There are actually loads of other radio solutions. One can get radio modems which go up to about 20km (IIRC) and which are license-free. There are also off the shelf remote control solutions which work on 2.4GHz and which will work over more than enough distance. There are so many solutions for activating PCL that the legality issue becomes totally moot.

I know it's not in the area initially requested but on the more general topic Cumbernauld have the facility and activated for me to use for a late arrival (private use) in 2009. Unless of course the rules have changed since. It was activated on their allocated airfield frequency.

Just to be clear about who has legal powers for controlling the misuse of frequencies. It's not the CAA.

It used to be the RCA (Radio Communications Agency). I worked with them a few years ago tracking down an oik who'd stolen a radio and thought it great fun to be a bedroom air traffic controller.

He was located using RDF and 'spoken too' by a big chap in a uniform.

THe RCA was absorbed by OFCOM. The CAA collect radio licence fees on behalf of, in effect, the Inland Revenue, but the only powers they have under the ANO in this instance would include reckless endangerment.

Hope this clarifies the position as I understand it.

Sir George Cayley

Cue loud coughing noises... It's actually so trivial it wasn't even fun.

I agree, the PCL situation is pathetic. If I had a private strip I'd buy it, install it and use it without giving slightest concern to whatever rules might prohibit it.

Whilst Sir George is correct up to a point, the CAA does (or certainly did a few years ago) have a bit more involvement with radio station licensing such as approval of callsigns, approval of frequencies for particular uses and services and the co-ordination of protected frequencies (i.e. assignments designed to try to minimise the likelihoon of interference from stations using the same frequency).

A number of posters have said it is OFCOM that regulates frequency allocation and legitimate usage - With which I understand and agree.

However, it remains unclear to me that keying the voice carrier for the purpose of conveying a message is not a legitimate usage (and on this point I am already aware a number of you disagree).

However, if you are correct, why does the CAA choose to express this restriction against using the voice carrier to signal as

• only a specific instance (PCL),
• only for some aerodromes (licensed fields - at all times even if they are operating unlicensed at the time)
• with a CAA managed exception for certain emergency services use (on airband rather than police band radios)

Rather than a general restriction that 'forbids carrier key signalling within UK airspace on aviation frequencies - this includes the use in PCL'.

The regulation as drafted feels much more like addressing an Aviation Safety concern someone had/has about landing at unattended aerodromes at night.


Or is this another example where the regulations are written in an indirect and overly wordy way so as to introduce ambiguity and the opportunity for increased bandwidth consumption on PPrune ;)

Flynn, the short answer is "because it is their train-set".
I'm sure they do feel uncomfortable at the thought of light aircraft coming and going at night willy-nilly, as would a number of other Govt agencies.

Shunter, you do not belong in the aviation community with an attitude like that. You are a disgrace and a danger to the rest of us with that attitude to the rules. Aviation is not an activity for those with a gipsy mentality like yours.

IO540. Yor attitude is little better, as virtually every post you've mad so far recommends or suggests some sort of illegal activity and contempt for rules that were made by wiser people than you for reasons of safety, yet you always appear to know better.
For your (and others') info those frequencies not requiring licences are not exempt from the law, and one of them relates to height of the antenna above ground for reasons of reducing nuisance by excessive range.
It is actually rather difficult to find a frequency in Europe that is not nibbling into the coverage area of another station using the same one at or outside published coverajust ge area, and that is the licenced ones. You are not in posession of a geographical spectrum analysis so you are talking out of your fundament. It is pretty staggering to find someone so ill-informed and actualy peddling such utter crap on this forum. Does it not occur to you that although you have not heard any transmissions from ground level it does not mean that your Tx cannot reach and block someone airborne a hundred miles away, or that you just have't been listening at the right time.
Your attitude stinks too.

What's wrong with just accepting that you aren't allowed to?
Or fitting a decent landing light and using reflectors?
Or just not night flying from your private strip when there isn't enough moonlight to see.

For God's sake. We really get them on this forum, don't we?

So, how different is it for me to phone somebody at the destination, before departing, and get them to switch on the lights at the appropriate time?

:ugh:

What pompous bollox.

You must be Mr Guppy in disguise :)
Evidently, you don't fly (or are a retired ISO9000 quality inspector with FSX), for that would be illegal.

Arse

PCL obviously works and is safe. One would struggle to find a more litigious society than America and its in widespread use there without problems.

Its no wonder people question the CAA current stance.

A typical PCL transmission: - - - - -

Taking about three seconds. That's all.

Some posters here seem to live in a constant state of fear and/or anger. :hmm:

Can someone please point me at these antenna restrictions for use of an MPT exempt radio?

That's very harsh. There is no need to be so insulting. :=

:E

You have changed your position on this point. Earlier you were arguing the restriction has naught to do with the CAA and was an OFCOM regulation.

re-read my question. [PARAPHRASE]If that is true (i.e. the restriction is imposed by OFCOM) why do the CAA choose to communicate this restriction as only applying to licensed aerodromes and only one type of carrier key usage? [PARAPHRASE/]

If it is a CAA restriction rather than OFCOM (which I believe it is) then stop muddying the thread with irrelevant comments about frequency usage.

If one wants to make a case for change a good starting point is to understand who made the rule and why. To this end I believe it is the CAA’s rule, not OFCOMS and is 'safety' based)

And if it is "safety" based then the CAA needs to make a good case for retaining it, because it heavily detracts from the utility value of general aviation, which results in poorer pilot currency, a reduced safety, and economic damage.

It's pretty obvious that the case for "safety" here is about the same as the "safety" case for holding back GPS approaches. Both them and PCL work just fine in the USA....

I am sure the CAA can see this line of attack coming, which is why they are not going to go public with any reasons for being against PCL. The moment they state that they don't like it for safety reasons, they are toast. And if they give other reasons, they are toast as well. So they are just going to stonewall.

I'm not sure that the Ofcom argument is correct, although I'm prepared to be pursuaded. If so then the easy fix is to say 'click' (or whatever) each time the mic. is keyed. Voila! Voice communication.

The safety case doesn't hold water. You only need to look elsewhere to see PAL/PCL in use as a normal part of aviation - including public transport.

Very clever :ok:

Even better would be voice recognition :)

"lights on please"

What is the safety case?

I'm sometimes tasked to land at a private HLS that has PCL, just a ring of lights giving an outline of the landing pad. I know the frequency and will obviously use them if it's dark. However, if they don't come on, I still have to land there anyway. Landing without the pad marker lights is possible, because I'm familiar with the HLS but I reckon it's safer to use them.

Agaricus bisporus, people who unthinkingly and unquestioningly follow rules, just because "it's the rules", are a far greater danger than those people in this thread who have the maturity and brainpower to assess the risks themselves! If you truly believe that all rules are made by people who know better than you, you must consider yourself barely more intelligent than a newt...

PCL is a proven, safe technology (if you can even call it a "technology", it's so simple) that is kept out of the UK by lazy, unthinking bureaucrats who aren't worthy of washing our cowlings :ok:

If I owned/ran a licensed aerodrome in the UK, I would argue that the airfield is only licensed when it is published as open in the UK Air Pilot.

Bt definition, PCL is for use outside opening hours, when the airfield is unlicensed, probably unmanned, and therefore unregulated.

There is no law that I know of preventing use of an unlicensed airfield by an aircraft which is allowed to do so by the nature of its operation, by day or night, with the owner's consent. And there is no law which says that lights cannot be provided for such use at night. Neither the lights nor their method of operation is subject to regulation under the ANO in those circumstances.

Perhaps not, but the use of radio stations is, and the conditions of the radio station licence still apply.

That is not to say that I am particularly agin the idea of PCL, or that I blindly follow the rules without thinking about them. But to argue that PCL is used in another, different environment and so it should be allowed in the UK (or wherever else it is not permitted) is no better than the supposed stonewalling that the CAA has been accused of.

And some GA pilots wonder why the CAA doesn't seem to listen to them......