Originally Posted by
Fuji Abound
I wonder how many gliders fly for more than 5 hours?
Quite a few. Checking the flights that have been published on the gliding competition ladder from the weekend shows 88 flights in excess of 500kms on 14th alone Many of these will have taken five hours+. Many, many more flights of a similar duration will have taken place but won't have been published (not all glider pilots are competitive). Additionally most club gliders will have been flown pretty solidly from 09:00 to 20:00 with flight durations ranging from a quick 10 minute hop & circuit through to many five hour badge claim flights.
Originally Posted by
Fuji Abound
There are always exception - but the exceptions do not enable you to evade the point - if gliders in clogg land as you put it can and do fit transponders under EASA why cant the same gliders do so in roast beef land?
As mentioned elsewhere, the suspicion is that the Dutch pilots have installed non-EASA approved equipment to their gliders. Quite ironic really that they've done non-approved mods to comply with the Dutch requireement to have Mode-S equipment fitted and they're now obliged to turn the equipment off as it's apparently causing problems with Schiphol's Radar when they're flying below CAS.