re: very happy to have TCAS
I’ve not flown with the comfort of that! Does it require that both aircraft have the system for it to work?
I remember years ago a device that could sense the presence of a strobe from a mile or so away. It looked for the frequency of the light from a strobe. It’s apparently different enough from other lights to make it pretty selective. I saw them being marketed for ultralights. Talk about a bunch of aircraft all doing their own thing!
One company had a strobe that was designed to be more visible to the systems that looked for strobes.
I have not seen anything on this in years or even heard about it. Could be that it was one of those inventions that looked better on paper than in reality!
It doesn't require both aircraft to have the system, but the traffic has to have a mode C transponder.
We jokingly call it the fish finder because it isn't always that accurate in bearing, but is pretty good in altitude. The aircraft I fly have it piped into the nav systems so it gets displayed on the moving map. A couple of our aircraft have piped into a Garmin 530. Not that high end. I usually see the guys pop up on the scope well outside of 10 miles and the screen goes to traffic only and verbal warnings around a mile.
Personally the scariest things I've seen in aviation is when you find yourself in glider country. They fly at pretty high altitudes, despite their wing span they are often hard to see, and they usually aren't talking to anybody to conserve battery power. There was a corporate jet flying on an IFR flight plan into Reno a couple years ago that got T bones over Minden by a sail plane. The glider pilot was doing vertical maneuvers right in the approach corridor. He got out with a chute. The jet landed at Carson City gear up with a serious injury to one of the pilots. Passengers were okay.