Head on a swivel out there.
Very unfortunate midair collison near Calabasas, CA.

1 Dead After 2 Small Planes Collide Near LA - ABC News

 

RIP. Fortunate that even one made it down intact.

This keeps happening in SOCAL.

 

 

Wow, my recurrent nightmare. Wonder if they had TIS, helps with my (glass) plane but obviously no substitute for continuous scan. Hopefully ADS-B takes care of this in 2020.

 

ADS-B helps now. There are GBTs over nearly the entire US, and they transmit terminal radar data, wx, etc, so as long as there's an xpder, there's a good chance of picking them up, especially in a terminal area. TIS is extremely limited in capability and won't be supported beyond the current installations, but a few years back ADS-B exploded across the US. It'll be nice when each aircraft has an ADS-B transceiver rather than a transponder so the ADS-B units will talk to each other like TCAS, but ADS-B is doing it's thing now. Lots of airliners have integrated ADS-B/TCAS/Xpder units that are a one-in-all now too.

 

From GA perspective, though, I just worry about the lag before it is widely implemented, because there will always be a bunch of non-retrofitted planes tooling around Class Echo without the proper transponder, so I just fear that relying too much on assumption that people are using ADS-B is worrisome, and people will have increased tendency to be "head down" instead of scanning.

I know other people have different fears, but this is my greatest safety worry in aviation for me personally. Lots of old planes even without strobes or Mode C in my area of country, Sunday fliers that do things that are sometimes not really advised.

 

I see too many GA once-a-monther’s, Sunday fliers, etc that fly like they drive their cars on the highways. Mind-numbing! Ignorant and oblivious to airspace class, ATC procedures, pattern entry procedures, etc. Gawd…even common sense is just sooo lacking. I'll stop. No need for a rant here.

 

Yeah, the guy I'm partners with in a plane--to watch him enter a pattern and make radio calls....yikes!!

 

I recommend you upgrade and get it. It really does help significantly with awareness. It IS widely implemented right now. Targets that are not ADS-B equipped still show up on radar and that signal is beamed to your aircraft via the GBT. That coverage is great in terminal areas.

Your fear is no different than someone that is currently flying around with no transponder, and he won't show up on either, but the technology has taken a big step forward a few years ago with full GBT implementation.

The point I was making is that ADS-B won't "take care" of this in 2020 or what you were referring to, this always boils down to human factors and the fact that someone is out there flying in the airspace legally without that equipment or the ability to make his position known.

It's always the one you don't see though!

 

Was referring to the 2020 mandate for ADS-B out for entry to Bravo and Charlie space... this rule will suddenly make "almost everybody" have the ADS-B equipment, so somebody with the receiver will have much better position information as a general rule, hopefully preventing stuff like this with the near realtime update and dramatic improvement in accuracy for equipped planes. Maybe not "completely solve" the problem, but significantly help.

Challenges abound with FAA?s ?ADS-B Out? mandate

Not sure if this timeline has been changed, quite a while since I looked into it as I decided it wasn't prime time yet, but from what you're saying ADS-B out rebroadcast coverage is coming along nicely so I will again look into it. I want to upgrade my 182 to something else eventually so will eventually just do it at that time.

I didn't get the ADS plugin/upgrade yet primarily because of economics, I looked into it when I first entered to my current partnership but it didn't make sense. I think it was over $10,000 for the G1000 upgrade. I have TIS though and coverage around most places locally, which is nice but obviously going to be discontinued.

Totally agreed with everything said above. I had a fellow doctor-pilot I was flying with yawn and say "oh, so nice to not have to worry about other planes with flight following," on a perfect Saturday afternoon. I squirmed a little bit and focused out the window.