You are back whining about stuff we all know about and we can't change. We live in an imperfect world with an imperfect technology. But as I've said before here, perfect is the enemy of good and the goal we all should have is to help reduce risks and improve safety.

To that point it would be incredibly stupid to be operating a UAT Out equipped towplane where there is a fleet of PowerFLARM equipped gliders. There is just no way to sugar coat that stupidity.

And again you are using examples of Stanton MN. Sounds like there are lots of traffic concerns there. If so some of the GA traffic risks should be able to be reduced today by equipping gliders and towplanes with transponders. If it is such a problem I would hope there is 100% transponder carriage.


On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 6:43:50 AM UTC-7, Mike Schumann wrote:
On Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 11:46:10 PM UTC-4, Darryl Ramm wrote:
On Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 6:44:42 PM UTC-7, Mike Schumann wrote:


skyBeacon is a pretty darn inexpensive and easy to implement way to make a tow plane 2020 compliant. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant number of people don't go that route, even though it is UAT instead of 1090ES.


That would be the stupidest thing in the world. "significant number"..... bull****. There are very few towplanes anywhere that I know of that are planning to equip with ADS-B Out for 2020 compliance reasons. I'm not aware of any of them going UAT, I had one question asked months ago and that person went away understanding why to use 1090ES Out not UAT. I only hear about ADS-B Out installs that folks ask for help with, but by now I'd hope that enough people know to keep UAT away from PowerFLARM equipped gliders.

The stupidest thing in the world is that PowerFlarm doesn't support ADS-R or TIS-B. The fact of the matter is that UAT exists in the US and a significant number of GA aircraft are going to use this technology whether or not they are tow planes. We have 30+ gliders operating out of Stanton MN, within the MSP Mode C veil. At least half of the mid-air threats are not gliders, but other GA aircraft operating in our airspace. Not only do gliders need to be visible to this traffic, but they should also be equipped with real, US standards compliant ADS-B IN receivers (preferably dual frequency) so they can see all of the non-glider traffic in the area.