not seen them I would have been mince meat, all
with no help from ATC.
I'm actually amazed how much other traffic I see flying around the
countryside.
Dave Long
----- Original Message -----
From:"Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia."
To:"AUS Soaring"
Cc:
Sent:Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:03:57 +0000
Subject:Re: [Aus-soaring] Radio & near collision.
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 [1]
http://www.zaon.aero/ [2]
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 _______________________________________________
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------
[1] http://www.lxavionics.co.uk/traffic-monitor.htm
[2] http://www.zaon.aero/
[3] mailto:[email protected]
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