Pic St Loup
The montpellier gliding club's glider fleet have had conventional transponders for at least a decade after an airbus hit a glider in open airspace. Controller error and knee jerk was the dgac nicking 2,000 ft of open airspace but the club negotiated using closed airspace with mode C transponders powered by a couple of burglar alarm lead acid batteries. Autonomy was generally at least 5 hours in spite of the cold OAT during wave climbs. Standard calls either with Montpellier approach or Istres military towards the rhone valley..Then onto Airways with Orange. Only negative is some of the controllers appalling English which often led to them having to listen to my french.