chevvron wrote:Crash one wrote:So all these glider frequencies are just glider/glider chit chat. Do they ever use the thing to talk to ATC units/flight information, frequencies the rest of us use, or just bang on with each other?
Effectively large numbers of non radio stealth/difficult to see aircraft spread over a large area. Very helpful!
If this is considered acceptable I must be missing something.
Not absolutely sure but I believe the use of a BGA frequency from a glider does not require the user to hold an FRTOL but if they wish to call a non gliding frequency, they must have one.
It's almost correct. It's talking to a ATSU which needs a license. So it's more frequencies than the specific common gliding ones. (eg some gliding airfields have their own).
But the idea that talking to an ATSU on a Basic Service other than for very specific purposes (crossing an approach lane, entering an ATZ etc) makes much difference to other people's situational awareness is pretty flawed - all it tells you is that there's a glider somewhere. Not where. On a good day, that's a pretty good bet anyway.
My experience is as follows. I pass an ATSU and ask for a basic service. I tell them where I am. Twenty minutes later, someone else calls for a basic service and is told where I was twenty minutes ago. All this despite them having radar. and me a transponder (but no one qualified to interpret it (!)). Also, if they'd bothered to look at their iPads they could have seen where I was from OGN.
Now, I understand the lack of data integrity in OGN (in detail), but it's unclear to me how a twenty minute old position is of any use. (or indeed how my verbal position report is of higher integrity than an automatic readout of what my GPS says, approved or not).
Paul