Postby Peter.L. » Fri Mar 02, 2012 2:31 pm
Good Day Everybody,
A couple of points in this thread require clarification, so here goes.
Firstly, all aircraft station and most other types of licence fees for the forthcoming year, i.e. 01/04/2012 to 31/03/2013, were debited to the respective licence accounts on 22nd of February. Posting of renewal notices would have commenced the following week, beginning Monday 27th, and I am aware that some have already been delivered. If you have not yet received yours, it is likely in the post but if you have not received it by, say, the 3rd week of March, please make enquiries. Don't forget that, although ICASA does send renewal notices to the vast majority of licence holders, in terms of the relevant legislation it is actually your responsibility to ensure that the licence fees are paid on time, regardless of whether or not you actually receive a renewal and, as we all know only too well, documents have a nasty habit of wandering from their projected flight path in RSA. We have already had an example of licences being summarily cancelled due to non-payment of fees back in March of last year, which caused a lot of grief and PT to a good few aircraft owners/operators insofar as getting the fees paid and the licences re-instated. Let's try and not have that happen again!
Oh and by the way, although I'm sure that you all know by now, I would like to remind everyone that the annual licence fee will increase to R120.00 with effect from 1st April 2012.
Secondly, the matter of handheld radios needs addressing. There seems to be a misconception in some quarters that a handheld is not required to be reflected on a licence. This is totally incorrect! With a very few exceptions, the law requires ALL radiocommunication equipment to be properly licenced, either on an individual basis or as part of a bigger installation. No aeronautical radios are excluded from the licencing requirement. A handheld, therefore, may be licenced as a stand-alone radio carried on a particular aircraft as the sole means of communication or as an emergency device carried aboard an aircraft with a variety of other communication equipment. The respective radio licence must identify the handheld as the sole radio or as part of the entire radio installation. Typically, microlights do not have adequate facilities available for the installation of a fixed radio and it is therefore common for the pilot to carry the handheld on and off the aircraft when it is in use. Currently the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Radio Regulations, which RSA is a signatory to and is therefore required to comply with, stipulates that if radio communication is carried out from an aircraft, that aircraft must be licenced to conduct such communication. In other words and related to our own situation, the owners/operators of all SA registered aircraft from which radio communication is carried out must be in possession of the relevant licence obtained from ICASA (Please note here that this is not just a local requirement but is International law). This means that, as John has previously mentioned, if you have more than one aircraft which you use from time to time, all of them must be covered by their own individual radio licence. However, it is not necessary for all of them to be provided with individual radios (unless obviously they are in use at the same time) but one handheld may be rotated amongst them according to requirements.
I hope that clarifies the situation a little. It is not the full story regarding licencing of radios but I think it will suffice for now, otherwise people may start falling asleep.
If anyone has further queries or is experiencing problems with radio licencing, please drop me an email and I’ll try and provide answers.
pleonard [at] icasa.org.za
Ciao for now
Peter