EC Review
Taking stock of EC
Share the air. Sense all others, be seen by all others. So say the CAA’s slogans for the future of airspace in the UK. Ian Fraser reports
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theme common to many recent CAA publications (CAPs) concerning the future of airspace in the UK is ‘sense all and be seen by all’. It is about Electronic Conspicuity (EC), a system in which all aircraft automatically transmit their GPS derived position via radio beacons and we will all (including ATC) have a ‘radar’ display and warning device, using this data, to alert us to potential traffic conflicts. That couldn’t be clearer, and there is affordable technology available today that could do it. With this technology, the airspace modernisation programme planners can harness the data, confident that it has high integrity and will allow a reduction in the amount of controlled and restricted airspace. Commercial and GA traffic could share the air safely, and the UK would become a much more aviation-friendly place to be. Successful EC is absolutely fundamental to the CAA’s lower airspace modernisation strategy (CAP1734) and must happen. But will it? One of the key requirements for the CAA’s vision of EC is that all the devices must be (in their words) ‘interoperable’. To me, that means that there can only be ONE standard for all beacon transmissions and the same standard for all receivers. In various CAPs, the CAA say that they will start to
mandate EC for choke points by 2023, and several regional airports are already planning airspace change in response to their modernisation initiative. Is EC ready for that? No, it is not. Currently there are four incompatible conspicuity technologies in use in the UK – ATC Radar, Mode S ES (ADSB), FLARM and Pilot Aware (PA).
Incompatibility
Below The CAA CAPs and the SkyEcho 2.
Much has already been written on the problems of, and incompatibility between, these technologies, so I won’t repeat much of it here. It’s a bit like current politics where every standard has its champions who claim they are right and that everyone else is completely mad and wrong. In fact, each of the technologies has strengths and more seriously, weaknesses. This article was supposed to be an annual technology update on the EC world, but since my last one in February 2019, very little new technology has appeared. Nothing is happening because the market is waiting for the CAA’s decision on an affordable way ahead for EC technology. To date, the CAA and EASA have been very careful not to take any decisions. In most of their documents they carefully explain that they are not favouring any technology, but they do appear to prefer the traditional transponder band, 1090Mhz, and to continue to use
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