wrote, On 7/12/2013 4:54 PM:
That'sOn Friday, July 12, 2013 12:14:11 PM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:

Now I won't mention any names, but what do you say to the pilot
who's installed a PFlarm but refuses to install a transponder?
Sure, he can see PFlarm equipped gliders, but neither TCAS nor PCAS
equipped aircraft, nor ATC can see him. To him I say, "Fine, I
respect your choice, now please respect mine." Even though I think
my choice is better.

Dan

I think that's easy - the number of fatal collisions between
transport-category aircraft and gliders is...drum roll...zero. So a
Transponder is a less valuable choice than PF for the average glider
pilot.

People are terrible at estimating low probability events - especially
catastrophic ones.

Three things:

- perhaps the probability is low because many pilots have already
equipped with transponders in areas where the potential for conflicts is
high. If that's true, we can not use the overall collision rate to
estimate the probability of non-equipped gliders colliding with
airliners and other large aircraft.

- even if we are poor at estimating low probability events, we are
perhaps good at estimating the cost of a catastrophic one. It won't be
just the loss of the pilot's life, but might involve potentially
hundreds of lives in the airliner and perhaps huge restrictions or costs
for all soaring.

- (Low probability) * (huge cost) = (makes transponder seem cheap) is
what a lot of us have calculated.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm
http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl