EC review
Electronic conspicuity – and how to use it!
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Neil Fraser explains EC’s foibles and advises plans for when you have a potential conflict…
have been investigating, using and reporting on Electronic Conspicuity (EC) for nearly four years and have notched up more than 150 hours air use of various gadgets. My experience of the traffic information from my EC has on the whole been good, and I have even experienced a couple of real traffic alerts. However, while they have woken me up, they also demonstrated to me that I was not as familiar with my traffic display as I should be, and I had no real plan of how to deal with the more challenging traffic conflicts it may identify. So, in this article I take a more in depth look at EC displays and possible pilot reactions to traffic alerts from them. The CAA says it is embracing EC for the future of airspace
Below The CAA’s latest Clued Up publication.
management. It has published several brochures, which include slogans such as ‘see and be seen and share the air’, the latest of which is Clued Up future vision (Picture 1) which can be found on its website as CAP2000 and was handed out at the LAA Rally. In it, the CAA encourages us all to equip ourselves for our own good but talk about ‘sharing the air’ without any explanation of what this might really mean to us in terms of freedom or restriction. My own expectations of EC and indeed the CAA’s future vision, if taken literally, depend on EC devices working effectively together as a system, not individually. Before EC can really contribute to a safe and capable aviation infrastructure that permits ‘sharing the air’ the CAA must resolve the interoperability challenge of the disparate standards – ADSB, PAW and FLARM – about which they currently sit firmly on the fence. However, the politics and difficulties over beacon (EC out transmitter) standards have been debated interminably elsewhere, so let’s move on. Traffic avoidance only becomes a serious problem when two aircraft try to occupy the same piece of airspace. Thankfully such events are few and far between, but it is a risk we all take when we fly. As an American pundit put it, ‘today we depend on big sky and small airplanes for our air traffic safety’. However, as the public airports in the UK continue to grab more of our airspace (seemingly unaware of the CAA’s ‘share the air’ and EC policy), that big sky is getting smaller and the traffic density higher. The CAA, it’s procedures, regulations and our training as pilots, address avoidance of traffic conflict to try to minimise this hazard, but are they moving with the times? With the advent of Electronic Conspicuity many of us have invested in EC devices to reduce the risk further, and it certainly adds another string to the bow of collision avoidance. Is it just a question of putting a beacon in your aircraft to be able to ‘share the air’ safely, or is more required to reduce the risk?
Conflict prevention: The Skyway Code
1 14 | LIGHT AVIATION | December 2021
To help us avoid conflict the CAA has published rules condensed into a readable form, the Skyway Code (CAP1535). This includes (VFR) rules for avoiding and resolving traffic conflict including directions of flight at altitudes above 3,000ft, flight along line features (roads / rivers etc.), priorities and procedures around aerodromes, passing and conflict avoidance manoeuvres. Mutual compliance with these rules goes a long way to mitigate the collision risk, but maybe now is the time for it to include EC.
