schreef:
In rec.aviation.piloting jan olieslagers wrote:
Dave schreef:
We have the ZAON XRX on board our Cherokee in a VERY busy environment
(100,000 operations /yr)
I cannot begin to tell you how useful this tool is in tracking
trafffic around us
For $1500 !

But it will only show planes with certain non-mandatory equipment, if I
got it right? Is it not like radio at a non-controlled aerodrome, a nice
extra source of info but nothing to really count on?


If by "certain non-mandatory equipment" you mean a mode C transponder, yes.

That's what I meant indeed.

However, there is hardly any place in the US with significant traffic that
most people don't have a mode C transponder.

Ah, yes, in them US of A, yes, of course...
Then again, how do you define "significant" traffic?
Which plane is more significant, the 5 you had heard on the radio or the
one you hadn't? Or the one you collide with?

The places were there are few transponders tend to be well removed from
major urban areas and full of things like gliders, sky divers, ultra lights
and such.

Which seems to me exactly where we want "eyes on our bum" as the saying
goes down here... far more than in controlled airspace where controllers
are paid to keep us posted on what's happening.

---

FYI here in Northern Belgium, and I guess in most of Western Europe,
uncontrolled airspace is scarce*, yet is the only place allowed for
ultralights (including our equivalent of the US'an LSA), gliders,
trikes, and what not. So we're either in controlled airspace, with a
transponder mandatory almost everywhere anyway, and a controller taking
care anyway, or we're in class G chaos where only our eyes will serve,
with a little help from the radio and perhaps perhaps AFIS - but they
are not aware of nordo-craft either. So to my humble opinion (I am a
low-time newbie pilot of a Rans Coyote, that would classify as an LSA at
yours) TCAS is much expense for little use down here. Then again, no
price is too dear for safety, of course, our own or others'.

* just for one example: transition is at 4500' AMSL, and everything
above is controlled. Another: there's sometimes zero, and only rarely
more than 40 NM between CTR's, which are mostly class C, sometimes D.
Enough said?