I agree with you, but I would like to point that 1993 is 15 years ago.
Technology has changed a lot, so the methodology has to be
adapted a little bit.
In this day and age and the track record of
American companies it still surprises me that they didn't tie the
whole idea up in patents which might have had us paying 5 times the
current price for flight recorders today.

No one would buy a flight recorder so expensive, that's why. People on this
group claim that loggers are already too expensive.
If you see a logger from the specs point of view, and the investments they
did in order to fulfill these specs, they are not too expensive. If you
instead look at their mere functionalities, then it looks like they are way
too expensive.

After all, it's just a matter of considering a COTS gps just like a camera
and revise the checking procedures and the supervision duties.
Actually it all comes down to the point that an approved GPS cannot be
modified and reports the truth. Let's leave it like that.
Let's at the same point replace the old cameras with COTS.
Mainly because a COTS gps is useful for flying and not only for recording
data.

In any case, if there is no supervision (an officer, or whatever) it's clear
that the only choice is (for me) a nice Colibri by LX, which works like a
charm.




"nimbusgb" ha scritto nel messaggio
...

I think that it is time that someone at IGC take in consideration what
pilots say, and not only what IGC approved manufacturers want and say.


Everyone involved at the IGC is very firmly connected to gliding and,
knowing more than one or two of them, I can say all of them have the
sports best interests at heart. Trying to make things workable on a
global scale and still have some level of security when an OO is not
about was a very difficult task. With 20:20 hindsight it may be easy
to say they did not get it perfect but they came up with a workable
system.

At the time that flight recorders were just getting going a LOT of
consultation was done and many, many hours were spent by people like
Tim for zero reward apart from delivering an acceptable methodology
for improving and simplifying the flight verification procedures. At
the time Cambridge were the only manufacturers of any sort of flight
recorder following their early demos in Sweden in 93 and New Zealand
in 95. Even they did not get things all their way in the ensuing
regulation changes. In this day and age and the track record of
American companies it still surprises me that they didn't tie the
whole idea up in patents which might have had us paying 5 times the
current price for flight recorders today.

I agree that the communication to and consultation with the membership
appears to be very poor at times but I don't see too many people
sticking their heads above the parapet to try to change that. Perhaps
they are all too aware they they will become targets for bored pilots!