![]() |
If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
|
#1
|
|||
|
|||
![]()
Don Johnstone wrote:
snip I am sorry if my opion offends and seems negative but the answer to this problem is a human one, better education, better training, better awareness of the problem and potential hazards and perhaps even a change in the way we view flying close to each other. Don, I'm not offended by your opinion - I just don't understand it. Better everything would be, well... better - but it's a goal that has existed forever and it hasn't answered the problem yet. Perfect education, perfect training, perfect awareness, etc. would be an answer, but it's just not available. Lets be honest with ourselves - in the real world of jobs, families, weather, and long commutes to the gliderport all of those betters are just *not* going to happen, at least not in any systemic way. My subjective view is that the majority of collisions take place between aircraft that know exactly where the other aircraft is yet still manage to make contact. This is certainly true of the military who as I said earlier are the only other significant organisation that encourage aircraft to fly close together. I really don't see how another gadget in the cockpit can help unless it is very sophisticated indeed. Let's try on another analogy and see how it fits - automobiles. Hundreds of modestly-trained individuals moving in tight formation, passing within a meter of one another, closure rates of 200+ kph, etc. Horribly complex to analyze, and no system has yet been invented that will recognize a bad situation and reliably guide the driver out of it. Thankfully, rather than say "can't be done - let's have some more driver education" the auto industry has provided any number of safety "gadgets" such as airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, proximity radar, and on and on. For each individual gadget there are plenty of straw-man situations that can be conjectured for which the gadget doesn't help, but of much greater significance are the lives saved in situations where the gadget *did* help. No one advocating the FLARM or other hypothetical system thinks it can safely guide a pilot out of *all* possible collision situations - let's stop debating it's usefulness in a 40-ship gaggle. Can we agree that there are *some* or perhaps *many* situations where it could help, and were it available and widely deployed today at least *some* of this year's mid-airs might have been avoided. I'd buy one. Dave |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
![]() |
||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
For Keith Willshaw... | robert arndt | Military Aviation | 253 | July 6th 04 05:18 AM |
Anti collision lights mods for Arrow 1968?? | Frode Berg | Piloting | 3 | May 20th 04 05:42 AM |
Anti collision light mod for Piper Arrow 1968 model? | Frode Berg | Owning | 4 | May 20th 04 05:16 AM |
New anti collision system for aircrafts, helicopters and gliders | Thierry | Owning | 10 | February 14th 04 08:36 AM |
USAF = US Amphetamine Fools | RT | Military Aviation | 104 | September 25th 03 03:17 PM |