Well, my airport is at 1312 ft MSL and CAS (E) starts at 1000 ft AGL north and south of the field. Class C airspace starts at 3500. MRVA is 3600. There is no chance to get an IFR clearance without climbing to 3600 ft.
In real life i try to reach 3600 north of the airfield where C starts in 4500. But E still starts at 1000 AGL … so anything above 2312 ft is CAS.
achimha wrote:
After Überlingen, TCAS now officially trumps ATC.
I don’t think that’s true. TCAS trumped ATC even before, but people used to authoritarian societies had problems accepting that 
What we got out of Überlingen was the Überlingen mode of the TCAS, detecting non-compliance to resolution advisories, and then reversing the advisories.
Flyer59 wrote:
Well, my airport is at 1312 ft MSL and CAS (E) starts at 1000 ft AGL north and south of the field. Class C airspace starts at 3500. MRVA is 3600. There is no chance to get an IFR clearance without climbing to 3600 ft.
Well, I’ve commented on this very situation. ..
bit off-topic, but my club is considering installing PowerFLARM. What display do you use? Any recommend
I have a PowerFlarm Core with a dedicated display (Butterfly 57) hardwired to the Flarm unit. The Core unit is installed in the avionics bay in my plane just on the other side of the panel, the display, for space reasons, on the very left side of the co-pilot panel. Although the display is very bright and clear even at that distance it becomes difficult to read simply due to its size.
There is a piece of hardware called Air Connect available (EUR 160 or some such) which links the Core unit via WIFI to your tablet, so targets can be depicted in SkyDemon (and, I believe, one or two other applications). With the latest software update the depiction in SD has been significantly improved and I much prefer this over the original display. You can download the latest manual of SkyDemon from their website to get an idea on how this looks like.
Also, there is an option available to wire the Core unit to your audio panel so one can also get audio warnings. A company in Germany is selling the hardware and also providing support. They have been extremly helpful when I was thinking about which hardware to choose and how to install it. Suggest you give them a call (air-avionics.com).
This is the screenshot I made during the approach of LH 715, an A340-600, approaching Munich airport coming back from Tokyo last Saturday.
The arrow points to my VFR airfield which is under the 4500 ft Class C airspace.
I cannot prove it now, but i am pretty sure the LH flight was below airspace C before intercepting the ILS, or at least on the very bottom. There’s about 1200 flights daily to that airport, and I wonder why anybody would fly in IMC in that area without a clearance. I know that it is still done. I also know that if the TCAS goes off in an LH flight you can throw your PPL out the window or burn it after landing.
Do I understand correctly that none of you would enter IMC in such an area?
Flyer59 wrote:
I cannot prive it now, but i am pretty sure the LH flight was below airspace C before intercepting the ILS
Good luck proving this because it’s false. The whole idea of the inverted wedding cake design of German terminal areas is that aircraft never leave airspace C/D.
Who else besides you ever talked about flying in airspace C/D without a clearance?
You are sure, but i am not so sure, and I fly that area all the time.
But whatever, if the airliner is in IMC at the bottom of C and you fly in IMC in E, 300 feet below and the airliner gets a TCAS warning, and there was IMC even below the airliner’s altitude … you will* be in big trouble, i am sure.
Not saying this is smart but can Germany successfully prosecute if it is legal?
It is not legal to fly in IMC in controlled airspace without a clearance, and especially close to big airports like EDDM I would not recommend doing it. On many days the ceiling at my field (EDML) is at 2500 ft MSL. If i climb into that overcast up to 3600 to get a clearance and there’s an Airbus descending through C and gets a TCAS alert …
Well, of course it’s hard to prove (you still could have been VMS, somewhere) …
It’s against my idea of always having big margins. I’d rather scud run to the next airport with an IFR departure …
Scud run with a 100ft margin to windmills…
How would I get in trouble for flying in IMC in E in Germany? Obviously it requires a clearance but I can not think of a scenario where you could get prosecuted for it. VMC/IMC outside of control zones can only be determined from the cockpit.
Flyer59 wrote:
If i climb into that overcast up to 3600 to get a clearance and there’s an Airbus descending through C and gets a TCAS alert …
The inverted wedding cakes which you seem not familiar with are even designed so that you do not get a TCAS alert if somebody’s flying around below, otherwise on a nice VFR day, the TCAS wouldn’t stop ringing for a second…
Also I do not really see a scenario where one could “accidentally” become IMC in class E in Germany unless preparing for an IFR pickup which means radio contact with ATC and thereby separation. If you want to fly in IMC on your own, you have to do that in airspace G, not E.
