Spodman, why doesn’t anyone from Airservices come on this site and put their name to the decision for the low level ADS-B and sell its advantages? You only post anonymously – presumably so when problems occur you can’t be held accountable in any way. In the meantime, millions of dollars will be spent that could be wasted.
In relation to your American air traffic controller friend, why doesn’t she answer the point rather than attack me personally? The FAA has stated that it will be keeping the secondary surveillance radars to provide a service above FL180 when ADS-B is installed. Surely she can come back and say if this is true or not. The reason she doesn’t is that she knows that it is!
I stated clearly on this site a number of weeks ago that the FAA has become as dysfunctional as Airservices, very much for the same reason. That is, in the past in both organisations had people in charge who had a good aviation background. About a decade ago the FAA Administrators were “de-skilled”, and no longer were people with professional aviation experience given the position – it was handed to bureaucrats from the transport department in Washington.
Look at what happened here in Australia. John Anderson put a farmer with absolutely no aviation background or knowledge in charge of Airservices.
BN APP 125.6, I’m not holding up the FAA “as an example of how things should be done”, I’m simply stating a basic fact. That is, when they plan to go to ADS-B, they are going to keep secondary surveillance radars to cover the airspace above FL180. This is obviously so they have a back up if the GPS system goes out.
In Australia, the whole basis for our low level GPS system is the money saving that can allegedly be obtained by turning off these enroute secondary surveillance radars.
I can assure everyone who reads this that our proposed ADS-B system, which is allegedly subsidised to the tune of $100 million to GA, has not been attempted anywhere else in the world. There is not even an inexpensive certified ADS-B ‘out’ or ‘in’ unit suitable for GA.
As I have said before, I’m a strong supporter of ADS-B – but not leading the world, and not going ahead without examining all the pros and cons, and communicating them to everyone involved.