Originally Posted by
Senior Skipper
No, I'm not kidding you. It is unreliable. If "see and avoid" worked, there wouldn't be any collisions would there? Sure, it has saved my butt a few times already, but you can't be looking outside all the time. You get distracted by tasks inside the cockpit, and you may not have scanned a sector of the sky properly and thus didn't notice somebody.
If your eyes down, doesn't the other guy pick up the scan?
Whatever the reason, it doesn't work. Now I'm not suggesting that we all get TCAS and then stop looking outside, but when you're buzzing along VFR at 1500ft without flight following, and somebody directly above you at 3000ft starts descending, you'll quickly appreciate the value of TCAS.
Your driving along and a car T-bones you....sure wish we had some kind of lighting system to tell us when to go and when to stop at busy intersections!
I'm not saying that we should switch to TCAS based separation, but it is an invaluable tool in avoiding collision.
Birds have a tendency to FOD out our engines, maybe we should kill all birds...
Like anything thing else, if you throw enough money at it, you can most likely get it fixed. But like most things, money is the prohibiting factor. Doing this would drive most GA guys out of flying. I would venture to say that most GA pilots are willing to take their chances rather than be driven out of flying.