SAFA Skysailor Magazine

46 SKY SAILOR December-January-February | SUMMER 2025/2026 out at the beginning of the chapter about GA in the explainer box on p141. The first is, “extending and expanding ex- isting subsidies for the purchase of Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) equipment.” Well, that sounds promising. Might be time to write to those nice people in Minister King’s office again. But wait, the second says, ” keeping the skies safe by reducing collision risk between drones and crewed aircraft by considering advice, by in late 2025, about a timetable for mandating ADS-B devices.” When I read these, two thoughts ran through my mind. First, my suspicions about the motives around the rebate scheme just might have been well- founded. Secondly,we’re not eligible for the subsidy, but are included in the mandate? Really? A minor diversion to CASR Part 103 We’d already had advance notice of the intention to require us to carry surveillance equipment. It came in the form of a draft of the planned Chapter 6 of the CASR Part 103 Manual of Standards (MOS). This document was provided to us with follow-up correspondence from our submission on a proposal to allow access to controlled airspace for sport and recrea- tional aircraft. The email described that for the purposes of air traffic control and aircraft separation, EC devices could not be considered due to technical requirements concerning geolocation. I’m going to reproduce the relevant table from that chapter here (although the formatting gets a bit weird); it was provided before the Part 103 Technical Working Group recon- vened later in 2024. The ADS-B Mandate Proposal and Consultation