It was easy to tell which position report belongs to which airfield by the very simple procedure of naming the airfield at the start and end of each position announcement. It ain’t rocket science!
Yeah, I was doing that in Arizona too. Worked great. Even self announced holding patterns (in VMC). But what goes on in the USA requires a whoooooole different PPL training system to what we get here in Europe, where the training apparatus’ obligation to the customer is considered discharged with a flight along the coast…
But during weekends (when one needs it most because of the traffic density!) – forget it. The frequencies are so congested that it takes several minutes to get an initial call in and how is one single controller supposed to watch over so many aircraft?
That’s because “we” get trained here to call up every damn ATC unit.
So I’d rather you all spent your money on Mode S than 8.33!
I think you mean Mode C. The extra Mode S stuff doesn’t show up on your TCAS (or mine). Actually, recalling a flight in a Cessna 400 some years ago, with some old Avidyne MFD kit, RS232 interfaced IIRC to the TAS 6xx, you see tail numbers of N-reg planes with Mode S, but the altitude, azimuth, and distance is wholly from Mode C. We had a long thread on this recently… none of the certified TAS boxes see the extra Mode S stuff for proximity purposes, unless the target is radiating ADS-B and then none of the Avidyne TAS boxes will see that anyway.
Peter wrote:
I think you mean Mode C.
I meant Mode S, because you can no longer spend money on Mode C.
Peter wrote:
ADS-B and then none of the Avidyne TAS boxes will see that anyway.
Quite. Even though we have paid Avidyne good money on a promise that they would.
That is why I advise students and people at my seminars not to touch Avidyne with a bargepole.
Quite. Even though we have paid Avidyne good money on a promise that they would.
That is why I advise students and people at my seminars not to touch Avidyne with a bargepole.
A search on EuroGA on the word avidyne digs out some great (and occassionally staggering) threads… I suggest not diverting this thread too much.
because you can no longer spend money on Mode C.
I really didn’t want to divert this thread any more but in the interest of not creating yet more reader confusion with an overly-brief post, you CAN if replacing a unit with the exact same Mode C model as was already in there. For people who don’t need Mode S for airspace compliance, or who want their tail number to be invisible (search for “privacy” for some past threads e.g. this one) this is a great option because TCAS and ATC can still see you properly. And (my grandma told me this) who knows what was already in there? 
Rwy20 wrote:
They put one into the Super Constellation. No idea though if that is the same regulatory regime as your aircraft and how they did it from an EASA regulatory point of view.
That must be an Annex II aircraft, so none of EASAs concern.
Silvaire wrote:
I think you can run most of GA anywhere on about six Unicom style air-to-air frequencies
I’m sure you can not. Sweden has about a dozen such frequencies and arguably a lower density of airports than the US, still there is a frequent problem with interference on those frequencies.
