Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
#1704580
defcribed wrote:I understand that GASCO gets the money. It certainly seems to appear as an income stream in their accounts.


Without wishing to see this thread being locked for a ‘cool off’ and ‘time out’, then all I will say is that the course payment is taken by GASCo to cover the cost of the venue, refreshments, IT equipment (such as some electronic voting clickers for interactive learning), the facilitators’ expenses, admin expenses (there is a salaried GASCo office manager that assists with this task) and other bits an bobs. The GASCo Charity has to take risk up front when it books a venue and if there aren’t enough attendees then it may make a loss - thankfully, so far, there has been a small amount of gain that has been plowed back into the other work of GASCo that is often provided for the benefit of the whole of GA for free. The problem with charging exact costs in this instance is that you never now how may attendees you will get and without setting a ‘fixed fee’ (based on average costs) then one infringer may be disadvantaged by having to pay more than another.

As pointed out, we have to be quite transparent with our finances under Charity Commission rules. I did try to explain it more here if you are really that interested: viewtopic.php?p=1703420#p1703420 and viewtopic.php?p=1703505#p1703505

:thumleft:
kanga liked this
#1704620
gaznav wrote:The GASCo Charity has to take risk up front when it books a venue and if there aren’t enough attendees then it may make a loss - thankfully, so far, there has been a small amount of gain that has been plowed back into the other work of GASCo that is often provided for the benefit of the whole of GA for free.


The conspiracy theory is that the CAA make sure all the courses are filled. The other conspiracy is that the request for transparency isn't forthcoming as it would show the first thing to be true.
Rob P liked this
#1704622
Paul_Sengupta wrote:
gaznav wrote:The GASCo Charity has to take risk up front when it books a venue and if there aren’t enough attendees then it may make a loss - thankfully, so far, there has been a small amount of gain that has been plowed back into the other work of GASCo that is often provided for the benefit of the whole of GA for free.


The conspiracy theory is that the CAA make sure all the courses are filled. The other conspiracy is that the request for transparency isn't forthcoming as it would show the first thing to be true.


Well, I personally know that is not the case - so keep wearing those tin foil hats! :cyclopsani:

CAA Infringement Co-ordination Group (ICG)
The ICG is a multi-disciplinary team from across the CAA, comprising staff from the General Aviation Unit, the Investigations and Enforcement Team, Airspace Regulation, Air Traffic Management, Air Traffic Service Investigations, Pilot Licensing Policy, Safety Data and the CAA’s Flight Examiners. It also includes representation from the MoD’s aviation regulator, the Military Aviation Authority (MAA).

So just how would such a conspiracy work across such a wide variety of departments - even cross Government when you include the MAA?

Honestly, this completely beggars belief...
Flyin'Dutch' liked this
#1705181
I’ve just done a little analysis of the figures in the following: http://docs.fasvig.info/Info/Analysis-o ... e-2014.pdf

If we consider the following to represent the type of GA that we are looking to detect on a day-to-day basis in the average Class G VFR scenario - then we come up with the following:

SEP/MEP to 5,700kgs. 9,576 aircraft. 5,701 transponders. 59%
2,263 gliders. 47 transponders. 2%
Helo to 5,700kgs. 1,107 helos. 923 transponders. 83%
4,009 Microlights. 213 transponders. 5%
~8,000 SSDR, Hangliders, Paramotors, etc... 0%
24,955 ‘GA type’ aircraft. 6,884 transponders. 27%

That is a massive 73% that have no transponder (Mode 3/A, Mode S or Mode S ES)

A very large proportion of the gliding fleet carry FLARM - so let’s be generous and say that 2,000x FLARMs are being used. That still means that only 35% are electronically detectable - obviously the 3,000 PAW users can see each other but that is another small subset of the 24,955 like FLARM (which can be seen by FLARM, PAW and SkyEcho) . That is pretty shocking in my view even though there are some significant approximations, I would be surprised if there is more than 5% variance in those percentages.

I was really quite shocked to find out that nearly 4,000 light SEP/MEP aircraft have no transponder - or 41% of the fleet. But overall, the final figure of 27% of all UK aircraft (excluding visitors to UK airspace) have no transponder surely strengthens the case to have a system that means they can detect each other? Before anyone says “PAW”, then it is highly unlikely that the larger commercial and military aircraft (including foreign visitors) will embody PAW (although some military aircraft have FLARM) - which drags me back to ADS-B. Is there really any other viable common solution??
#1705197
gaznav wrote:... which drags me back to ADS-B.


I'm sure each and every one of us is grateful for the sacrifice you make returning unwillingly to a subject you are patently so reticent to mention.

Rob P
patowalker, neilmurg liked this
#1705198
Well before we go making transponders compulsory, preferably at the airlines expense, maybe we should redesign the system to make it bi-directional.

Build in a single frequency receiver. Add to the ATC screens a "contact target" button. When a target is selected and the button hit, a digital message is sent to that transponder on that frequency, triggering a flashing display with "contact 123.450".

Think of the problems it could prevent.
gaznav liked this
#1705229
Seems to me that Transponders are not a viable solution, they don't offer practical Air:Air EC for small aircraft, and fitting all aircraft with transponders (as transponders exist today) would swamp many choke points in returns. The technology was designed to solve issues with ground based radar, but surely it is well past the sell-by date?

Low power EC systems broadcasting identity, position and vector information are cheaper and offer more function for both Air:Ground and Air:Air. I don't really care whether it's Flarm, ADSB, or P3i; I just wish we would get a move one and get EC into the fleet !

The idea of two way communication for Air:Ground is a good one, maybe an alternative would be to link the EC device into the radio and broadcast the frequency that the aircraft is on alongside the other information?
Sooty25, gaznav liked this