Not ment to sound inflammitory although reading it back it does sound that way. It's just that every now and then this comes up and the glider pilot is seen as the bad guy with everyone wanting to curtail his/her freedom. If you want the protection of CAS then surely you can stay within it. Outside it's open and long may it remain that way.
SS
Not pointing a finger at gliders as they have as much right to fly.
There are unique hazards that gliders pose but thats another subject we can discuss which IMO puts a question mark on them flying IMC.
regretfully there are many locations in the UK where flight completely in CAS from takeoff to TD is impossible. Even with Airlines this is the case.
I posted a while back concerning LondonDerry where the approaches are procedural and there is no RAS yet many commercial flights operate into there out of CAS. The same goes for many other UK Locations.
With the restriction on operating hours on what we have relied on ie Military RAS the risks of collision in the Big Sky are inreasing and maybe we should all have transponders and Ticas flying in IMC out of CAS so we can look out for each other. As radar services decline so does our safety.
The big sky arguement is made for the small chance of collision but in this case we passed in no more than 50 metres of each other solid IMC.
Pace