An alarming experience
I had an interesting day recently which may change my view of light aviation.
It started with a visit to a radar control tower for the benefit of my friend. In this case the “tower” offered a LARS and an approach service, in addition to the normal air traffic services. The professionalism of the guys in charge was as usual impressive.
Far less impressive was the equipment. Primary radar has a number of disadvantages that are well known. Moreover, maintaining the primary head is clearly a very expensive business particularly when, so it would seem no subsidies or other financial assistance is provided to those offering this service, unless the military are involved (and they were not in this case.) when it would be funded from the defense budget.
It would seem logical to stream the data from a local NATS head with all the benefits this would bring. I gather to do so would be relatively simple. So what’s the hitch. Well, as I understand it, an annual bill of getting on for £100K for the privilege - just for the stream.
NATS is a commercial organisation - that we all understand. They exist to make money. However I question the wisdom of their effectively denying vital safety information to those that can and do provide an excellent service in open FIR.
They are not providing a NATIONAL air traffic service, they are providing a COMMERCIAL air traffic service, and in my opinion that should not have been permitted by government.
I know - but who is going to pay. Firstly, I would be surprised if the actual cost of a feed was anything close to the proposed charge. Secondly, the structure of the airspace in some parts of the country forces OCAS traffic to operate in confined corridors with little availability of vertical separation. The existence of CAS is therefore in itself increasing the risk of an OCAS mid air. Finally, and just maybe there is an argument that some of the fees light aircraft pay in the form of duty and CAA fees should be applied to radar services or that GA should make an additional contribution.
That was of course hardly sufficient to change my view of light aviation.
There was a very harsh lesson to follow.
Shortly after I had the closest mid air occurrence I wish to ever experience.
Personally, if I can get a service I do. I don’t care if it is outside CAS, and I don’t care if the unit would far rather give me a FI or even nothing at all. I know I cant insist on the service and often have to make do - but at least I always try. I also reckon that in a great many years and hours of flying I have a pretty good scan helped a little by plenty of aeros.
In this case I was getting a RIS. The incident occurred in the few moments between changing service providers. I completely missed seeing the other aircraft and he me. In hindsight I suspect we had been converging in such a way that we crossed at right angles. We were doing 160 knots and he a little faster I would guess. I would be “interested” to know the separation. I have done some formation flying and have some judgement of distance. I would guess it was less than 50 feet of vertical separation and there was no horizontal separation. I can only assume he was not receiving a RIS as the controller commented as soon as I signed on (moments later) that the returns had merged. He gave no indication he had been working the other aircraft. From the direction the other aircraft came, it is very unlikely he would have been changing service providers.
I am still wondering if I could have done anything more. However, it has left me wondering whether there is any excuse for “fast” aircraft not to obtaining a RIS whenever possible, not to be fitted with mode C or S (and I would assume they just about all are) but also no excuse for the government not requiring NATS to provide a more coherent and integrated service. It seems to me that often the radar feeds are available and it also seems to me that it is to a great degree the impact of controlled airspace that has increased the risk. Statistically the risk of a collision in Scotland must be far less. However in southern England the result of CAS is to bottle OCAS traffic into narrow low level “corridors” and to boot in some of the busiest air space.
I do not have the statistics but I have a suspicion that the number of light aircraft in some of these areas has increased and, perhaps more importantly, the average speed of that traffic has also increased and will continue to do so as the quest for faster light and very light aircraft becomes a reality with modern designs. Moreover, I also have a suspicion that there are a great many who don’t bother to request or “insist” on a RIS where available, because it is simpler for them not to do so; yet I find myself not in favour of of pilots following this practice.
Despite the criticism of mode S it has made be reassess the need for all aircraft to transpond so at least the faster traffic has a better opportunity of avoiding slower traffic, it has left me reconsidering the urgent need for an integrated low level service being made available to OCAS traffic and left me wondering whether to fit TCAS or PCAS on the basis that anything that reduces the risk of collision cant be a bad thing.