As far as I was aware the Mode s was going to be a mandatory requirement as is Mode C, I am sure there are going to be loads of people trying to wriggle out of it but this is always the case. As for my cunning plan the emphasis was avoiding action on request, if an IFR ac believes its safety may be compromised because its IMC and you are reporting another ac on its nose at 3nm that is supposed to be VFR, then obviously the eyebrows are going to twitch. I am aware that the VFR criteria changes for the speed of the ac but this is also the case in class E, D and I believe C airspace but this does not stop the rest of the world from using these criteria. The practice of getting 5nm separation harks back to a time when radar returns were 5nm long, plot extracted pictures with all the gismos are a different kettle of fish and provided that separation of any kind is achieved (rather like TCAS) then an accident has been avoided. I appreciate that this may cause the sucking of teeth but the alternative is to solder on with ever increasing traffic levels in a more and more crowded FIR. I know for a fact that some pilots will not ask, even if they are IMC, for RAS because they know that there are so many other ac around that they will be turned all over the sky and never end up going where they wanted to. Equally, some units refuse to provide RAS in the open FIR because it is impossible to maintain separation iaw with the rules. On the other hand, VFR pilots believe they are being mucked about so much when they ask for a service that they would prefer not to receive one and rely on looking out the window. If this is the case then the system doesn't work and needs to be changed. While on the surface it may seem like the rules for Class E it is not, primarily because you would not need to file a flight plan to fly IFR thereby allowing you the freedom to change from 1 flight rule to the other as the weather dictated