Frank Arouet wrote:
The J curve already has Radar.
Not sure what you're trying to say here, but one of the main points of the whole ADS-B/subsidy debate was that ADS-B, properly implemented and mandated, would supersede radar technology, shift funds from radar maintenance to increasing situational awareness for all concerned, and stimulate the aviation industry in many different ways (and yes, handing out a massive surplus to the great unwashed is a very daft idea and utterly useless to stimulate anything in the long term apart from health care and social security costs).
It would have made perfect sense to subsidise all aircraft owners to get ADS-B OUT equipment, and a small light Aussie-built ADS-B in/out box with connector to popular GPS's was ready to go within the subsidy amount.
It's because this country has backward-looking, oversized, unproductive and in many ways useless regulators and air services providers, that reason and rational thought can't keep or get the upper hand.
Let me share a recent personal experience from my own flying: Inbound close to a YBAF reporting point last weekend, a slower high wing aircraft reported just ahead of me, due to the slightly hazy conditions and sunlight from the front I never saw him although I did plenty of looking, and I was afraid I could have been encroaching on him from the top in my low wing as we were both moving to the assigned inbound altitude. That's what happened in quite a few of the mid-air's and it's almost impossible to avoid, wrong place wrong time and you're dead! The only thing that provided some relief in this situation was the other guy's transponder interrogator (which of course doesn't work out back as it requires an interrogating entity which these small/cheapish boxes can't provide) that made me show up on his screen.
Now tell me again why mandated ADS-B is useless, i.e. everybody can see everyone else after complete implementation?
I feel a lot of the negativity is from people who want a way to fly illegally one way or the other, would would be deprived of their anonymity with an always-on unit.. well, to any of you bl@ody !diots out there, get out of the sky, you're as much a menace to the rest of us as the drunk m@ron who plows into pedestrians because he's just killed his last brain cell with a Bundy & Coke