I am a Glider CFI and Tow Pilot, I live in Brazil and although I do not recall any collision accident along the past 29 years that I have been flying, however, the airspace sharing with IFR aircrafts has always been a concern, specially because I used to fly Mountain waves at 15,000 ft near the largest TMA in Brazil (Sao Paulo), or as already said, near to the cloud base of a nice cumulus cloud.

It seems a consensus that if small batteries cannot sustain a transponder up to six or eight hours, it may not be a feasible option for high perfomance gliders.

Although I am not expert on transponder technology, I will risk some humble opinions and leave some food for thought during the SSA Convention :

- Development of transponders that are always on low consumption (stdby) and only react when a certain level of signal is received;

- Passive Radar deflectors that will somehow reflect radar singal and clearly tell controllers that a glider is there (Sail boats use that on ocean);

- Radio comm mandatory whenever below VMC minimuns (i.e. less than 300 m vertical or 1,200m horizontal from clouds (flying without a radio makes no sense on these days).

These are my quick two cents… something must indeed be done in this area so we see everyone well.

Thanks for bringing it up, good luck and all the best.

Great topic! I have flown gliders off and on for 40 years. Texas Soaring Association had to move farther away from Dallas over the years as the Class B airspace expanded. The result is a long drive but little conflicting air traffic near the field.

Last year I got checked out in the CAP 2-33 at Pleasant Valley Airport NW of Phoenix. It is just outside the Class B airspace, and just north of a major VFR transition route. I was really worried about the amount of traffic in the area. On one occasion I was circling in a thermal when a turboprop went zooming past not far from me. The combination of my tight turn and my need to look at the vertical speed indicator (no audio) to center in the thermal made it very unlikely I would be able to spot high speed traffic early enough to avoid a collision.

I remember thinking that it was crazy to fly a glider in such a high traffic area without a transponder. It seems like someone needs to develop a simple transponder with a replaceable battery that lasts a couple of hours. That way a pilot could install a freshly charged battery before the flight, and potentially install a spare battery if necessary during the flight, without running down the battery used for the radio and other instruments. This would also work in simple gliders like the 2-33 that have no battery. The transponder could be removed between flights to avoid theft, or pilots could even bring their own transponder.

I will be interested to learn what comes out of your discussion. While I am a “less regulation is better” person, as the recent training regs for the MU-2 have proven, sometimes a regulation can save lots of lives. I certainly would have been a lot more comfortable if I had a transponder in that glider. The trick will be to design a light weight, simple and relatively inexpensive unit that is appropriate for gliders and especially training gliders.

We operate a ride glider at a busy resort in the summer months. I really believe the bottom line for everyone’s safety is communication. We try to make sure that all traffic knows that we’re there and what our intentions are. The better the glider pilot can clearly communicate his needs and intentions, the better we all seem to get along. I hate to say it, but at busy non-towered airports NORDO ops, though legal, are no longer acceptable. We will not launch without a functioning radio.

General aviation power pilots cannot be counted on to learn about the capabilities and limitations of gliders. They often complicate the situation in the pattern by slowing down, doing three-sixties or other maneuvers designed to give us more time when we’d just like them to continue their approach. They also need to understand our need to make downwind departures under a variety of conditions.

The decision to turn on the transponder should obviously be the glider pilot’s and should not be regulated. I’m very concerned with the growing tendency of many pilots to depend on their traffic avoidance systems in their panels to the exclusion of looking out the window, but that’s another subject.

I’m looking forward to your comments after the convention. Thanks for your efforts.

Your comments exemplify exactly the challenge we face. I am not a fan of more regulation but perhaps more self policing and awareness. I suspect it will be lively discussion in LIT and I hope to become far better educated on this.

I also think that we ( ASF) can do a better job of education. There are certainly other ideas and I look forward to hearing them both here and down South