Rwy20 wrote:
Makes you wonder why you couldn’t automate it a bit more and just write “Everyone flying in tomorrow is welcome to land” on that website. Or turn it around and write “everyone is always welcome to land, unless we publish a NOTAM to the contrary”.
Indeed. I agree. They seem to manage just fine in the United States doing that.
There are some places where PPR is really needed (think grass airfields subject to waterlogging) but an awful lot where it likely serves no useful purpose other than “we’ve always done it so we’ll keep doing it”.
alioth wrote:
Indeed. I agree. They seem to manage just fine in the United States doing that.At my airfield we publish a NOTAM when it is closed because of waterlogging. That really only happens during the thawing period in early spring.There are some places where PPR is really needed (think grass airfields subject to waterlogging) but an awful lot where it likely serves no useful purpose other than “we’ve always done it so we’ll keep doing it”.
Peter wrote:
I guess pilot honesty (payment of landing fees) varies by culture…
In Norway almost all smaller strips are private. They are mostly free to use, and mostly requires no prior notice. Hence, no problems – mostly. Anyway, PPR means Prior Permission Requirements AFAIK, and unless the airfield/strip is public (open for all), then PPR is required by law. The PPR can just consist of a sentence in an unobtainable document saying, “open for anyone, beware of wild bats”, or it can be a largish document you have to read before using the field (like on ENOP). ENOP still don’t require any landing permission though.
Seems to me lots of people take this flying thing way too seriously. GA is mostly a bunch of oldish men having fun, and for 95% of us that is the only serious thing.
I guess in the very end it’s all about being able to travel.
Not that long ago anyone was able to walk or use a horse to move around this planet without much obstacles but at the risk of being robbed and maybe killed by bandits.
Some day the car was invented and roads were built. Now it was easier and faster to go places. Around the same time it became more and more common practice to control the movement of people. Lately we’ve seen a lot of restrictions on the movement of people being lifted again and so we can use a car to drive across the EU/Schengen area as we please without producing “papers”.
To people who have a need or a desire to travel a lot it does feel strange that one can drive all around the place and park almost everywhere but once the chosen means of travel is an aircraft all kinds of local restrictions make its use difficult.
Why can I drive a car anywhere in Europe at night and pull up in front of a gas station or hotel but I cannot land an aircraft at night at the gas station and parking lot which is called “airport”?
Deadly car accidents do happen on deserted country roads at night and even unsuspecting third parties get involved and harmed. Kind of hard to understand why it makes a difference that in one case it’s about a 4 seater car and in the other about a 4 seater small aircraft.
For some reason governments feel the need to regulate small air transport instead of leaving it to those involved but for car transport the infrastructure gets created with public funds and no limitations are set for its use.
Peter wrote:
Detecting landing aircraft automatically is accordingly trivial. 10 years ago I looked into a system costing peanuts which would email me a pic of the inside of a hangar whenever anything moved.
If you want a really interesting and relatively cheap camera system, look at Netgear’s Arlo. I have a system set up with two cameras complete with emergency siren installed at home watching the front and rear doors; as soon as the sensor is triggered, it sends me a video to my smartphone. I can access the video via (e.g.) Chrome real time and use the microphone in my phone and an integrated loudspeaker / microphone in the camera to communicate with the ‘intruder’. The videos are held for 7 days in the Cloud or you can pay a small fee for them to be held for longer……
I’d like to know if any and if so which European countries have implemented remote ATC and the corresponding airfields falling in that category.
Along the same line, any experiences with remote ATC would be of interest and known information about how they were implemented both technically and operationally (from a provider view of course, for the user this should be transparent).
Anyone have information to provide on the subject?
It’s implemented in Hungary, strangely for LHBP Budapest-Ferihegy tower. The remote tower is located ca. 5 km from the actual one, in the same building where the en-route and approach controllers sit. Currently either the remote tower shadows the concrete tower (more frequent) or vice versa. The ratio is to be reversed soon and in a few year’s time the actual airport tower will be decommissioned and probably even demolished. It will only happen after a second remote control room is operational as a backup.
By the end of 2019, both LHDC Debrecen and LHSM Balaton-Sármellék is slated to switch from the current on-site AFIS to remote tower controlled from the same room as LHBP remote tower.
chflyer wrote:
I’d like to know if any and if so which European countries have implemented remote ATC and the corresponding airfields falling in that category.
Sweden. So far only Örnsköldsvik (ESNO) but more are to follow.
Yes, there are more than one, at least on trial, because Svedavia, (private company owned by Swedish tax payers), was the sponsor for the development of the concept and now push, more or less, any municipality airport to adopt the solution with the marketing slogan that it would “save a lot of money” by avoiding to employ “expensive ATC”, forgetting to disclose how much it will cost their software, maintenance SLA etc etc. In my opinion their statement is not true at least because of two reasons: One – in long term Local ATC folk do NOT need the same level of qualifications and skills as needed for big airports, (read less paid) plus that you do not need to many. Two: no mater how many cameras/ webcams, you will put on an airport, it will allays be a point that you will not cover. Don’t remember exactly the name of the unmanned Control Tower now, but a pilot friend encountered some problems when asked for more information from the remote “Tower” and they could not provide it.
