The UK has since for ever banned solo without having passed air law, but apparently this is not supported by any legislation.
hmng wrote:
maxbc wrote:no solo before passed theory,
Hmm? That does not sound right…..
The rationale behind this (if you can call it that) is that your base airport may close at any time while doing solo circuits, so you need the knowledge for radio, planning and diverting. The rule is not strictly applied everywhere yet, but I know some students at my club did it that way (I only had to pass it for solo navigation, which I understand more).
a lot of extra work to cross borders
Which borders? Practically the only border that requires work to cross is UK border. The rest doesn’t exist in Europe except if you fly to Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania.
Yes, the totally mad smash-the-problem-with-a-hammer UK CAA infringement policy is definitely one thing which has made VFR in UK OCAS quite risky and has led to some 50% of GA turning off transponders.
To me, the main difficulty 20 years ago was finding the destination airport and not get into dangerous weather.
Today, it is more about keeping your license and avoiding CAS.
I think we got more weather cautious and have much better weather information.
The downside is higher cost and a lot of extra work to cross borders.
maxbc wrote:
no solo before passed theory,
Hmm? That does not sound right…..
Peter wrote:
any “glass” etc does no more in terms of navigation capability or accuracy than a KLN94
Yes it does, Peter. It raises the situational awareness by several steps, and thus “lowers the bar” for a newbie to understand the system.
A simple example: I have OAT on my glass display. It IS a hassle to read the old OAT meter at night, using a torch and trying to read the indication. The other is obvious: I see on the glass display that the autopilot is in fact flying the approach that is programmed. It’s all there. You just have to follow what the plane is doing, that feels like 80% less workload than doing all the approach without all the info “in a box”.
To me the pilot is part of the equipment. And the navigation capability and accuracy of the whole system including the pilot has improved a lot since introduction of glass.
G1000 was a game changer
But it turned out to be great disappointment in terms of upgradability.
No disagreement here. I enjoy my boxes until they last. How long would that be?
LPV is enough of a game changer for GA. In the US, there are 4 times the number of LPV than ILS. Yes, LPV and ILS have the same Cat 1 capability, but LPV is clearly superior. LPV is smoother and simpler to fly. Smoother because it is not affected by aircraft or vehicles on the airport or runway that need an ILS safety area or by local interference in the course or vertical guidance. It is simpler because you use a single avionics system rather than for an ILS where one uses GPS for enroute, STAR, joining the approach if not vectored, switching to localizer for the intermediate and final approach segments and back to GPS for the missed approach. There are many more opportunities for error with an ILS approach, tuning the wrong frequency, not activating the frequency, not changing the CDI to display the localizer rather than the GPS guidance, not switching back to GPS for a missed approach, and not selecting the appropriate autopilot modes. That is why here in the US, most GA pilots have a strong preference for using LPV even when ILS is an available option. Sure you can fly many LNAV approach procedures with a KLN94 and unless the weather is below the procedure MDA, you get to the same place, just with more work and reduced safety afforded by vertical guidance. With your KLN94, you can’t fly an RNAV SID or STAR, you can’t use your autopilot to fly a curved path, such as would be required with a hold, PT, DME arc, or RF turn. With the KLN94, the processor is too slow to provide a usable roll steering guidance and the roll steering it does provide is non standard and near useless. The KLN94 was an improvement over the KLN90B and KLN89B, but never matched the GNS430 legacy capability, much less the WAAS version.
G1000 was a game changer
But it turned out to be great disappointment in terms of upgradability. It was advertised as easy-to-upgrade – just change LRU but it turned out to be impossible or almost impossible, leaving the owners heavily dependent on aircraft manufacturer’s will to order software development from Garmin.
From my perspective:
- 2013 Croatia joined EU which eliminated need for customs for majority of my flights
- 2023 Croatia joined EU which eliminated need for immigration for majority of my flights
- less and less ground navaids including removing ILS
- higher and higher airport fees and insane handling fees for zero service delivered
- shrinking GA community, especially in Croatia
