Dear Finbar,

1) Please support the request for the exemption by making comments to
the Docket. See the SSA website for info on doing this. If we get the
exemption, all your concerns about the foolishness of the _present_
rule, and your fears about being busted for turning off your transponder
are over.

2) It doesn't cause ATC a problem when a VFR (code 1200) transponder
signal disappears from their screen. They don't control VFR traffic, and
signals vanish all the time for a variety of reasons. If it caused a
problem, this request for an exemption would never have gotten on the
Docket in the first place.

3) FAA people have repeatedly told SSA people that they'd rather see
more gliders with transponders than less. They've told me the same thing
when I've talked to ATC folks about our wave windows.

Finbar wrote:
If you take a look at Tim Mara's comments and Andy Durbin's note in
the new thread "parachute repack requirement, was SSA transponders"
you'll see the sort of thing I worry about with this regulation.

By analogy to Tim's logic, and by analogy to the logic of that
inspector who ran ramp checks for parachute pack dates (parachutes not
legally required, inspector couldn't have ticketed someone who flew
with no chute at all, and the requirement for a chute in the contest
is not a legal matter the inspector could enforce), someone is going
to get cited for turning off a transponder on board their glider -
someone who would NOT have been cited if there had been no transponder
on board at all. It's going to happen. Once someone decides to do
it, figuring out who the pilot was won't be as hard as people might
like to think - remember the fallacy of the anonymous internet? With
one reservation, I find it hard to find words to express the profound
idiocy of this, but it will happen, and it will be justified using
something like Tim's logic. I've heard this logic before from
regulatory types: as an engineer it's a kind of thinking alien to me,
but the reality is that this IS how regulators think, and Tim is
evidently accustomed to it (presumably from long exposure).

The reservation is that I don't understand the radar system well
enough to be sure that turning off a transponder in flight doesn't
cause all sorts of chaos at ATC, which might be so severe as to
justify a preference for no transponder, rather than have you turn it
on and off in flight. I doubt it, but in my ignorance I'd have to be
open to that possibility.

So it may seem stupid to not carry a transponder because it might be
illegal to do so, but the regulators don't think it's stupid at all.
It's the law, just like the law that forbids the carrying of
parachutes that might not work, and requires the substitution of a
seat cushion that definitely, categorically will not work. And, just
like the law forbidding the carriage of non-required chutes that are
outside their 120-day pack date, it WILL be enforced.

You'd think law enforcement would support safety, but that's not
always its first priority. Sometimes the law gets enforced, and the
law always trumps common sense.

Pity.

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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA