When ULMs came on the scene they integrated into the GA system. Obeyed a set of rules and were restricted by those airspace rules.
GA never had to integrate into the commercial scene because GA flying was here before a passenger ever set foot on plane.
Commercial aircraft pay for certain services, used by GA.
The big difference here is that the drone industry are not thinking of integrating, they are thinking in terms of taking over large areas of lower airspace where it will become unsafe for the current GA aircraft without installing some form of expensive TAS/TCAS kit. That or the sky becomes smaller because of them.
We are already seeing this with military drones where swathes of airspace are shut down by trigger Notam for exercises during the week. Fortunately for the moment it is not every day and is limited to short periods of the day. But at the moment, they are only trialling.
Anyone going from the UK to Northern Spain down the West Coast of France during the week will already know how difficult that can be. French pilots tend to be more familiar with how to deal with these areas.
So I do not claim any ownership of the airspace but I do feel that anyone using it should have respect for others and their safety. If it is our duty in those areas to see and avoid, surely it follows that that they too have a duty of see and avoid, and as there are no mark 1 eyeballs in a drone, they will have to have some sort of technology unless airspace is shut down.
gallois wrote:
Forgive me therefore @Malibuflyer if I believe that the burden of cost should rest firmly in the hands of the new industry. Perhaps they should set aside a certain part of the huge profits, they believe they will make, to fund the equipping of the small GA non commercial world with a unified TAS/TCAS system for each and every aircraft, whether that be ADSB, Mode S,, Flarm or whatever.
Regards, someone who believes in the freedom to fly.
Nothing to forgive here ;-) We just have different opinions.
I do not believe that the Airspace belongs to us as the traditional users and any new user has to pay an entrance fee. When ULs/Microlights became big some 20 years ago, did “they” pay “us” as the traditional GA airspace users any equipment that would help navigating more crowded airspaces? Did “we” pay the airliners any equipment they need to avoid being hit by us?
We would not have the discussion around FLARM and/or ADSB if any existing SEP would have gotten an anti-collision system paid for by the microlight industry.
Now we have again a new class of airspace users – even lighter than microlight – and same thing happens again: We all have the same rights to use the airspace and we need to discuss how we get organized so that the burden is evenly split.
The claim: “We are the incumbents and therefore have all rights to do as we did until a newcomer pays us to do differently” in my opinion is not only unjustified, but will also never happen.
I think extra segregation poses an even greater threat to the majority of
It does, I am more concerned about having to avoid “drones airspace” and hitting a ULM doing the same on the other side than hitting the “drone object” itself when flying straight: not changing my heading seems to lead to better resuuts “on average” in the “long run”…if there is something I want to avoid, I like to see it on a display as “object” to avoid not as “airspace” to avoid
Random collisions rarely happen in low traffic density but they start to appear when you restrict and saggretate airspace…the restrictions such as clouds, terrain, airspace, routes, terrain, castles, beaches, rail, roads, valleys…all seems to lead to traffic concentration and the naked eye is less equipped to cope in those corners
It way easier to keep Golf as “open bar” with everybody radiating his position…
I don’t think anyone is saying that there should not be change. However here you have unmanned small aircraft coming on to the market and flying in the same areas which currently I am able to operate.
Unless there is some sort of segregation or some sort of system where separation can be maintained, either light aircraft pilots or UAV will have to be limited in the airspace in which we are able to use.
Now from a GA point of view, in VFR we already find it difficult to see and avoid larger aircraft than these drones with the Mark 1 eyeball.
Just look at the threads on this forum regarding ADSB, Flarm etc for all those people to install such devices, let alone the cost.
I think extra segregation poses an even greater threat to the majority of, more controlled airspace is likely to cause many more hobby pilots to simply say it’s too much trouble to be a GA pilot.
On the other hand, here is a newish industry which wants to use the same airspace as us or deny airspace to us just because they are a new industry whose “raison d’ être” is to do away with pilots in aircraft.
Forgive me therefore @Malibuflyer if I believe that the burden of cost should rest firmly in the hands of the new industry. Perhaps they should set aside a certain part of the huge profits, they believe they will make, to fund the equipping of the small GA non commercial world with a unified TAS/TCAS system for each and every aircraft, whether that be ADSB, Mode S,, Flarm or whatever.
Regards, someone who believes in the freedom to fly.
gallois wrote:
Thus negating the need for us ,as pilots of light aircraft, should not need to see and avoid them.
IMO he has a very good point there. After all newcomers to a market should not expect the whole market to change for them, just so they can compete.
Is it a better expectation from the incumbents to state: “They can do whatever they want as long as we do not have to change at all and they make sure they do not interfere with whatever we might be doing.”?
This is not very likely to happen … and it doesn’t even theoretically work. How could the right of way be depending on the question if a “modern rotorcraft” is commanded by a human onboard pilot, a human remote pilot or some kind of automation? How would we practically fly if we can only decide if we or the other aircraft has the right of way after we have seen if a human pilot is at the controls?
WingsWaterAndWheels wrote:
And in any event, if they want their product to be somewhat useful and thus relatively safe, that is a requirement anyway, because you cannot base your design on a system on other traffic which will sometime fail (as a pilot we all know that things eventually fails, even engines does that sometimes…).
So you would argue that the product “commercial air traffic” is not viable from the start?
Sorry but many of these discussions boil down to “it’s always best if nothing at all changes”.
gallois wrote:
I think @wingswaterand wheels is suggesting that drones should be designed, equipped and operated so that they can see and avoid all other traffic.
Thank you, that is what I meant. And in any event, if they want their product to be somewhat useful and thus relatively safe, that is a requirement anyway, because you cannot base your design on a system on other traffic which will sometime fail (as a pilot we all know that things eventually fails, even engines does that sometimes…). And that remains true even if they had airspace dedicated only to drones equipped with whatever system to avoid each other, if one drones has a failure of this system, what happens to the other drones if they cannot avoid it without it?
gallois wrote:
IMO he has a very good point there. After all newcomers to a market should not expect the whole market to change for them, just so they can compete.
There is also the very obvious size difference. Which is easiest to spot?
I think @wingswaterand wheels is suggesting that drones should be designed, equipped and operated so that they can see and avoid all other traffic. Thus negating the need for us ,as pilots of light aircraft, should not need to see and avoid them.
IMO he has a very good point there. After all newcomers to a market should not expect the whole market to change for them, just so they can compete.
WingsWaterAndWheels wrote:
See and avoid should apply, in the case of drone it translate into the drone being developed so that it can ‘see’ and avoid all other traffic.
Be careful what you ask for – if we get the common “see and avoid” we will pretty quickly realize, that our traditional “Eyeball 1.0” device for see and avoid is completely unsuitable to guarantee such s&a for objects of one cubic meter size that travel at 100km/h.
Many people think the “George Orwell 1984” scenario will indeed be mandatory ADS-B OUT for all flying machines.
It already is thus in the US but only in transponder-mandatory areas (which is relatively logical, and met with little “ideological” resistance). Europe, particularly the mainland, is much better able to impose autocratic measures than the US. So we may get that one day.
IMHO all this is driven by drones (commercial/police/military) and some of it is really quite cynical. It isn’t airliners or bizjets since none of these can see ADS-B OUT traffic; TCAS sees only Mode C transponders (Mode S for TCAS 2 and RAs).
