Originally Posted by Comjam
What possible objection can you have to be being visible on radar and visible on TCAS?? Is it just the cost??
Wish it were so simple. Capital and recurrent cost is undoubtedly a factor. Recreational flyers don't have the resource of CAT so if the expense is deemed unaffordable then ipso facto they are barred from their 'country lanes' and being forced out causes deep and often irrational resentment. Especially when the 'aggressor' is perceived as little more than unabashed commercialism.
OK, many of the guys flying well above FL 100 are likely to be of the ilk that will fit a transponder for all the sensible reason that you espouse but the lower down you come the more likely you are to find those who wouldn't (given the choice) and FL 100 is the sort of level where you learn your wave flying. Lower than that then cross country flights become potentially hazardous because of the areas of sink you have to cross. If you can't make it to the next area of lift you are likely out of the sky and in a field.
The lower performance gliders are the ones more likely to have tight budgets and they are the ones that won't succeed at the upwind jump in 10kts sink.
Believe us when we say that a 9-10,000ft ceiling on wave flying is a disaster for gliding.
But it doesn't stop there. TMZs. I fly in the Peak district where we are boxed in by airways overhead, East Midlands to the South, Manchester to the West, Leeds/Bradford to the North and soon Finningley to the East. (What pc committee of little drips decided to call it Robin Hood? Yuk. End rant). .
If TMZs were wrapped around all that lot our airfield would be in them! So then its transponders in everything -right down to the £500.00 Ka8 that we use for early solos. Which incidentally is quite capable of floating above FL100.
The mainstay of gliding clubs is those members who are quite happy flying local without ambitions to be heroes but who nurture the new bloods and and keep the infrastructure going. If they give up because its all too complicated or expensive the the whole movement is threatened. UK gliding, by he way, produces world champions and a steady stream of ATPLs and many of the wave flights in Scotland are held in awe by more than just we Brits.
A bit like school playing fields, municipal parks, musical education and excellence in anything you care to name we ARE of benefit to society but trying to be heard is an uphill struggle.
So, no - its not just the cost. It the threat of extinction as well.