Typhoons Need Midair Collision Avoidance System, Safety Officials Say
TCAS in the Hawk T2.
I started on the jet when it was still at a reasonably early stage of syllabus development in the RAF and the integration caused a few headaches.
Since the kit is in the jet it is very hard to justify ever turning it off. Formations in segregated airspace operating visually with each other would be one time this could be done.
It did create a few problems especially at times when you didn't want your student to know there was another jet coming (low level evasion for instance). It was also quite annoying that it would steal your left hand screen whenever it issued a warning.
I wasn't the biggest fan of it initially and was happy that I had a fairly effective lookout scan but with the best eyes in the world you can still miss things.
The bottom line is that since a couple of guys I knew died in the GR4 midair I believe it is getting harder to justify not fitting it to all FJs. TCAS II is not a perfect system and I would much rather see something that is optimised for FJ use but in the meantime I would just fit it anyway. It would be much easier to sleep at night for some folks. It almost certainly would have prevented the midair in question but who knows if it could prevent more in future. Once it's fitted you'll never know.
The problems it causes can be mitigated against and despite what I've said on previous threads I'd take the rough with the smooth personally.
BV