This thread picks up from here
My homebase host around 50 singles. Maybe 3 or 4 of them are “high end new ones”.
The IFR fleet in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland is almost 100% equipped with at least a basic approach approved GPS
So how come two German pilots (both long term residents of the GA scene) disagree totally on this?
Fairly obviously, a large % of the GA fleet at any “developed GA” country is going to be PPL training, and they won’t need fancy avionics. Maybe Germany throws a lot of €€€ at their training fleet, but the UK certainly doesn’t. Even at the ATPL training level (twins) and apart from the DA42 fleets, it is mostly really shagged old stuff.
Also fairly obviously, any IAP with a high MDA (say 800ft) is not going to help anybody, especially at a coastal airport – except as a legality charade for an AOC flight.
Peter wrote:
So how come two German pilots (both long term residents of the GA scene) disagree totally on this?
We don’t! There is no contradiction between " …is almost 100% equipped with at least a basic approach approved GPS…" and “Maybe 3 or 4 of them are high end new ones””.
The older ones only have the required BRNAV capability met by every certified GPS that was delivered after 1990 or so. And the few high end ones come LPV capability straight from the factory. For example “my” FTO has around 20 IFR capable training aicraft. None of them belongs to the high end category. They all have a GNS430 or 530, because of BRNAV and 8,33kHz. But only two of them (or so) have one of the newer GNSx30W units installed that probvides LPV.
OK; the contradiction is in the LPV context which didn’t get carried over from the previous thread.
I think quite a few owners and pilots simply don’t know enough about it and some shy away from the certification cost.
When I upgraded I also did the LPV upgrade as a last minute addition because I was not properly informed on what the state of the art really meant. That I could do it with the WAAS upgrade and a ton of paperwork was beyond my expectation, I somehow got the idea that I would need a much more expensive upgrade.
I do notice however that posting about it seems to have woken some people up who had the technical capability but were not aware on how to go about it to get the certificate. At least 3 people who wrote to me about this have now gotten their LPV approval as well, 2 of those without any technical change on the airplane.
It is not such a big deal after all: You need a WAAS GPS and you need the proper paperwork. Whoever has a GNS430W or upwards (or a 430 which can be upgraded) can do it relatively easily. And I think it is worth it looking at how many LPV approaches are popping up. That is a trend which I expect to grow exponentially in the next few months and years.
Hope so. Obviously they have to be developed these approaches, but at least now and in the future we have for the first time the ability to do approaches into any airfield, even little grass and gravel ones if we want to. That’s a milestone and will eventually help grow aviation in some small way. Technology again forces the hand, not regulation.
I cannot see why anyone would install a new NDB or VOR approach. However if there is already an approach there it is hard to justify another fee to design a GNSS approach unless you are going to decommission the NDB and save the money on the maintenance of that.
For a new approach why wouldn’t you go for a GNSS approach? It’s cheaper and better than an NDB approach.
I know a UK airfield that does not currently have any approach at all that is currently going through the process to get one. It will be a GNSS approach.
Neil wrote:
However if there is already an approach there it is hard to justify another fee to design a GNSS approach unless you are going to decommission the NDB and save the money on the maintenance of that.
That is exactly what a lot of folks are doing, as well as the fact that an LPV approach of course offers near ILS performance with vertical guidance. That is certainly preferrable to a VOR or NDB approach.
I cannot see why anyone would install a new NDB or VOR approach
I think the reason is that most low-end UK AOC ops are not approved for GPS approaches. They fly conventional IAPs using whatever means they are approved to use (FMS in the higher-end stuff) or they fly the ILS (which is why Gloucester spent all that money on their ILS; it wasn’t done for light GA).
And private ops can fly an NDB approach, using the GPS 
So a GPS approach won’t bring more traffic.
I know a UK airfield that does not currently have any approach at all that is currently going through the process to get one. It will be a GNSS approach.
That makes complete sense but I would guess they are not looking to attract any particular AOC aircraft.
For an airfield to put in its first IAP, it has to look carefully at extra generated traffic. Since an airfield could reach peak (e.g. planning permission limited, like Shoreham) traffic levels on nice days, but be like a graveyard in OVC010 or lower, an IAP can bring in a lot of money.
Peter wrote:
I think the reason is that most low-end UK AOC ops are not approved for GPS approaches.
Why would that be? I have been flying in GA AOC operations (some of them on the lowest possible end…) since 1992 and after the GNS430 and similar units became commonplace – around 1997 or so – every one of these operations got itself certified for GPS operation. All it requires are a few pages in the OM-A describing the procedure and some formal training for the pilots, nowadays done by clicking through an online course…
Yes, but for some reason, UK aviation is just totally backwards in quite a few ways.
