The Air Force radar is aimed out over the oceans, the FAA
radar is used to detect and vector traffic within the
boarders. If there is a national emergency [say nuclear
war] the FAA centers will stay in operation for the military
and all other airplanes will be grounded. The
communications system was built to do this and survive a
nuke attack. To justify the costs, it was used to control
more and more general aviation aircraft by the simple tool,
restrict more airspace to aircraft that don't participate.

It isn't all bad or a waste, but a lot of the expense of
owning an airplane is transponders, ELTs [a Congressman's
plane was lost in Colorado and Congress passed a law, not
the FAA], positive control [Class A and B], encoders above
10,000, everything is small potatoes to the government, but
it costs a lot of money to comply with all the rules and
then to maintain the equipment.


".Blueskies." wrote in
message
. net...
|
| "Jim Macklin" wrote
in message news:Gq1zg.84634$ZW3.44653@dukeread04...
| : ATC exists because it is a military service, it is just
| : available to the few thousand airline aircraft and in
most
| : cases it is forced upon general aviation.
| :
| :
| : --
| : James H. Macklin
| : ATP,CFI,A&P
| :
|
| A bit like NASA and the space shuttle...
|
|