AdamFrisch wrote:
Silvaire, problem with interrogating/squitting radar service is that then you have to rely on ATC opening their mouth and telling you about traffic, which they clearly don’t do in the UK and many other places.
The UK apparently has a broader problem with providing radar service to low altitude IFR traffic, but in response to your LA Basin problem, the existing FAA TIS-B system will give you traffic data now for most Mode C equipped traffic without them needing ADS-B, if you have ADS-B in your plane.
AdamFrisch wrote:
The technology is there, why continue with this charade of the Mk 1 eyeball somehow being superior?
Indeed…how about the Mk II eyeball? A self-contained visual system based on a forward-looking IR camera (like Cirri have) with clever pattern recognition software? That’s all existing software and hardware…. if it hasn’t been done I’m sure it will be soon….then no more reliance on other people’s transponders or the vigilance of a radar operator….
Great idea!
With radar it’s called MTI, moving target indicator 
but why doesn’t the UK have Class E
The answer is extremely simple: Class E is controlled airspace for IFR and you would then need to pay ATCOs (sector controllers) to provide a service in it, which the UK won’t do because of the adopted principle of cost recovery, and GA below 2000kg paying no route charges, and even if they were paying route charges most would just fly VFR, in IMC as necessary.
Class E works only with taxpayer funded ATC provision.
A self-contained visual system based on a forward-looking IR camera (like Cirri have) with clever pattern recognition software?
It is evidently very hard to do, because even the human eye, looking in the right direction, fails to spot most targets. A few years ago somebody built something which detected wingtip strobes (which should be easy to do – just looking at a fast risetime event) and I haven’t seen it going anywhere but it was a fairly obvious way to approach it. It might however fail with LED strobes because while they could have nanosecond-level risetimes, they don’t have to to look “right” and in any case avoiding fast events helps with the EMC issue (radiation from strobe cables is a huge issue in aircraft).
However machine vision is moving ahead fast so maybe it is much easier to do today.
However, the remaining hard case is that a target on a genuine collision course is a stationary point in your field of view, so you have no movement to go on. You have only the contrast and shape, and even with a 4K sensor the target will be only a few pixels until it gets close. Human eye resolution is of the order of hundreds of megapixels… I have seen some close traffic in 4K videos I have shot and it is really hard to see anything in the video.
which they clearly don’t do in the UK and many other places
In the UK you will get a traffic service from the radar units e.g. Farnborough Radar, but you won’t get it when you need it most which is on sunny weekends when the sky is full. I don’t see how a controller in the USA could do any better. A large % of traffic showing on TCAS and passing close is accordingly never notified.
The difference is that the USA has more permissive airspace policies and better airspace design. In the UK, most CAS is Class A into which VFR traffic cannot possibly be cleared, and this creates bottlenecks, especially where they occur below say 2500ft. The worst one I know is the Manchester-Liverpool “1300ft max” transit corridor (itself in Class D) where you are assured of an airprox every few mins on a sunny weekend. In the USA you would have got cleared via the Manchester overhead at a few k. In the USA, a 2 way radio contact is enough for entry into Class D, for example (a sub ICAO privilege).
And still we are into ATC funding. The LARS units like Farnborough were originally set up and funded to provide a service to the RAF. Military aviation (below transport level) has historically had poor navigation capabilities and needed a lot of assistance. Later the LARS unit funding continued because they prevent many CAS busts by GA. But the funding would not be provided for GA because GA doesn’t pay.
IMHO, the UK situation is a result of a combination of
Much of this is historical but we are stuck with it.
Peter wrote:
Class E works only with taxpayer funded ATC provision.Germany has lots of class E. I didn’t know that the DFS was “taxpayer funded”, they certainly charge both enroute fees through the Eurocontrol system and terminal navigation fees through the airports.
Maybe someone from Germany can comment?
Airborne_Again wrote:
Germany has lots of class E. I didn’t know that the DFS was “taxpayer funded”, they certainly charge both enroute fees through the Eurocontrol system and terminal navigation fees through the airports.
Maybe someone from Germany can comment?
I now checked the German wikipedia. It says that “running costs” of DFS are covered by fees. I would think that ATCO salaries are “running costs”.
So it seems that class E can very well work without taxpayer funded ATC.
Where does the money come from?
It has to come from either the > 2T traffic (who will complain if they can) or from the taxpayer, obviously. Well, the sale of VFR terminal charts raises a few DM also
Peter wrote:
Where does the money come from?I wrote that, didn’t I?
Airborne_Again wrote:
they certainly charge both enroute fees through the Eurocontrol system and terminal navigation fees through the airports.Surely you must have landed at a controlled German airport several times? Then you paid a “terminal navigation fee”, which goes to fund the DFS.
Peter wrote:
It has to come from either the > 2T traffic (who will complain if they can)Why would they? They themselves fly in class E on departure/approach to many airports. Or enroute if they don’t have pressurisation/oxygen.
Where does the money come from?
Mainly enroute fees (76%), the remaining part are approach fees and other sources of income. See their yearly balance of 2016 below, page 26 (found only a german version of the document). Zero taxpayer money involved, all paid for by the people who use the service:
http://www.dfs.de/dfs_homepage/de/Presse/Publikationen/DFS%20Geschäftsbericht%202016_dt_w.pdf
According to NATS, an extra H24 radar ATC desk, fully costed, is about 1M/year. Well, they told me that about 10 years ago.
At a wild guess, Class E in the UK would cost of the order of 10M/year extra. It’s not going to happen in the UK…
It also seems clear that in Germany there is a big cross-subsidy from airlines to GA, which in the UK would cause a lot of trouble.
