Whatever. Then I’ll just speak for myself. It is getting on my nerves having this thread pop back up to the top of the list every other day, without – if I skimread the last few weeks – any real new content or learning elements. And thus I would like to be able to hide it, just for my own profile. No more. That occasionally applies also to other threads.
Please don’t think I don’t understand why some of you guys are having high blood pressure here. You and your two or three wingmen here apparently got the Gassco course (probably for minor, “technical” infringements) and are thus possibly facing serious licensing action the next time an infringement by them is recorded by that CAIT tool. That would get my blood pumping as well. no doubt.
Adding functionality to the forum costs real money. Several hundred GBP per half day. Accordingly, even though the donations have been most generous (well, more from some countries than others 
) they need to be spent on the most important things first. And not all these things are visible; e.g. some important security fixes were done, to keep out malicious signups.
I don’t have any “wingmen” BTW. In fact UK pilots almost never back each other up on EuroGA, just because they are from the UK. I have never met the majority of UK pilots participating on EuroGA.
boscomantico wrote:
It is getting on my nerves having this thread pop back up to the top of the list every other day,
Honestly this is why Usenet was better – no web forum has come even close to the customisability or functionality of even a CLI based usenet reader like slrn. With slrn you can score by poster, by post, by regexp, by practically anything you like to make threads appear or disappear how you like, without someone “central” having to make code changes. Of course you don’t have to use slrn. You could use any newsreader with any capabilities you wanted.
The only time I ran a web forum, I also wrote an NNTP server for it so people could use a newsreader instead and have it customised how they liked it. Unfortunately no one else seems to have ever done this. Few web forums have even implemented the most basic equivalent of a kill file, instead relying on moderators to make these decisions for the users.
When we started in 2012, a number of pilots requested a “kill user” facility, to suppress posts from a particular pilot they knew well from their domestic forum (the “target” was actually someone down the road from Bosco).
We didn’t implement this because once you start down that road you end up with loads of people killing loads of other people (because even one post by X which annoys Y is usually enough to make Y killfile X) and then forgetting they killed them, and then loads of people don’t see loads of good posts – because somebody annoyed them years previously. Then you have to make exceptions for admins, but again that breaks down if the admin participates (unless as I said he runs fake personas, as is actually done on various forums, hey, ho).
It was an ok strategy for Usenet (of which I have extensive experience) which in between working superbly was full of trolls and assorted d1ckheads. Then even Usenet got killed by spammers.
Unfortunately, 2019 is a different world, full of malicious people who are out to destroy anything that anyone else built, just for a laugh. Some regard the moderator as a legitimate military target but it’s your best hope for building an information resource which lasts. It is also your only hope of a consistent policy on moderation; if you spread this function through the audience you get the Huckeberry Finn approach. There are additional challenges on an international forum 
You and your two or three wingmen here apparently got the Gassco course (probably for minor, “technical” infringements) and are thus possibly facing serious licensing action the next time an infringement by them is recorded by that CAIT tool. That would get my blood pumping as well. no doubt.
As a little voice from the back, I’m nobody’s wingman, but a strong supporter of the thread and keen to see it maintain a high profile.
I’ve never infringed or been on any course or subject to any licensing action.
boscomantico wrote:
You and your two or three wingmen here…that would get my blood pumping as well. no doubt.
I never busted in the UK nor I went to those courses, but the UK policy does pumps some pilot blood !
I busted CAS all over the place in France (3 to be precise, one is PTMA) and once in Spain and I am really happy how things are policed over there
FYI, I am not counting asking for clearance to transit between two adjacent CAS once you are into it after a free call, this is OK almost anywhere else but I had the UK taste of it twice
New UK numbers are out at the usual place. As perhaps expected, activity for Nov is massively down on October
That blip of 11 busts of RAs in October remains unexplained. I enquired around UK social media but nobody knew what it was.
This shows much reduced numbers going to Gasco (5). Again, there is the reinforcement that if you have got gasco once, next time your license is suspended:
Compare this with about a year ago, Jan 2019 when GA activity was probably about the same as Dec 2019. Look at the dramatically changed ratio of warning letters to gasco “sentences”, from 4:17 to 22:5
It seems obvious that the exposure of this process on EuroGA (which gradually filtered into the UK social media scene, despite efforts in some quarters to squash discussion of the topic) has resulted in a big change in the way pilots are being treated.
Let’s hope so, but will the course still be financially viable with a measly five “sentences”? or will they save them up for a future haul…….
I have been looking for samples of the letters which [the CAA man who demanded his name removed] sends to all pilots who are getting suspended.
This is because a lot of people have been asking “what basis does the CAA have for removing someone’s license?”. They can’t believe the CAA can just do that.
I will post a better summary when I get a bigger sample (if anybody has got one I would really like to see the text) but basically the way they are working it is along the lines that a pilot who infringed airspace does not meet the requirements for holding a license (flying skills and theoretical knowledge).
This assertion is obviously dumb, simply because practically every pilot has infringed at some point, so anybody with a brain should be asking “why set the license holding criteria so high, when practically everybody flying has made a mistake like this at some point”. But AFAIK nobody has mounted a successful legal challenge on this. In any other walk of life this has been done successfully i.e. disproportionate punishments are not possible (in UK law, anyway)…
The most likely reason for the lack of challenge is simple: Most pilots just want their license back ASAP and they don’t care if the process leaves a sh1tty taste in their mouth. You also see this in everyday business, where most busy businessmen will write a cheque to get the Revenue off their back, even if the challenge is obviously bogus.
If you read CAP1404, it indicates certain timeframes within which you can potentially regain your license. If you get sent to Gasco again (which it says is possible, and I know it is possible because one of the presenters told me they had some, and this is despite the CAA stats laboriously implying that post-Gasco you always get a suspension) then you can have it back within some weeks (Gasco plus CAA admin time). But if there is legal action involved there is no timeframe. So the moment you engage a lawyer, the CAA can and will hang you on the washing line, because a “provisional” suspension (which it AFAIK always is, at that point) has no appeal, and the lack of a timeframe could blow away 6-12 months, plus 5 or 6 figures of your cash. They have zero incentive to treat the pilot fairly.
I suggest everybody who believes they have been unfairly treated writes to Grant Shapps MP (Minister of Transport) and to Richard Moriarty (CAA chief exec). I believe the way this pilot busting process is operated is a freelance operation within the CAA and the DfT which is not sanctioned from the top.
Another thing has come to light.
The UK CAA is most definitely in breach of CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, specifically articles 41 and 47 and most definitely 49(3).
It is quite likely that the CAAs on mainland Europe are aware of this.
