WR
I am absolutely definitely not going to start another "GPS thread" but if you read the Ontrack report you find that about 18% of infringers were using a moving map GPS.
I would suggest that 18% is a vastly lower figure than the % of "serious" pilots that use a GPS routinely, which today is probably very close to 100%.
A day's hanging about your local airport won't fail to establish a massive correlation between aircraft types (and the corresponding pilot attitudes to all things traditional) and the sort of journeys they fly. The "vintage" (however you define that, much of GA is vintage these days) types rarely venture outside the local area, and I would not expect them to feature in the stats.
Whether you think the Ontrack report is a properly produced piece of statistics is another matter. The old timers in this business swear by it, as does the CAA, NATS, etc, and it's probably the best study currently existing. But it is still rather amateurish, with categories like "get-home-itis", "excessive reliance on GPS" (but no category called "excessive reliance on VOR" etc). Relatively little analysis of what the pilot actually did to bust the airspace i.e. the actual human error.
If my job was to get all of powered GA to carry and use a Mode C transponder (or any other piece of kit which can trigger a TCAS traffic proximity alert) I would look at the attitudes that prevail in a large chunk of the pilot population, and would immediately tear all my hair out.
Last edited by IO540; 13th May 2006 at 08:11.