Gliding areas.

[robin]

When I fly in my local area under the local LARS they often remind me that the nearby gliding club is operating and there are contacts close by.

They never say I am infringing. But they may well warn me I am within x nms of the site. As a local glider pilot I know exactly where to go and where to look and appreciate the local LARS are looking out.

[tggzzz]

thing wrote:

Yes it is on the half mil, it's a bog standard, non Notamed glider site with cables to height 3000'. The area is the little circle that goes along with it, 1nm radius. I know it's not illegal to fly in there, it is however very ill advised unless you want your wing slicing off. We sometimes get low flyers over our glider field, nothing you can do other than wait until they are gone.

Always presuming you notice them

http://www.airproxboard.org.uk/defau...0&pageid=10289

[Someone_Else]

NorthSouth

What, even if you couldn't see any radar returns in that area? How on earth would you report that to the pilot, under any service?
And what's the basis for providing 5nm/1000ft separation from notified areas, as opposed to traffic? Where's that from? I've never seen that in any document. I would not be happy to be vectored 5nm away from a NOTAMed area that I'd flight-planned to miss by a mile, because of some unwritten rule relating to what might possibly be operating inside that area even though no-one can see anything in it.
Please explain!
NS

It's in my rule book, which is in two parts. Part 1 (CAP493) you can see on the CAA website and broadly contains the minima that you would expect. Then there is part 2 which contains the rules relevant to my airspace.

The rules in guidelines in my unit specific manual have to take into consideration the priorities that I have to deal with. First and foremost my responsibility is to traffic inside controlled airspace being provided with a RCS. Where we do have areas to avoid generally our book says that Danger areas/restricted airspace have to be treated the same as if it was another aircraft. So this means 1000ft/5nm. Regardless if we see any radar return.

My point was that even in uncontrolled airspace I would consider similar minima when offering traffic or deconfliction advice. Infact, you may already know that, the deconfliction minima that we aim to provide is 3000ft/5nm if the traffic is uncoordinated or 1000/3nm if coordinated.

Coordinated would be against a specific aircraft, so if the area was a glider area (where often we can't even see a radar return) this reduced separation would not apply. If the area has an upper limit then we would provide 1000ft separation against the upper limit not aircraft flying inside the area.

If you're under a Traffic Service there are slightly different rules when we would provide traffic information.

With anything there are a few exceptions to all of this but I'm just explaining the generics of our unit. Every unit has different capabilities depending on their priorities. As I said before, if you're in uncontrolled airspace and you are not happy with the service you are receiving you can downgrade it.

To the starter of the tread; if you're on a basic service then aside from providing generic information (such as active areas) the controller should not be advising you on traffic and "The avoidance of other traffic is solely the pilot’s responsibility." (CAP493, Section 1, Chap 11, Section 3).

Sorry for the long post; I hope it provides an insight. CAP774 contains the rules for Flight Information Services (CAP 774: UK Flight Information Services | Publications | CAA).