It is a big sky. Years ago the FAA [it is said] did a study
to show how safe aviation would be if all their ATC plans
were fully funded and they could control every airplane from
taxi to shutdown in the US airspace system. They came up
with some tens of millions of flight hours between mid-air
collisions, something like a chance every hour of
0.000000015 collisions per hour. Somebody asked what kind
of improvement this was over no control at all. They had a
university do a study and the number came back...
0.000000019.

Big sky, few airplanes. The hazards at and near the busy,
big airports. To a degree, the rules that say all traffic
flies at cardinal altitudes concentrates traffic at certain
places, such as 17,500 feet or 10,000 feet because those
altitudes [in the USA] are where rules change.

You do clearing turns, shallow turns and you look for other
airplanes. Airplanes at your altitude look to be on the
horizon, airplanes above you are above the horizon and
airplanes below you are below the horizon and are harder to
see because of the ground. But you look for moving shadows
on the ground at low altitude. You run all you lights and
hope the other guy is also. You look out the windows. You
look for small dark spots that don't seem to move because
things on a collision course have zero relative motion.

But the human eye seems motion better than it does small
dark spots.

In areas of high traffic, there are often radio procedures
used to announce intentions. There are IR detectors that
can "see" the strobe lights on an airplane and they do have
systems that can detect the transponder of other aircraft.
And they are developing data-link systems that will put a
ground based radar display in the cockpit of those airplanes
and countries that can afford the cost.


--
James H. Macklin
ATP,CFI,A&P

wrote in message
ps.com...
| Jim Macklin wrote:
|
| What does work is systems that detect the transponder in
the other airplane and present
| a warning display.
| --
| James H. Macklin
| ATP,CFI,A&P
|
|
| That's what I went, a tad naively, expecting to find,
although Bob
| Moore had given me a sneak peek at what I could reasonably
hope to see,
| which was *not* an A320 layout
|
| But nothing could prepare me from the vulnerability I felt
when
| airborne.
|
| Ramapriya
|