In the Netherlands we have (had) a similar discussion about the
installation of transponders. The Dutch CAA was convinced to "stall"
installation of
transponders for a couple of years. Arguments that were used:

- Power consumption.
- Very limited amount of manufacturers that are producing LOW POWER
consumption transponders (no competition so a manopoly for one or two
supliers).
- What setting will you put the transponder on when you don't have any
ATC communication?
- Positioning of the antenea. That is something the the manufacturer of
the AC should determine (who is going to go back to Sweizer for the
1-26 or 2-33 or 2-22 or to Glasflugel for the Libelle). If you don't
put them in the right position it could harm the pilot (radiation
hazard) and/or provide a useless signal that can only be recieved from
useless angles (on the 747 they originaly had placed the transponder
antenne on top, until they discoverd that it didn't gave a decent
signal for ATC while flying straight and level....)
- What do you think that ATC will do when a glider contest is going on
or when there are 10 gliders in one thermal? There first responce will
be to filter out all gliders, since they don't use any ATC
communication. Because of so many gliders in a small area the system
will generate "false returns" (it interogates one transponder and gets
a return from a different transponder so it will mess up the whole
system)
- Why do we have different classes of airspace, that is exactly the
reason, to keep us seperated (commercial AC from gliders). So if a
commercial aircraft is in class G airspace they should be the one to be
extra allert. According to the rules a powered AC should give way to a
Glider!
- Most of the time we are flying realtively low so the possibility of
running into a commercial aircraft is relatively low. The only AC's
that fly fast and low are Fighters and they don't carry any transponder
at all!
- It is also a question of mentality of the commercial pilots, I have
flown a number of test flights with a fokker 100 and only during
takeoff or landing do they ever raise there head to see what's outside
of the aircraft (even though these pilots were also glider pilots)!
- Generaly glider pilots are most of the time busy to see what's going
on outside in conterary to comercial pilots. Why should the glider
pilot pay for solving a problem that is mainly caused by commercial
flights? If we raise an airline ticket by not even one US$ cent (0,01)
there is enough money to provide every glider with a transponder so why
ask every individual glider pilot to spend a 1000 US or more to solve
a problem that is not theirs?
- Now it is the Mode S transponder they want, when this discussion took
place, not even 3 years ago they wanted us to install Mode C
transponders, so what's the next $ 4000 (total cost of installation
maintenance extra power suply, certification in some cases) gadget that
they want you to replace the mode S transponder with?

Diederik

PS: this can become a long discussion!