Transponder issue

[Robin Hood]

Whew Lester That is a most sensible message on this involved issue for this time of the morning!

[Fairy Flycatcher]

I think some of the problems are also that we do not take transgressions in uncontrolled airspace seriously. I have come up against this a number of times.

I am at the point of saying that if the rules are not enforceable for uncontrolled airspace, why need a licence? You can drive any vehicle on your farm without a licence, but as soon as you are on "controlled" roads, you need one. Maybe the same for aircraft?


OR: We only have 4 high-problem areas in SA, Durban SRA East, CT SRA, JHB SRA x 2

The rest of the country does not seem to have the risk profile of these 4 areas (by far!)

Why not have a manned "safety-radio" in these areas? Just a couple of people manning the radio and purely keeping tabs on those straying too close to the boundary, or actually going into the TMA (I have heard guys here call 5000' over Hazelmere on 124.2 (TMA is 4500') Their call-signs can then be noted and they can be contacted?

If a guy willingly strays into controlled airspace, he is more likely to do that with only transponder control than with any other form of control, as he can just put transponder off?

I think flying with the correct GPS has great potential, but it can't become law until Galileo is fully running, as GPS is American army owned, and for that reason not fully reliable during war-time (which with those guys mean all the time )

[Arnulf]

Hi,

FF wrote:

I think flying with the correct GPS has great potential, but it can't become law until Galileo is fully running,

I don't see this as being a problem anymore.

When it was first deployed, GPS included a feature called Selective Availability (or SA) that introduced intentional errors of up to a hundred meters into the publicly available navigation signals, making it difficult to use for guiding long range missiles to precise targets. Additional accuracy was available in the signal, but in an encrypted form that was only available to the United States military, its allies and a few others, mostly government users.

SA typically added signal errors of up to about 10 m horizontally and 30 m vertically. The inaccuracy of the civilian signal was deliberately encoded so as not to change very quickly, for instance the entire eastern US area might read 30 m off, but 30 m off everywhere and in the same direction. In order to improve the usefulness of GPS for civilian navigation, Differential GPS was used by many civilian GPS receivers to greatly improve accuracy.

During the Gulf War, the shortage of military GPS units and the wide availability of civilian ones among personnel resulted in disabling the Selective Availability. In the 1990s the FAA started pressuring the military to turn off SA permanently. This would save the FAA millions of dollars every year in maintenance of their own, less accurate, radio navigation systems. The military resisted for most of the 1990s, but SA was eventually turned off in 2000 following an announcement by then US President Bill Clinton, allowing all users to enjoy nearly the same level of access.

The US military has developed the ability to locally deny GPS (and other navigation services) to hostile forces in a specific area of crisis without affecting the rest of the world or its own military systems. Such Navigation Warfare uses techniques such as local jamming to replace the blunt, world-wide degradation of civilian GPS service that SA represented.
Ref: Wikipedia

FF wrote:

I think some of the problems are also that we do not take transgressions in uncontrolled airspace seriously.

This is where probably the biggest problem lies. Personally I think a good GPS with a moving map display would help solve the problem of pilots flying into controlled airspace "by accident" Such a GPS is to my mind a better investment than a transponder.

Regards,
Arnulf

[IFLYHI]

FF wrote:

Why not have a manned "safety-radio" in these areas? Just a couple of people manning the radio and purely keeping tabs on those straying too close to the boundary

Pure brilliance :D

ATNS could use this as training opportunity for young cadets, volunteers could assist eg pilots that have either no wings until June or reckless guys that allow their ATF to exp
Basically this service will only be needed on weekends (after June they could chuck in Flydays )

In Jhb the 2 "Towers" could be at Microland/Springs and in the Wild West somewhere to cover Harties, Sandton Tower