(Mark James Boyd) wrote in message news:3fd60658$1@darkstar...
In article ,
Marcel Duenner wrote:
Is my impression correct that in the U.S. many if not most fly around
with handheld radios only?
If yes - why?

In (continental) Europe virtually all sailplanes have built-in radios.

None of our 5 club gliders have radios. Part of it is to
keep the rent cheap, cheap, cheap.

That's a point.

Another part is simplicity:
nothing to break, repair, steal, or recharge.

We rarely break, repair and never steal our radios either :-)
What we recharge is the battery which we need anyway for the el. vario
and glide computer.

Another part is that
we very seldom have simultaneous tows, and the 400 foot width
of our main runway makes unplanned simultaneous landings a cinch.
Finally, there is very, very little "radio required" airspace
within even 50 miles, and I don't know anyone who has
made it to 18,000 above our sea level airport (18,000 feet is
again where radios are required).

I suspect in Europe there is much less open land, and much less
uncontrolled airspace.

The controlled airspace is not the reason I use radio. Last time I
talked to ATC was at least 300 flying hours ago. We have general and
also "private" chatting frequencies here and I wouldn't like to rely
on the poor transmission range of a handheld. Plus I have enough stuff
flying around (no, not literally) in the cockpit already (food, drink,
maps, jacket, sometimes GPS, sometimes oxygen, sometimes camera) and
can do without an additional handheld radio with all the potential
difficulties described by others in this thread.

And I suspect gliding is much
more popular because petrol is so expensive and in some
countries one must get a scheduled "slot" to fly a plane.
I imagine this is why winches are popular too.
On aerotow, there are signals that don't require radio,
and are easy to see from 200 feet.
On winch, I bet radios really help a lot.

There are also very clear signals for winch launching without radio -
but because of radio long forgotten by most people... including winch
drivers.

Don't the flight levels start at 6000 in some places too?
Do you need radios for this?

Don't know about 6000. In Switzerland and Germany controlled airspace
generally starts at FL100. Swiss Alps FL130, some places and times
even FL150. From there on you need clearance and often enough won't
get it without a transponder. Of course there are also plenty of CTR,
TMA and AWY much lower down. Same thing the very often no or only
very restrictive clearence without transponder. So I just don't go
there. So far most of these airspaces are fly-aroundable. But the
situation certainly is not getting better.


Now on the US East coast, I couldn't say if radios are
commonly installed. I suspect it's more likely since
the controlled airspace on their sectionals seems to
appear with some regularity...

Perhaps someone could tell us what radio requirements
are over the pond, or in other parts of the world.
In the US, the bahamas, and mexico, it's very easy
to fly anywhere, except major (500,000 person+) city
airports, using only a handheld.

Regards
Marcel