With the planned mandatory carriage of mode-S it became apparent that my wooden airframe and lack of any generator (hence no fixed radio or transponeder) would've made my aircraft unflyable, thus making the planned strip within the cardiff zone a pointless exercise. Those mode-S plans have obviously been dropped but the original date for mandatory carriage preceded the installation of mode-S capable radar.
Here's a thought Is the size of the Cardiff zone (increased in the recent past? 2006?) justified by the small volume of traffic? I guess this is a side issue and not pertinent to the Cardiff-specific thread.
My aircraft uses about 2 3/4 galloms of Mogas per hour. That makes it about £15 per hour for fuel. Would I really buy a small, efficient aircraft and then spend £85 for handling? Rhoose is not a place I'd want to visit, yet the US manages to have GA friendly ops where pilots are encouraged to visit. Surely having a restaurant, a flying school, affordable shelter/hangars and small landing/handling fees would be the way to generate an income through GA, albeit it would take time and investment.
It would be fantastic to fly from my local airfields. After all, Cardiff and St Athan must be the 2 biggest and best equipped strips of tarmac in the country. The fees are not in the right ballpark for me, though, since the £2400 p.a. cost of parking/landings will buy me 5 years of flying from a grass strip or pay the mortgage interest on quite a few acres of farm strip.
PS £85.50+vat plus £15+vat per day parking, according to the airport this morning! And no free doughnut or coffee!