FLARM is on 868MHz.
So you’re fearing interference from car keys?
Definitely a possibility, but I’ve not seen very many flying cars recently, so distance takes care of that. Power allowed in the 868MHz band is quite limited, and furthermore car keys are supposed to work on a smallish battery for a long time, so there’s even more interest to keep the radiated power low.
Operating 868MHz devices while airborne is not allowed in most european countries. So in the beginning of FLARM, there had been talks to authorities. OFCOM wanted them to use an exclusive frequency allocation in the air band, while FOCA said there was no way to do this as the airband was full, so in the end OFCOM gave way and granted an exemption to allow FLARM devices to be operated while airborne.
So you’re fearing interference from car keys?
No, excuse me for being insufficiently clear. I am concerned about too high levels of reliance on “consumer grade” electronics. You may well be right that lots of certified avionics are not very reliable either, but at least they are traceable, and if anything does go wrong there will be a way to find out who really was to blame, though that may be a poor consolation to the victims’ relatives.
Most of all, I am afraid that many pilots will rely far too much on a technology building on relatively poor basic building blocks. “I have this FLARM gimmick, it tells me about all other traffic around, a midair can never happen on me”. It is so fatally easy to think…
Nothing wrong with FLARM as such but, again, everything depends on pilots’ education, especially as regards knowing the merits AND the limitations of their equipment. These last being rather extensive, in the case of FLARM, and IMHO insufficiently publicised.
PS excuse me for writing 866 – I thought it simple enough to double the 433 MHz frequency. Wrongly, it appears…
bq. why was every regulator afraid of GPS
Here in the UK there has been and still is strong training industry pressure to ignore GPS, to keep costs to minimum. If the CAA mandated some form of GPS training, they would have a war on their hands.
Here in Germany (usually a very conservative country with this kind of stuff) I had my first GPS officially and legally installed in a Cessna 421 in 1992. That was even before the satellite constellation was complete and we had lots of times per day with poor and no reception. Also, there was selective availability in place and the positions were only accurate to about 100 metres. There was a placard on the panel saying “GPS for VFR navigation only”. Sometime in the mid nineties, that placard could legally be removed and GPS be used as a means of area naviagtion. As early as 1999 I flew my first legal and approved GPS arrival procedure with a "TSO"ed GNS430 – on a German registered aeroplane. So I never saw this “why was every regulator afraid of GPS” thing!
Here in the UK, it happened in two ways:
The flight training business mostly ignored it and mostly continues to do so.
The CAA put out a lot of material, often in presentations, suggesting that GPS is the work of the devil.
The result has been that many pilots believe that GPS is illegal for “primary navigation” (whatever that means) although I don’t think it is the majority anymore like it was up to a few years ago.
The use of GPS for VFR and IFR has never been questioned in the legal sense, and anyway BRNAV can be met (in light GA) only with an IFR GPS, but you had to “know” this.
