Turn off your transponder!

With all of the Next Gen hype, ADSB, TIS, FIS, Mode-S, etc.....

I was contemplating the purchase of a new Trig Transponder so I could take advantage of the traffic capabilities over the summer flying season. Then I started to remember that we are supposed to set our transponders to standby when flying in to Oshkosh - precisely the place that something like in flight traffic would be the most useful! Is there a good reason to turn our transponders off? I know that the purpose was to keep from overwhelming controllers, but they have some pretty cool hardware these days to help them out. Besides, I'm VFR and I'd rather have in cockpit traffic (even with it's shortcomings) that might possibly save my bacon. The controllers can filter out the 1200 squawks, so how could it hurt for us to leave our transponders on?

They may want you looking out the window!

I suggest you turn it off like they ask and look outside. Many aircraft won't even have xponders and most that do will be following the rules and have em turned off.

One thing I learned last year for my first trip to Osh arriving during a busy time.....The arrival at Osh is flown by the seat of your pants with your eyes outside and your head on a swivel and you follow the NOTAM to the letter!

Too many airplanes!

The EAA controllers would have to give you the final word, but from my experience flying into both Osh and Sun n Fun, there are too many airplanes for controllers to handle via radar. All of the transponder hits would just overwhelm the screen. Normal spacing goes out the window during these operations. In fact, they are landing three airplanes on a single taxiway at once (blue and white cessna, land on the orange spot!).

As others have suggested, you keep your eyes outside and follow directions carefully. I have always done this with multiple people in the airplane, all of us watching for other traffic.

It is a blast though!

David

Yep

The very best anti-collision device...eyeballs

Best,

If everyone had mode s transponders or better it would be possible because they support selective interrogation, meaning that the radar can interrogate just your airplane and if a transponder isn't the intended recipient it ignores the request. This enables radar to work in incredibly congested airspace and is one of the big reasons that many nations have mandated mode s.

I'll ditto what everyone else said - just keep your eyes outside, head on a swivel and the railroad tracks between your legs.

Trig Transponder

I purchased a trig transponder last year and I love it. I was able to put the electricaly noisy unite under the seat and run the antenna out the bottom with a very short coax. It also has the altitude read out on the screen so you can double check the unite or altimeter by just turning the altimeter to 29.92. It has worked flawless for me but when I checked it out with the tower they wanted me to change to a different squak and I forgot how to change the numbers so it took me a minute or so of fiddling around to get it tuned in. The tower requested my altitude and it check out with what I was showing on my steam gauges and Trig, cool. I'm happy with my purchase.

your eyeballs

I've flown into Oshkosh enough times to understand the need for good see and avoid techniques, but this doesn't mean I stop scanning my instruments. I also realize that not everyone has a transponder and TIS-B is not 100% reliable. I'm pointing out that this government mandated tool (in currently mode-c areas) would be another trick in the bag to augment pilot awareness when flying in to Oshkosh, yet we are effectively banned from using it.

Don

Turn it off. I am a retired center controller, and granted, we do have filters for "VFR Targets", that can only be selected for high altitude sectors. The other thing is that if you are squawking a code you come up as a slash (about a 1/4") vs a "primary only target" (no transponder) which is a dot. There are a lot of planes crunched into one small area, so between all of the target overlap, tracks swapping around with other aircraft close by, etc, it all becomes useless to us and actually takes away from our primary goal... separation.

Hope that helps.

Follow the Notam

I fly in the Phoenix area and have traffic (TIS) in my 7. It can be very distracting to continually hear, "traffic, traffic." Your eyes should be out.

Even if you kept it on and everyone else is in Standby, I don't think you are going to get traffic. Also, not even sure Wittman is TIS enabled.

Simply follow the Notam to the letter. Study it, know it, follow it. Practice your slow flight at 90 kts and holding altitude. Do it until you can do it!!! Everyone arriving is expecting every pilot to be in the right place at the proper speed and altitude.