… especially since many navigators nowadays have “Visual Approach” features, which allows pilot to fly the final as precisely as on an RNP oder ILS, without actually using any instrument approach procedure.
There is some data from elsewhere e.g. IIRC Cambridge watches traffic on FR24/FA sites and if it looks like it is flying the IAP, and the aircraft is based there, they kick the owner off the airport. I can’t find the original source but I posted it here in 2019. Well, yes, obviously almost all airports in Europe are privately owned and they can ban a based owner. I doubt Shoreham would do that because
Shoreham is nice. Just don’t make their life hard by poking the CAA gorilla 
They have been in the CAA’s gunsight since the Hunter crash, which was not their fault at all.
Considering there was a not-insignificant charge to officially fly the RNP, I was happy to fly the “five-mile final” instead.
Just thinking. Could it be to prevent two pilots from flying the same track at the same time? If you fly non-controlled IFR using an IAF and an approach no one separates between aircraft. Normally this is not an issue because when no one flies on the exact same track the probability of an in-flight hit is very low. But not so if all use gps precision down to meters in an RNP approach.
Not really since in Class G anybody can be flying non-radio, non-txp, right through the 2200ft platform altitude / approach path. They just need to be outside the ATZ but actually that only goes up to about 2010ft AMSL.
And people frequently do. A while ago I had a contact on TCAS doing the above. I told Shoreham. They could see his code was a Farnborough one. They called Farnborough but apparently Farnborough could not be bothered to tell this chap to move, and indeed he was entitled to be there.
So we are back to Class G and, as they say in the US, when god made air he made lots of it
Of course you are right procedurally, but it is only on the basis of the emperor being completely naked and it is fine so long as nobody tells him
IIRC, the UK has not seen a mid-air in IMC since around WW2.
Just thinking. Could it be to prevent two pilots from flying the same track at the same time? If you fly non-controlled IFR using an IAF and an approach no one separates between aircraft. Normally this is not an issue because when no one flies on the exact same track the probability of an in-flight hit is very low. But not so if all use gps precision down to meters in an RNP approach.
Of course, that technically is a risk. You wouldn‘t even need to fly an RNP approach with 0.3 HSI scaling for that. It might be enough if two aircraft fly the same route between two points, but in opposite directions, on 2-axis autopilot with GPSS and all. This is a risk that GPS has brought to us. In the days of radio nav, the tolerances were too high to really risk a collision.
I also never fly VFR along airways/between two VORs, but flown by GPS nowadays. Too high a risk to have someone else do the same thing, with same type of avionics. Always fly „random“, self-created tracks when VFR.
In the instrument approach scenario, this is usually mitigated by using the radio. In France for example, most instrument approaches may be flown, in IMC, without any ATC, but if every traffic announces his position and intentions, the risk is minimized.
Which is why my preference for a non ATC letdown to get into Shoreham, is a traffic service to confirm I’m clear of traffic, and descend over the water to VMC.
Becoming VMC at anything greater than 1200ft before joining the circuit, seems a safer option to me.
I do subscribe to the ‘great big sky’ theory in IMC but thats based on general flying, and not near an approach sector of an airfield.
To me, doing a ‘non std radio’ approach from 5 miles is akin to a ‘straight-in’
Peter wrote:
has not seen a mid-air in IMC since around WW2
OK then clouds seem to be the safest portion of the naked emperor, I mean, the sky.
Peter wrote:
You cannot enter the ATZ without ATC clearance but if there is no ATC then clearly you can…
Assuming it’s an A/G radio service when there’s no ATC, you do need to have established two-way communication before entering the ATZ. That is something the CAA are quite hot on right now and came out of all the hullaballoo at Barton, who were MORing anyone who didn’t.
You are also technically supposed to announce entering / leaving the ATZ and in doing so state your height (that has to be an old RAF influence lingering), but I have literally never heard anyone actually do that. Displaying the usual finger on the pulse, he who must not be named at the CAA told me that everyone does it, all the time, at every A/G and AFIS aerodrome in the UK.
Assuming it’s an A/G radio service when there’s no ATC, you do need to have established two-way communication before entering the ATZ.
Yes indeed I forgot about that.
It just takes an MOR and NATS will retrieve the radar data to bust you with.
Also I am sure most if not all airfields have a “nonexistent laptop” which pics up the usual sites, including ADS-B with high accuracy, so they can see you anyway unless you are non-txp.
