For those who are using TCAS and its less functional poor cousins, are you solely using it to determine traffic in a vertical plane, or do you think it's some kind of pseudo radar giving you accurate horizontal awareness as well ?
It's a great piece of kit, but you need to understand the philosophy behind its design and the inherent innaccuracies if you use it in a different way from that intended by the manufacturers and those who specify the industry standard for ACAS devices.
As stated here, there is an established system called "TCAS". I got slated above for a reference to it, and how it "did not apply to GA systems". Can we at least establish that "TCAS" is the "system" installed and used in large commercial aircraft, and differentiate from other systems that might assist in traffic awareness and potential collision avoidance.
As the poster above implies, TCAS is a "system" involving hardware + pilot & ATCO training and actions. It is not perfect - it has so far caused one mid-air with >100 fatalities (hardware fine, human factors and training not...) and one
very near mid air (2 x widebody, all human factors fine, but 1 dodgy wire
). Also for reasons various "TCAS" is not really applicable to the GA / VFR environment for many reasons.
We then come on to to various hardware solutions that do some things similar to TCAS hardware - albeit they seem to be on the TA side, not RA? It is fine for one or 2 systems (certified?) to express a "display" on where other aircraft may (or may not) be in relation to your aircraft. But if we start talking of mandating such systems? What training is required? They seem largely to revolve around Mode C? Are GA Mode C altitudes broadcast to the required accuracy for collision avoidance? As opposed to ATC separation requirements (far more tolerant). TCAS is an active system to determine range? Whereas I understand these systems largely passive? And as implied above, even though TCAS does a fair job at displaying "bearing", this is "info only" and TA/RA warnings based solely on the (accurate) range calculations? Are these systems, broadcasting "relative bearing", willing to be certitied (and accountable in a court of law) on that basis?
And if we do go down this route, what of training / the law? With TCAS, it is now 100% established that TCAS overrides ATC, and almost 100% pilot judgement as well... even if we see the "traffic", how do we really know it is the one the RA is based on? As such, we train regularly for TCAS... But in the GA environment? Is it legitimate to follow a "warning" and climb into CAS?
NoD