The bit about making better use of FIS (e.g. London Info 124.60) is slightly ironic because they don’t officially have radar and can’t say anything on the radio suggesting that they can see you.
Not quite. It says make better use of the UK flight information services available.
This includes LARS units that provide the different levels of flight information services.
Better use also means requesting a surveillance service such as a Traffic Service where available.
Is GA just a convenient scapegoat?
It could be easily seen that way, as:
All of these factors combined play a key role as to why airspace keeps getting infringed, and mainly by GA.
However NATS has told me that a lot of this airspace is due to the ancient structure that they have inherited and would agree it is due for change.
A number of projects such as FASVIG has been created to address a variety of issues such as this.
what action will the CAA take against the military pilots for example
None whatsoever, as military pilots are not under CAA jurisdiction. The military write their own rules and decide on their own disciplinary actions.
“The military write their own rules and decide on their own disciplinary actions.”
That seems to suggest they are able to do as they wish but I am sure that is not your intention. i was merely trying to illustrate that there are many military infringements, often by fast jets carrying out high energy manoeuvres and still it is GA that seems to get all the “flack”. Just think we need a little balance.
That seems to suggest they are able to do as they wish but I am sure that is not your intention.
Well, yes and no. Military flight operations are not subject to civilian rules, neither national nor international. Of course, in democratic countries the military is ultimately subordinate to the civilian government and can not do quite what as they wish, but their regulation is distinct from that of civil aviation.
I seem to recall AOPA stating many years ago, that approximately 30% of infringements were by the military.
A worthwhile read
The article on LPAT (low powered traffic alerting system) was very interesting – a cheaper form of ADS-B that we could benefit from. Sadly no timescales mentioned or whether this would be limited to UK only.
The clarification of what SERA means for the UK pilot was one of the best I’ve seen.
But I dislike these online magazine reader formats in general – would much prefer just having a straightforward PDF copy to use with a standard PDF viewer.
This would also allow offline consumption, eg during travel.
The LPAT reminds me of the CAA proposal, years ago, for a low cost Mode S TXP. Of course, no manufacturer was interested, because nobody wanted to bomb the GBP 2k (plus installation) market price, which includes the absolutely essential dealer discount, especially when it costs just GBP 100-200 to build a GTX330 so whatever price you sold yours for, Garmin could always chop your legs off. But more to the point nobody would want to install it, unless they charged more for the installation cost.
One can convert the mag to PDF but it’s a hassle. I suspect these things are driven by a desire to “possess” the publication and prevent it being re-hosted. The owner of the Socata owners group did the same, creating a summary of lubrication requirements as flash movie! Of course that was “out” as a PDF without an hour, but anybody re-hosting it would be kicked out of the group. The least dirty way I can think of for this magazine is a screenshot of each page (e.g. Faststone screen capture) and then drop all the jpegs into a PDF. Maybe 10 mins… and somebody clever could automate it.
DavidC wrote:
or whether this would be limited to UK only
The EASA people I talked to at the Friedrichshafen show very much want to see this Europe wide.
