Expensive Mode-S Transponders for R22 Helicopters
 

CASA/Airservices are bringing in a unique mandatory requirement for transponders. I have not seen it anywhere else in the world. It appears that all helicopters flying into Sydney airport via Cape Banks (even tiny R22s) and only going to the helipad via tower airspace and not mixing with fixed-wing taxiing traffic at all still have to be fitted with a Mode-S transponder.

Can anyone advise why this mandatory requirement is there and whether a Regulation Impact Statement was prepared? I haven’t been able to ascertain this from Airservices even though I have written and waited four weeks for an answer.

So much for the Coalitions policy of removing expensive red tape! Ha Ha ! Mr Truss is going to do the opposite.

AIP GEN 1.5-10 :confused:

Para ????:ugh:

sorry to inform you, but GA has been dead in Australia now for quite a few years.. all thats left are the diehards, and the last few kicks of a dying nervous system. just look at YSBK, for many year the busiest airport in the southern hemisphere. more flying schools than you could count..
now, just a few schools left, and countless empty derelict hangars. and about 1 IfR arriving an hour on average. even sunny calm weekends at Bankstown now are a quiet affair.

Can we get movement figures for Bankstown?

Seems to me that there has been a substantial reduction in movements in the last 20 years.

Dick: Movements at Australian airports | Airservices

I am not such an expert in compiling figures. Can an expert advise if the movements are up or down at bk ?

About right , most of that is equipment cost.

Seriously, Dick? As former head of aviation and a businessman with a head for figures, you couldn't do what Raptor did? Or did you need a volunteer personal assistant to look it up for you even when you were given the link?

Boy, your credibility just took a big hit in my eyes.

The fix?
 

Dick, et El,
One does not have to examine the numbers, but of course they help when fighting the system (Govt) or seeking public support.

What we as an industry should be doing, and I am sure you are capable of putting forward the case, is that we should be examining what the root cause of these problems might be?

Do we have a govt that understands aviation... Not at all

Do we have a govt that supports the aviation industry.... NO

Do we have too many rules? Certainly YES

Why? To keep public servants employed...?

Are they written with the involvement of industry experts? Mostly not I believe. (And casa certainly don't have a monopoly on experts)

Who is involved in writing all these rules that we really don't need? And are they ALL subject to a safety analysis and any sort of costing?

Answer that and we might be close to the root cause?
Hint: another govt dept
If there is no safety benefit and it costs us even a $1 more, then it should be trashed!

This is not only part 61, and transponders/ADSB etc, but airworthiness who seem to be intent on killing what is left of the GA fleet.

Dick, as you have done in the past, you need to surround yourself with a team of industry experts and come up with a fix that cannot be ignored.
:ok:

I'm not the expert that Dick asks for. But I was rather fascinated that for example, April 2015 the less than 7 Tonnes Movements were thus:


YSBK: 13376
YMMB: 20690
YPPF: 22152


Those South Australians must be doing something right with their flight training.


"Movements are the sum of Arrivals + Circuits multiplied by 2 ie (A+C) X 2"

Graphically:

http://s9.postimg.org/gfarn18tb/YSBK_movts.jpg

Raptor090

The labour is a small part. There isn't much mark up on the Avionics shop side. I rather customers source their own equipment so I am not handling the huge cost for little profit .Of course then people take forever to pay .So yeah they supply the avionics I just do the install.

Really Australia should have gone after the US in implementing ADSB. I think costs would have been lower.

I guess its a sign when the LAME's who get paid to do the work, shake their heads at the costs they are supposed to extract from owners, who will gain no benefit. The LAME would rather see you spend the money on replacing that on-condition engine, or the control cables....something that would be a clear and obvious safety outcome.

There is only one way to instigate the needed change, and that is to force it.
There is only one way to force it, and it will never happen.

There are too many vested interests, too many people willing to have a crack at going broke.

The issue is the same in my own industry, where the insurers (simply replacing Govmnt) are screwing the trade to the wall. They breach multiple sections of the Trade Practices act daily, but the rot continues because the industry will not band together to fight it.

The only way, and the ONLY way to fight CASA is a co-ordinated effort from every industry group in Aviation.....that includes ASA.

Shut it down for a week. NOTHING flies, not even privately.
From the guy polishing hubcaps on 737's to CEO's. Nothing moves.

The only way to hurt a politician, is to hurt the public! Until the politicians hurt, they won't bother touching CASA.

You can lobby and write letters all you like, some of us have been doing it for years. You feel great for writing and sending...but you just have that no hope feeling when you hear your letter hit the bottom of the postbox, because you know thats where its going on the pile of your chosen politician.

It will be the Aviation industries choice if it goes the way of the autobody repair industry.

No tim. Fantastic. Any chance of doing the decade before?

Well, I'll put another view across. Using Dick's example, someone wants to fly their two seat slow helicopter into the country's busiest airport. The controllers could be occupied during a busy sequence;the helicopter maybe posing conflict to multiple aircraft with hundreds of passengers. It may not be unreasonable to expect that helicopter to be equipped such that it's return is not garbled with multiple other targets in a confined area (one feature of mode S, as I understand it), it may be an advantage to have enhanced altitude reporting, and it may save transmission time in knowing the helicopter is on the ground, without having to actively request that information. Maybe.

13k for fitment and legals....methinks you guys better shop around!

By the look of it. A RIS was not written for this new and unique mandatory requirement ?

Is anyone concerned about that?

Grow ahead. Choppers coming in via Cape Banks are visually sighted by the tower and given traffic. Once sighted the pilot is usually allowed to continue in past the container terminal.

So why the need for expensive Mode S ?

I have to agree with Dick on a lot of this stuff in relation to unnecessary cost. But the whole environment changed many years ago and there's been a knock-on in respect of govt, CASA, Airservices, etc, being oblivious to the impost of doing business in the real world. And now there's a new generation of bureaucrats that accept this as the norm.

The turning point was 'user pays'. After that line was pushed by the zealots, with no consideration of the possible downstream consequences when they hit 'send,' GA's fate was sealed. Now, nobody in the bureaucracy gives a stuff. They just see any charges, no matter how exorbitant, as par for the course.

Sell HOX? Yeah, sure, it's a commercial environment. Mandate ADS-B? Yeah sure, because we can and it won't cost us. Mandate Mode-S? Yeah sure, because we can and it won't cost us. Approve the sell-off of YSBK? Yeah sure, no problem; it's business.

Clamoring for 'user pays,' IMHO, was the biggest blunder ever made. The zealots that pushed it fostered an attitudinal change in the government and its associated agencies that is now irreversible.

I don't think that I need to join the dots.