Question to our Italian friends

In the form of the Swiss Soaring Society there is a link to a link to a regulation of the Italian aviation authority about Transponder requirements in Italy. http://www.fivv.it/documenti/2003/Reg-Transponder.pdf

In Paragraph 1.2.f it is written 'a partire dal 30 giugno 2004 tutti i velivoli e gli elicotteri che operano nello spazio areeo italiano in aualungue classe di spaci aereo'

I don't speak Italian, but as far as I can understand this means transponders will be mandatory for gliders from 30 June 2004 Is this true?

Tel P 01 363 62 42, Tel G 01 632 43 60, Fax G 01 632 10 21

Hi!

No, it means, in accordance with the Eurocontrol original english text, XPDR is mandatory for AIRPLANES and ROTORCRAFT in all of Italian airspace, effective 30-6-2003

XPDR is mandatory already from now, in gliders, only for flights in class C, D, E airspace. (not much of that is close to the areas where we use to fly, just the TMA of Padova for example).

Some discussion, however, is going on, as many ATC operators don't have clear understanding of the definitions of AIRCRAFT ('aeromobile', including gliders and ballons), and AIRPLANE ('velivolo', powered fixed wing aircraft).

Cheers

Aldo Cernezzi

(remove PUSSAVIA+BUBU to reply to me)

I meant 2004, of course

Peter, you have just become a victim of what translators call a 'wrong friend'. (In German 'falscher Freund', I don't know whether it is really called a 'wrong friend' in English.)

A wrong friend is a word in a foreign language that sounds like a word in a known language but means a different thing. Here, 'velivolo' sounds like the french 'velivole' (glider pilot) which you probably know, but means 'motorized aircraft'.

(BTW: Computer translations are full of wrongly translated 'wrong fiends'. One of the most famous is Control Panel, which is everywhere translated as 'Kontrollfeld' instead of 'Einstellungsfeld'. Just another step towards the decay of western culture.)