My “no further action” incursion in the Bolkow Junior has resulted in a request for more information from the underwriters.
So in addition to the cost of Gasco and travelling and possible accommodation expenses and loss of earnings etc, we must now add potential increase in insurance premiums.
It would be interesting to get data from a Gasco delegate on this, but few of them want to say anything.
Mine (Visicover) didn’t go up.
On the QNH/QFE discussion (tongue in cheek): I recommend choosing a homebase where both are the same. My first homebase EDWF has a field elevation of 3ft AMSL.
@Qalupalik I asked a dgac pilote inspecteur (examiner) what would happen if they received notification from the CAA that a French pilot had busted controlled airspace by 32 feet. He asked why the pilot had busted airspace and when I said he had used a pressure setting given to him by a type of FIS (that’s the only way I could describe it) when he should have got qnh from another FIS/ATC, he looked at me as if I’d gone mad and said that they would probably find an appropriate place to file it.Then he thought for a moment and said that on the other hand the dgac might start an investigation to find out why Air Traffic Services were giving conflicting information for the same piece of sky and are there any safety ramifications to such a thing. He finished by saying but it is the UK and shrugged his shoulders.
I declared the GASCO course to both Visicover and Hayward’s (different years different aircraft) neither loaded the premium though Visicover sent it to underwriters. It want one of the boxes on their dropdown.
The main factor in my tiny horizontal bust was distraction following traffic avoidance -I accept I was to blame and was already correcting as it happened – at the time it was so momentary I wrongly thought nobody would notice and/or care!
France: I can confirm that I was passenger when a friend got asked to call French military after infringing (clipping the edge of) one of those small circular prohibited areas. Apparently they were very charming but wanted to track down the controller who had allowed it to happen – once reassured that he had been between frequencies at the time they did the telephone equivalent of a Gallic shrug and wished us a good onward journey.
Another time in France we took off from an airfield Notammed within a zone restricted for exercises (there was a hair-raisingly low tower-fly-by of a pair of jets while we were refuelling). It seems the controller who authorised takeoff was aware the exercise had completed, but once we went to the enroute frequency the controller (one of two voices on frequency) had a fit and told us to call military frequency who immediately snapped back with a clearance ”Yes, yes, cleared to transit…” calmly reassured us, and sent us back to the other controller(s)… I was quite rattled by it, but the military controller was not in the least. i think actually the issue was a trainee controller who hadn’t heard our point of origin correctly as we’d had to repeat our call three times. The French seem pragmatic – I dread to think what the fallout would have been in the UK.
Missiles.
UK AIP ENR 1.7
3.9 Airspace within all Control Zones (CTRs), and within and below all Terminal Control Areas (TMAs), Control Areas (CTAs) except
Airways and the Worthing and Clacton Control Areas, during their notified hours of operation, does not form part of the ASR
Regional Pressure Setting system.
3.10 When flying in Airspace below TMAs and CTAs detailed above, pilots should use the QNH of an adjacent aerodrome when flying
at or below the Transition Altitude. It may be assumed that for aerodromes located beneath such Areas, the differences in the QNH
values are insignificant. When flying beneath Airways whose base levels are expressed as Altitudes pilots are recommended to
use the QNH of an adjacent aerodrome in order to avoid penetrating the base of Controlled Airspace
That is of course gaga, as it presumes that pilots on cross-countries alternate back and fro between QNH and RPS as they pass from areas below TMAs/CTAs to areas clear of any airspaces and vice versa. Which works in theory, but of course doesn’t work in practice, as it is error-prone.
Visicover made no change after getting details of my incursion.
