On Jul 26, 7:32*pm, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Thursday, July 26, 2012 6:31:57 PM UTC-4, Evan Ludeman wrote:
The skies of VT and NH are incredibly empty.

Except near the airports where the newbie pilots are concentrated. (My original point.) Though the worse case is 3-4 trainers in the air, a towplane, and 3 XC launching at 1 pm.

Sometimes I think that in this neighborhood a Trig Mode-S transponder would be more valuable than a PowerFlarm as both Springfield and Sugarbush are right on Victor Airways to Burlington and Lebanon. *4-5 biz jets not uncommonly land at VSF on Saturday afternoon. *TCAS is a beautiful thing.

The PCAS function (transponder in the neighborhood) of PFlarm is valuable for GA traffic (as Tony mentioned).

As worst cases go, that's pretty light, except about the jets. I'm
astounded that you are getting that much jet traffic.

IIRC you get painted pretty low at VSF, so pcas should be useful
there. Go very far North though, and you have to be at 4 or 5000 to
get interrogated. Not sure how good Powerflarm pcas will be for
jets. I see pcas targets by eyeball almost always before I get the
info from flarm unless they are below/behind me. No way am I getting
pcas at 5 miles. Maybe 2 miles. Is that enough for jets? Is any
pcas device enough for jets? If I saw "4 or 5" bizjets at my altitude
in one day from my sailplane cockpit, I'd have a transponder this
time next week.

-Evan / T8