Glider pilots in IMC are aware of their position very accurately, as otherwise they would risk infringing controlled airspace. They do communicate with others who are the greatest risk to themselves, and that communication is on a known and published frequency (although apparently you were unaware of that).
I profess I don’t fully understand the sense of security that appears to derive from the use of the radio.
1. The reality is many powered aircraft do not have two radios. Their radio is therefore not going to be tuned to the glider frequency. Even if they do have two radios it may not be convenient to have box 2 always tuned to the glider frequency.
2. Isnt there a shared responsibility? In the same way you are asking powered aircraft to listen out on the glider frequency, shouldn’t we expect gliders to listen out on the local frequency. For example if I was operating near Bembridge more than likely I would be listening out for other traffic reports on the Bembridge frequency.
3. How do your position reports work exactly? You are a solo cross country glider for discussion, how often do you report your position, what do you do when you change altitude, which presumably you do frequently, and how do you exactly report your position.
4. Subject to your reply to 3 how do you expect powered traffic to interpolate your position reports? Have regard that we might well be on a 100 nm leg and not necessarily familiar with many of the land marks along the leg.
This debate has to understand the issues from both parties perspective otherwise it ends up becoming polarised into I’m right, you are wrong.
It is no good arguing that every powered aircraft should know precisely where every glider is when it enters IMC any more or less than every powered aircraft should know where every other powered aircraft is.
The fact of the matter is we have evolved a set of rules applicable to open FIR that were intended to enable everyone to “enjoy” the airspace and yet do so as safely as possible. The rules I suspect come from an era when transponders, FLARM, radar etc were the exception not the norm. For that reason we relied on see and avoid. However, we realised that for see and avoid to work the traffic shouldn’t be moving too quickly, so we introduced a speed cap. For operations in IMC we recognised see and avoid had no chance so we introduced some rules to try and separate the traffic based on height and direction. We also have some “rules” concerned with sound airmanship such as what we do when following line features, joining the circuit or crossing an IAP. I suspect we recognised that gliders often could not comply with these rules so we notified everyone of their areas of activity. For example I guess gliders ignore the line feature rules - if you are soaring along a ridge line, you are not interested in which side the line feature is relative to you, only where the thermals are relative to you.
I think since these basic rules were introduced a few things have changed. The traffic has got faster. Gliders are able to travel much further afield. More aircraft and gliders are willing to fly in IMC. In an effort to deal with these changes we have sort to introduce other means of separating traffic which are not solely reliant on see and avoid.
Its no good complaining about Citations flying into Bembridge because all that achieves is a polarisation of the debate. The Citation pilot may argue in exactly the same way as you that he doesn’t want you pi%%ing around in his airspace in your micky mouse glider as much as you wish he bu&&ered off to Gatwick and caught the bus from there.
The debate must focus on whether the existing arrangements are adequate given the changes I have mentioned in the way the airspace is used and if they are not what we ALL can do to improve the situation.