Originally Posted by
Funkie
Assuming you operate in this environment and as your profile suggests, Scotland where we have a huge chunk of Class G, having a Mode C transponder installed at say £1500 - £2k is almost a no brainer. It will assist flight safety to a great deal and also assist ATC in accurately identifying your position – no bad thing if you ask me.
Mode S, in my opinion is a very different matter…
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I can’t see how it provides any further help in flight safety over the current Mode C equipment.
Two points.
I would strongly support the idea that aircraft currently equipped with Mode A/C SSR should not have to re-equip until the Mode A/C unit breaks (or ADS-B over 1090ES is adopted). For now, Mode A/C is fine in the numbers that it's currently used. But there
are spectrum congestion issues that would make it difficult to move to the sorts of levels of equipage that would be desirable.
I don't believe that there's a technical reason why Mode S equipment needs to be more expensive than Mode C. At the moment the volumes of Mode S are small enough that it commands a premium. Mode C is discounted because of the introduction of Mode S. But in the long run, they're just radios with some logic attached.