Nigel Pocock wrote:
There are a few problems with fitting transponders.
I fly from a very active gliding site betwen two busy
airfields and under the main airway. On a typical
busy summer weekend, particularly if we have a competition
taking place, we can easily have 60 to 100 gliders
beeing launched between 10.30 and 12.30 to fly cross
country. they will then return later in the day. On
top of this we have training and local club flying
taking place.(30 plus gliders)
If all of this lot were using transponders it would
totally blitz the screens of the ATC. They would then
say that there was a safety issue as they could not
deal with all the returns and want a reduction in traffic.

I fly in the Reno, Nevada area, where on a summer weekend there will at
times be 50 to 100 gliders in the air, operating from three gliderports
within a 20 mile radius of a fairly busy international airport. We
started encouraging transponders after discussions with the local ATC
folks, following a couple of near misses between gliders and airliners.
Somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 of the club and privately owned gliders
have transponders at this point. If they so desire, ATC can easily make
us all disappear by filtering out our preassigned 0440 squawk code, but
I can't imagine why they would want to do that...

Marc