Just remember that a great many of us fly aircraft with a value of less than £5000 and do so on an annual flying budget of a few hundred pounds.
The cost of a transponder, radio, installation etc is several years maintenance costs for some of us, so we will forgo something else, probably more safety relevant, if forced to buy this useless item.
I have yet to see a single pertinent argument as to why a slow, highly visible, low flying, microlight, paramotor or powered hang glider, that only flies in the open FIR during daylight and good weather, should be forced into this expenditure.
Not only that, but there is no suitable equipment available for carriage on many of these very light aircraft and fitting one of the existing Mode S units may present an unnacceptably high radiological exposure risk on something like a paramotor.
Let's not forget that there are more than 10,000 of us that fly cheap and slow aircraft, VFR only and not in controlled airspace. There are, I believe, more than 3,000 paramotor aviators alone, plus another 4,000 microlights, a couple of thousand PFA types and probably a couple of thousand gliders, all of whom have been included in the daft bit of blanket legislation as it is currently worded.
We need to take a balanced view, based on the total number of individuals impacted by this, not just the impact on the relatively small number of GA aircraft.
VP