IO540
With all your experience you must have noticed that some VFR pilots are very good at spotting other traffic and some are not. The more one works on lookout and scan the better ones gets, but it is not 100% and never will be.
100% of people have transponders above 3000 ft? This is not correct. Last weekend there were 2000 ish gliders flying, 99% with no transponder and most would have been at 3000+.
Some numbers;
There is about 7000 G reg c of a SEP aircraft. Most will have transponders, say 80%
There are 4000 micros, 99% will not have transponders. About 50% of these are “little aircraft” flown by ex C of A aircraft owners who fly them exactly the same as there old PA28/140’s (similar performance). Such people do not usually stooge around at low level.
There are 2200 LAA permit aircraft. Around 50% of these have radio, so less will have transponders. Reasonable guess, 30%? Most of these are flown by experienced PPL’s in the 50 + age bracket with old stile CAA PPL’s, who are as likely to fly at 3000 ft as anybody else.
Lastly, you have a very large number of paramotors, 12000+. These are mostly low level, but I have seen them at 4000ft, and they have flown over Everest.
The above represents the majority of UK light GA which will be flying on a Saturday afternoon in summer. The % with some kind of traffic avoidance system will be very low. There are only 2 – 400 PCAS units in the UK, Flarm is estimated at 200 and rising fast, TCAS etc is only on a small number of high end C of A machines. Last Saturday the few LARS units which were open were swamped and offering BS only, so right now we need to work on our lookout, encourage people to fit low cost traffic warning systems which are technically appropriate to the aircraft concerned and stop bleating for transponders.
Rod1