Garmin Shocker: Inexpensive Retrofit Autopilots For Wide Range Of Planes

Poor example. SRQ has not one, but two ILS. Someone with enroute only GPS and an Nav/Com with Glideslope is going to get in there, just as well as the WAAS GPS owner.

Small fields are actually worse than your example, because that's where a WAAS GPS shines. If, as you say, they actually have an LPV approach. Many don't.

When they start decommissioning ILS approaches, your point would be much more valid. Especially giving an example of an airport with not just one, but two of them. :)

Check out post #35. I said unless you have an ILS capable plane. ILS isn't going anywhere right now, but I'd be willing to bet that getting an ILS approach setup at an airport costs more than an RNAV.

I acknowledge many small fields don't have LPV, and I addressed that in post #37 :).
 
And that wasn't what the person was asking for, they were saying they expected longer support on a device they already own.

But that last line is entertaining. List off the "other options" WAAS provides enroute in a non-approach environment. I'm interested in this list of "many other options".
And that wasn't what the person was asking for, they were saying they expected longer support on a device they already own.

But that last line is entertaining. List off the "other options" WAAS provides enroute in a non-approach environment. I'm interested in this list of "many other options".

Sure, check out the FAA brief on it here: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_or...nss/library/factsheets/media/WAAS_QFSheet.pdf
 
Check out post #35. I said unless you have an ILS capable plane.

Most aircraft with an older enroute non-WAAS GPS are ILS capable. Heck, when we install our GTN we'll keep the ILS receiver and move the OBS down a hole. 200 1/2 is the typical ILS, and that ain't bad when you're trying to get in.

That's why the person who complained that their older unit is not supported, complained. The unit works fine, they have an ILS receiver, they're fully capable of getting into most airports an LPV capable GPS will get someone else into.

The bottleneck on getting LPV approaches "everywhere" is the work needed to design the approach. Conversion of even the NDBs to the interim GPS approaches took the FAA years and years.

Ironically WAAS GPS does have one major benefit in the TRAINING environment. Airports with a single ILS used to be allowed to do opposite direction traffic toward the ILS. That particular policy change by FAA made the ILS useless for training even in broad daylight when everyone can easily see everyone, and gave the WAAS GPS trainers a distinct advantage in that business.

(Technically it also gives the ILS a disadvantage if the wind is howling in the wrong direction, too... but most airports put the ILS on the runway with the prevailing bad weather winds, and with a long runway, a pilot may also elect to land downwind out of an ILS approach to a point. Omitting Circle to Land because usually that'll put you at non-WAAS GPS minimums or close to it.)

The installed quote for a GTN 650 and GTX 345 in our 182 is pushing hard on the underside of $19,000 installed. We COULD get by with an enroute GPS and the existing ILS receiver for IFR. We probably won't. We're gadget hounds, but I can empathize greatly with someone who doesn't want to pay that to replace an older already installed enroute GPS + ILS setup.

$20,000 as a single owner is serious coin. Splitting it with a co-owner makes it 50% less painful.
 

Other than the T and Q routes, I see no list of "many" additional options for enroute that a non-WAAS GPS won't accomplish. Am I missing something? You specifically said "non-approach" and "many options" were made available by WAAS. That means enroute, and there's nothing on that page that looks like "many options" enroute that aren't available to an older non-WAAS GPS.
 
Most aircraft with an older enroute non-WAAS GPS are ILS capable. Heck, when we install our GTN we'll keep the ILS receiver and move the OBS down a hole. 200 1/2 is the typical ILS, and that ain't bad when you're trying to get in.

That's why the person who complained that their older unit is not supported, complained. The unit works fine, they have an ILS receiver, they're fully capable of getting into most airports an LPV capable GPS will get someone else into.

The bottleneck on getting LPV approaches "everywhere" is the work needed to design the approach. Conversion of even the NDBs to the interim GPS approaches took the FAA years and years.

Ironically WAAS GPS does have one major benefit in the TRAINING environment. Airports with a single ILS used to be allowed to do opposite direction traffic toward the ILS. That particular policy change by FAA made the ILS useless for training even in broad daylight when everyone can easily see everyone, and gave the WAAS GPS trainers a distinct advantage in that business.

(Technically it also gives the ILS a disadvantage if the wind is howling in the wrong direction, too... but most airports put the ILS on the runway with the prevailing bad weather winds, and with a long runway, a pilot may also elect to land downwind out of an ILS approach to a point. Omitting Circle to Land because usually that'll put you at non-WAAS GPS minimums or close to it.)

The installed quote for a GTN 650 and GTX 345 in our 182 is pushing hard on the underside of $19,000 installed. We COULD get by with an enroute GPS and the existing ILS receiver for IFR. We probably won't. We're gadget hounds, but I can empathize greatly with someone who doesn't want to pay that to replace an older already installed enroute GPS + ILS setup.

$20,000 as a single owner is serious coin. Splitting it with a co-owner makes it 50% less painful.

It cost me about 14K installed to add a GTN-650 to the Cherokee. It already was setup for ILS/VOR/LOC approaches, but that didn't help me at all at the smaller airports that only had RNAV for example. And here in FL there are a LOT of those smaller airports.

My reasoning was, why limit myself to LNAV only? Plus, nothing against ILS but to me, RNAV was just, more fun (if that's possible). And I'm a gadget hound as well..So that's why I added the GTN-650, if I'm gonna use it as an ILS replacement, might as well go all the way to LPV. And it opened a lot of doors for alternate airports when filing.

You say "most aircraft" and are probably right, I like to have my cake and eat it too. I'd rather have a panel that supports 90% of approaches out there then limit myself but not having the right equipment. However, given the choice between an ILS and an RNAV, I'll fly the RNAV. GPS just gives you more options, and the WAAS makes it very equivalent to ILS.

Having a panel with an LNAV only GPS would be to me the same as having a localizer/vor only panel (not the same concept I know, but I mean it in a limiting sense).
 
This is one reason I am too poor to own a plane:

It cost me about 14K installed to add a GTN-650 to the Cherokee

Oh well I can dream at least :)
 
Other than the T and Q routes, I see no list of "many" additional options for enroute that a non-WAAS GPS won't accomplish. Am I missing something? You specifically said "non-approach" and "many options" were made available by WAAS. That means enroute, and there's nothing on that page that looks like "many options" enroute that aren't available to an older non-WAAS GPS.

There's plenty of articles out there, just do a google search for enroute benefits of waas:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=enroute+benefits+of+waas

Again, for you there may be ZERO benefits, but additional routing choices, more altitude options (Alaska, for example) and better integrity are a few of them that I've found. There are more than that.

Many to me doesn't = 600, it's more than 3 (few).
 
Why is a business model where 40-year-old avionics continue to be viable choices desirable for anyone? It's truly bad all around and is only still running in our world because of the crazy cost of new avionics. We say we want someone to fix our old boxes, but what we're really saying is that we want a cheap way to maintain functionality. If you could reasonably trade out your entire panel for something better every 10 years, wouldn't you do it? If that cost $10,000 instead of $100,000 to make everything new? You wouldn't even think about saving that old radio or GPS.

Of course, that's not the world we live in. Avionics are crazy expensive. I'd prefer to spend my efforts promoting a world where I can upgrade for a reasonable cost vs. repair for a reasonable cost. How many of us really have an affection for ancient avionics the way we would for vintage aircraft? I doubt many.
 
There's plenty of articles out there, just do a google search for enroute benefits of waas:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=enroute+benefits+of+waas

Again, for you there may be ZERO benefits, but additional routing choices, more altitude options (Alaska, for example) and better integrity are a few of them that I've found. There are more than that.

Many to me doesn't = 600, it's more than 3 (few).

So three is now "more than" three? LOL.

Snark about me not looking up things that don't exist that you claim exist, isn't winning the argument. Sorry. Plus I wouldn't be asking if I didn't know already. It's called "challenging the false premise". It's more polite than flatly saying you're wrong, to simply ask you to defend vague words like "many options". Your words and your assertion.

Routing choices... that's one. T or Q routes. Doesn't matter really, any enroute GPS can accept "Direct" without using a T or Q route, and in practice, that's what controllers are issuing anyway. The route gives you a known terrain clearance and some other stuff, but so does a VOR waypoint to VOR waypoint GPS routing.

So it's not really any real practical benefit. To anyone. Other than in places where no route existed. And even then, just accept "Direct". Done. So it's not "just me". Slightly more pre-flight prep to confirm terrain clearance, and that's a no brainer.

Altitude options in Alaska... wow, there's a stretch. Did you forget we're talking about someone in the Lower 48 who has a non-WAAS GPS and ILS receiver?

Integrity... how much integrity does one need to see the thing say "satellites lost" and tune in a VOR as backup and join an airway? Not a practical problem solved by WAAS.

You're not making a very good case for your assertion that there's "many options" provided enroute by WAAS. All of the websites linked in that LMGTFY search gave no additional items than were on the FAA sheet originally linked.

They're just marketing material based upon said FAA material, which makes sense, since FAA certainly knows hat they've approved and not approved and is the source material. The FAA page looks quite comprehensive other than the Alaska thing.

Remember your assertion was that the person's non-WAAS GPS was obsolete. Your next assertion was that the WAAS GPS gave "many options" besides approaches. I see nothing in your list yet that the non-WAAS GPS can't do in the enroute environment.

Pragmatically WAAS simply doesn't add anything outside the terminal environment. And the ILS receiver can match it for approaches at 1500+ airports.

I'm not making this up. Asking was the nice way to see if you knew why you were flat wrong.
 
That's why the person who complained that their older unit is not supported, complained. The unit works fine, they have an ILS receiver, they're fully capable of getting into most airports an LPV capable GPS will get someone else into.

I agree that the main and practical benefits of WAAS are the terminal performance.

There are now twice as many WAAS approaches (LP and LPV) in the US than ILS approaches. An IFR GPS that is not equipped to fly them is obsolete, old technology. LPV's have some advantages but to me they are essentially the same thing as an ILS. There are over 1000 airports in the USA now served by LPV approaches that do not have an ILS. All around me are podunk airports with no ILS that now have a precision approach.

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_or...nss/library/factsheets/media/WAAS_QFSheet.pdf
 
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So three is now "more than" three? LOL.

Snark about me not looking up things that don't exist that you claim exist, isn't winning the argument. Sorry. Plus I wouldn't be asking if I didn't know already. It's called "challenging the false premise". It's more polite than flatly saying you're wrong, to simply ask you to defend vague words like "many options". Your words and your assertion.

Routing choices... that's one. T or Q routes. Doesn't matter really, any enroute GPS can accept "Direct" without using a T or Q route, and in practice, that's what controllers are issuing anyway. The route gives you a known terrain clearance and some other stuff, but so does a VOR waypoint to VOR waypoint GPS routing.

So it's not really any real practical benefit. To anyone. Other than in places where no route existed. And even then, just accept "Direct". Done. So it's not "just me". Slightly more pre-flight prep to confirm terrain clearance, and that's a no brainer.

Altitude options in Alaska... wow, there's a stretch. Did you forget we're talking about someone in the Lower 48 who has a non-WAAS GPS and ILS receiver?

Integrity... how much integrity does one need to see the thing say "satellites lost" and tune in a VOR as backup and join an airway? Not a practical problem solved by WAAS.

You're not making a very good case for your assertion that there's "many options" provided enroute by WAAS. All of the websites linked in that LMGTFY search gave no additional items than were on the FAA sheet originally linked.

They're just marketing material based upon said FAA material, which makes sense, since FAA certainly knows hat they've approved and not approved and is the source material. The FAA page looks quite comprehensive other than the Alaska thing.

Remember your assertion was that the person's non-WAAS GPS was obsolete. Your next assertion was that the WAAS GPS gave "many options" besides approaches. I see nothing in your list yet that the non-WAAS GPS can't do in the enroute environment.

Pragmatically WAAS simply doesn't add anything outside the terminal environment. And the ILS receiver can match it for approaches at 1500+ airports.

I'm not making this up. Asking was the nice way to see if you knew why you were flat wrong.

Meh, non-WAAS IS obsolete. Fight it all you want, but arguing that a 20 year old device is somehow on par with something manufactured in the last few years is just asinine. If you want to fly using an unsupported GPS that is about 3 times less accurate then WAAS shooting LNAV approaches with your hair on fire, have at it man. To each their own.

That you choose to ignore the "marketing materials" or discount the references I gave you is your decision, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. So to you, there is nothing it adds. That doesn't mean it adds nothing.

It's all good, we'll just have to agree to disagree on a couple things. And yeah I realize that "few" statement was stupid, I fixed it after I wrote it...lol.
 
I agree that the main and practical benefits of WAAS are the terminal performance.

There are now twice as many WAAS approaches (LP and LPV) in the US than ILS approaches. LPV's have some advantages but to me they are essentially the same thing as an ILS. There are over 1000 airports in the USA now served by LPV approaches that do not have an ILS. All around me are podunk airports with no ILS that now have a precision approach.

This is true. Now, one must ask... how many are more than an hour drive from an airport with an ILS? $10,000 buys a lot of crew car gas for not much time wasted.

In the terminal environment? Buying new? WAAS all the way.

But the person was complaining that their non-WAAS GPS was unsupported by the manufacturer, and that led to a blanket statement of it being "obsolete".

It's not. Not even close. Not when paired with an ILS receiver. Not obsolete in any way from what it could do the day it was installed, and the aircraft will work just fine in the IFR system still. (Ironically, one could keep the non-WAAS GPS and have to feed the stupid ADS-B transponder or UAT with a WAAS source. LOL.)

The extra approaches are nice. Maybe not $10,000 nice. Uninstalled. $12,000 installed. How many people who have a non-WAAS GPS already and an ILS receiver, need to fly 12 of those approaches not available any way other than WAAS, per year? That'd be $1000/approach amortized over that first year.

I bet the average spam can IFR driver actually NEEDS WAAS approaches to LPV minimums less than 10 times a year. Just a SWAG. Most recreational IFR rated pilots go to larger city destinations where there's plenty of ILS approaches around.
 
This is true. Now, one must ask... how many are more than an hour drive from an airport with an ILS? $10,000 buys a lot of crew car gas for not much time wasted.

In the terminal environment? Buying new? WAAS all the way.

But the person was complaining that their non-WAAS GPS was unsupported by the manufacturer, and that led to a blanket statement of it being "obsolete".

Its obsolete. I can still use Microsoft word on my old PC. But YouTube crashes it. YouTube used to be a novelty, but YouTube is everywhere now. All my friends use it. My old computer is obsolete.
 
And that wasn't what the person was asking for, they were saying they expected longer support on a device they already own.

Exactly. It has nothing to do with whether a person thinks it's adequate or not. It has everything to do with expecting a company to support avionics for longer than a dozen years. Similarly, support for my 496 was discontinued in 2015 (with a quick google search it looks like that is also only 10 years or so after it came on the market).

And, as you allude to in another post, most older planes have a ILS capability. Yes, mine does also.

But to address the point trying to be made: I don't live on the coast and thus don't have to screw with marine layers. I also don't fly that much IFR so my personal minimums are well above my plane's minimums. Thus I haven't gone missed in the 18+ years I've been instrument rated.

i.e. what I have works just fine for me, thanks!

I just wish it was still supported if/when it goes tango uniform.
 
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Meh, non-WAAS IS obsolete. Fight it all you want, but arguing that a 20 year old device is somehow on par with something manufactured in the last few years is just asinine. If you want to fly using an unsupported GPS that is about 3 times less accurate then WAAS shooting LNAV approaches with your hair on fire, have at it man. To each their own.

That you choose to ignore the "marketing materials" or discount the references I gave you is your decision, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. So to you, there is nothing it adds. That doesn't mean it adds nothing.

It's all good, we'll just have to agree to disagree on a couple things. And yeah I realize that "few" statement was stupid, I fixed it after I wrote it...lol.

You keep ignoring the context. The owner with a non-WAAS GPS and an ILS receiver. Nothing obsolete about that setup at all, in the current IFR system. Doesn't even significantly limit where the aircraft can go.

You also keep ignoring that I was addressing your inaccurate statements. I wasn't arguing to go shoot LNAV approaches, I was pointing out the flaws in your knowledge of what an old non-WAAS combined with an ILS receiver can accomplish, pragmatically.

Keep in mind you're the one who posted two approaches for a WAAS GPS that didn't get you as low as the ILS approaches on the same airport.

Just because someone says something is obsolete doesn't make it so. Pragmatically, the non-WAAS GPS and ILS receiver performs as well at your chosen example airport as your WAAS GPS. For less than 1/3 the price tag. Way less. About $7000 less.

That's 107 hours aloft in my airplane in fuel costs. (56 hours aloft if all maintenance and hangar is included.)

A GTN 650 plus GTX 345 installed is 308 hours worth of fuel. (160 hours aloft all-in.)

That's a lot of money to gain 1000 airports if someone has been successfully and safely going to destinations for decades with a VOR and ILS receiver.

Or put it another way...

$20,000 for a GTN and GTX, and let's say you're the typical owner right at that "magic" 100 hours a year to make owning worthwhile. Let's say you plan on keeping the airplane 5 more years before selling it. Heck, call it ten.

Keep the airplane a decade, the GPS and a transponder cost you $20/flight hour. Sound cost effective if you already have an older GPS and ILS on board?

Love the newer toys, but waving hands and saying "obsolete" doesn't make the older ones actually any less useful. Only the manufacturers have done that by not supporting their products.

By forcing no support, the manufacturers are also forcing a depreciation schedule that rivals the engine on the aircraft itself. I think it's completely normal and acceptable for someone who's last round of avionics lasted them two engines, and 40 years, to expect their current stuff to be supported for one engine and 20 years.

That's a 100% increase in avionics costs in the overall aircraft operaring and maintenance budget, not including subscriptions to feed the avionics that didn't need annual subscriptions to operate properly the past.

That probably pushes it to a 125% operating cost increase over the previous avionics with ground based systems over the typical 2000 TBO.

Now apply that math to the owner of an already paid for older GPS. 125% operating cost increase over 2000 hours and then throw it away and do it again? To gain 1000 approaches and nothing enroute?

I can see easily where the foundation is laid to be pretty mad at Garmin for not supporting the units longer.

We'll still do it to our airplane, but "ten years and dead" is too short for stuff that used to last at least 20.
 
Its obsolete. I can still use Microsoft word on my old PC. But YouTube crashes it. YouTube used to be a novelty, but YouTube is everywhere now. All my friends use it. My old computer is obsolete.

That's planned obsolescence via incredibly crappy code and has little to do with the capital expenditure asked of an avionics purchase. A new computer has come drastically DOWN in price, too.

But it does show that the IT industry has done our lying really really well. You're fully brainwashed into the three year consumer tech depreciation cycle, which once was seven, and before that was over a decade.

Avionics aren't consumer tech. You're not downloading new bloatware into them weekly. The accelerated fake obsolescence of consumer electronics doesn't apply for a $12,000 device. Or damned well shouldn't. That's one quarter of the median annual income of all Americans.

(By the way, I can probably get your old computer to play YouTube just fine, but you'll have to dump the commercial OS bloatware off of it.)
 
Yeah, the only thing I expect to grow is the databases, I may never need a software update on the GTN. Maybe there will be one for the new G5 autopilot interfaces but that has yet to be seen.
 
Yeah, the only thing I expect to grow is the databases, I may never need a software update on the GTN. Maybe there will be one for the new G5 autopilot interfaces but that has yet to be seen.

Databases always grow to exceed the available data space. That's a truism of all databases! Right @gkainz ? :)
 
Most recreational IFR rated pilots go to larger city destinations where there's plenty of ILS approaches around.

Your source for that is?

I rarely go to big city airports myself, cost me $7000 to upgrade to WAAS, if I fly another 14 years, that's $500 per year, not counting what It adds to the plane when I sell it.
 
Databases always grow to exceed the available data space. That's a truism of all databases! Right @gkainz ? :)
almost absolutely true! :) which is why we NEVER tell anyone how much capacity the storage array has ... we just tell them how much we've allocated for database currently...and then grumble and complain when they need more space (and then mount another handful of 300Gb LUNs during lunch)


to bring this back to GPS, when the database outgrew the capacity for my old GPS-90, I dissected it and made a custom load with just the West regions I needed. That got tiresome and the GPS-90 got relegated to the bookshelf. Anybody wanna buy a perfectly good hand-held GPS? :)
 
If you could reasonably trade out your entire panel for something better every 10 years, wouldn't you do it?

No.

Not only no, but he'll no.

Not if what's in my plane suits my needs. And what's in my plane suits my needs.

But, then again, I own a 3 year old cell phone (shudder!).
 
No.

Not only no, but he'll no.

Not if what's in my plane suits my needs. And what's in my plane suits my needs.

But, then again, I own a 3 year old cell phone (shudder!).

Even if that were the fundamentally cheaper model? $1000/year for refresh vs. $1000/year for repairs, and you'd pick repairs? Why?

Note: this is an orthogonal argument to @denverpilot . I have no disagreement with the position he's got, which is based in the current world reality. My view is about a more idealized model.

EDIT: Also, I have a two year old cell phone that I expect will get another year out of. Three years seems about right there: about $200/year I find quite acceptable for the level of improvement it provides my life.
 
You guys . . . when I think I'm getting close to my destination, I just trigger my ELT then call Flight Service for a DF steer, if they're within the range of my handheld COM. If not in range, then I'm still in the enroute phase and I figure the CAP guys will come out and find me and lead me to where I need to go. If that fails, I get out my paper WAC chart and get serious about having to find my own way. This doesn't have to be hard or expensive.
 
Because...

Throw away mentality sucks.

Every decade hardly counts as a throw-away mentality.

Every product has a useful life. Every product has a life vs. cost trade-off wherein there's a sweet spot which minimizes total cost. Currently, that trade-off for avionics is ridiculously on the long-life side. And, I'll grant, most of the rest of our products are a bit too far on the short-life side for convenience sake. There's a definite contrast between life in aviation and most of the rest of what we do.

Part of the reason the cost is so far that way is the regulatory environment these avionics live in as compared to volume being produced. (Car production has even tighter regulations, but the volume makes it mostly transparent to us, as an example.) The other part is that the cost of this long life is mostly borne by us as a group instead of individually, making the individual incentive to move forward much lighter. The old technologies must be supported by our government and taxes much longer due to the resistance to fixing up the fleet.

So, instead of financial incentive, the FAA has been moving forward by offering two uglier incentives. The first is straight legal requirements, e.g. ADS-B Out. The other is by removing the infrastructure needed for the old tech, e.g. VORs. Those are tools that are trotted out when you're talking about incentivizing against a group need instead of personal need. They're ending the welfare for the old tech.

If we had refresh/upgrade cycles closer to a decade vs. a half century, we would only have to bear the cost of around two cycles or 20 years of equipment. But we don't. We need to bear the cost of nearly all the equipment ever used commonly. Radio ranges are gone. Loran is gone. NDBs are just about gone. But everything else lives. VHF radio? check. VORs? check. GPS? check. Mode A? check. Mode C? check. Mode S? check? WAAS? check. LAAS? check. ILS? check. ADS-B? check. TCAS? check. HF radio? check. Radar? check. I could keep going...

But there's no way to make that happen today. $50k for a panel that stays current isn't hard to spend. Issuing that sort of ultimatum to the piston fleet would collapse it overnight. Fortunately, it looks like ADS-B is going the other way: there's enough people who are going to move forward with it instead of ending their flying careers that prices are dropping to semi-reasonable levels. If ADS-B were more complex and more costly, it may have gone the other way: people shuttered their planes instead of flying them, leading to a complete collapse and extremely high prices for the tiny remaining volume.
 
Every decade hardly counts as a throw-away mentality.

It does in aircraft. Aircraft easily outlive their avionics.


financial incentive, the FAA has been moving forward by offering two uglier incentives. The first is straight legal requirements, e.g. ADS-B Out. The other is by removing the infrastructure needed for the old tech, e.g. VORs. Those are tools that are trotted out when you're talking about incentivizing against a group need instead of personal need. They're ending the welfare for the old tech.

Incorrect. VOR shutdown is only below cruising altitude. They've clearly announced they're keeping the enroute VOR system.

They've also clearly announced that there will be no shutdown of any radar system, and ADS-B will NOT be considered primary.

The welfare continues unabated, with inferior NEW systems that still require the old systems as backup. The concept that these are "replacement" technologies isn't accurate. FAA has even publicly said so.

And you forgot the most egregious one: Purposefully crippling a safety system to force uptake.

If there's one thing pilots need to get through their heads, it's that the ADS-B IN "hockey puck" has no purpose being in Aviation safety whatsoever.

Anyone with a receiver operating should receive ALL traffic in the coverage area of the tower at all times. Period. Full stop.

Don't believe me? What's the failure mode when a properly installed and working ADS-B IN and OUT system loses a transmitter final amplifier after 2020? Same as today.

The system will immediately stop sending other aircraft locations to that perfectly working receiver that didn't fail, because "hockey puck".

That's not failsafe. That's fail. Designing a safety system that doesn't apply "best effort" design methodology is utterly stupid.

The pricks PURPOSEFULLY BROKE a system designed to add safety to drive uptake. If there's one thing everyone should be screaming at ANYONE doing a damned ADS-B meeting about the benefits of the system and added SAFETY it's that the "hockey puck" turns that statement into a bald faced LIE. Turn it off.

Sooner or later folks are going to realize that one and just like Selective Availability of GPS, the "hockey puck" algorithm will find its way to the trash heap of horrible engineering ideas and disabled forever.

You DO NOT build a broadcast traffic safety system that is only sent certain traffic selectively to the transmitters. Ever.

No. No. No. It's wrong, it's bad safety engineering, and it needs to be shot in the head right where it stands and dropped in the street.
 
Your source for that is?

I rarely go to big city airports myself, cost me $7000 to upgrade to WAAS, if I fly another 14 years, that's $500 per year, not counting what It adds to the plane when I sell it.

Traffic counts. Podunk airports are usually ghost towns.
 
Pricing of aviation components and aircraft is based on the victims blood volume, not cost. Why is a turbo SR22 100k more than a NA version if the difference in equipment retail prices is 30k or less ?
Because there are enough knuckleheads with big bucks to pay it.
 
It does in aircraft. Aircraft easily outlive their avionics.

Incorrect. VOR shutdown is only below cruising altitude. They've clearly announced they're keeping the enroute VOR system.

They've also clearly announced that there will be no shutdown of any radar system, and ADS-B will NOT be considered primary.

The welfare continues unabated, with inferior NEW systems that still require the old systems as backup. The concept that these are "replacement" technologies isn't accurate. FAA has even publicly said so.

And you forgot the most egregious one: Purposefully crippling a safety system to force uptake.

If there's one thing pilots need to get through their heads, it's that the ADS-B IN "hockey puck" has no purpose being in Aviation safety whatsoever.

Anyone with a receiver operating should receive ALL traffic in the coverage area of the tower at all times. Period. Full stop.

Don't believe me? What's the failure mode when a properly installed and working ADS-B IN and OUT system loses a transmitter final amplifier after 2020? Same as today.

The system will immediately stop sending other aircraft locations to that perfectly working receiver that didn't fail, because "hockey puck".

That's not failsafe. That's fail. Designing a safety system that doesn't apply "best effort" design methodology is utterly stupid.

The pricks PURPOSEFULLY BROKE a system designed to add safety to drive uptake. If there's one thing everyone should be screaming at ANYONE doing a damned ADS-B meeting about the benefits of the system and added SAFETY it's that the "hockey puck" turns that statement into a bald faced LIE. Turn it off.

Sooner or later folks are going to realize that one and just like Selective Availability of GPS, the "hockey puck" algorithm will find its way to the trash heap of horrible engineering ideas and disabled forever.

You DO NOT build a broadcast traffic safety system that is only sent certain traffic selectively to the transmitters. Ever.

No. No. No. It's wrong, it's bad safety engineering, and it needs to be shot in the head right where it stands and dropped in the street.

I don't think we're disagreeing much. I pulled ten years out of thin air as a length that sounded roughly reasonable. Of course, the best replacement timeline to aim for in the market would take serious research to optimize. And I don't disagree that aircraft outlive avionics, but I am saying that that is a good thing. I take throw-away mentality to mean that a mentality that values convenience over cost. This isn't that. These upgrades have objective benefit and it comes back to a straight cost-benefit analysis. Even if avionics have a shorter life than the aircraft they live in, I would not immediately attach a "throw-away" tag to it. I'd call them semi-durable: not quite the longevity of the airframe, but also not the disposability of true consumables like tires.

Yes, I'm aware that VORs are being retained for the foreseeable future. However, most of the conversation had been around approaches, and those are exactly the VORs that are disappearing.

Systems like ADS-B are designed into the environment they serve. They serve an environment where it's known that the old tech won't go away. Limitations like the "hockey puck" exist because the fallback of primary and secondary radar couldn't be eliminated. ADS-B was designed without internal failsafes because it could be. It had external failsafes. I also believe that this is a case where the slow uptake of technology at the infrastructure level really kills us. My understanding is that the "hockey puck" was designed into the system due to bandwidth and data limitations. It was an attempt to concentrate available information into the space where you knew you'd have consumers. ADS-B design started long ago. Today, I doubt we'd have the same limitations, as wireless bandwidth has increased mightily. But we're stuck: once the spec was written, it would be decades before it could be fixed up again.

If it were up to me, I'd alternate development cycles. Upgrade the space-based system one cycle. Update the ground-based system the next cycle. I'd call the current ADS-B mandate a space-based cycle, as the source-of-truth for the system is GPS. The ground-based pieces are just data collection and distribution. But satnav and satellite communication are easy to jam and quite delicate. It shocks me it works as well as it does day to day! A robust ground-based positioning system is critical as a fallback system. We're currently retaining "just enough" VORs to make that happen, along with primary and secondary radar. I'd choose to upgrade VORs next: use the existing bases to extend to a system that can provide similar features to sat nav. If you made the tuning of the stations automatic and the location triangulation automatic, robust ground-based signals could provide a location as good as GPS. Add a data return channel and now you've got a backup to secondary returns via ADS-B. Two systems, each capable of independently supplying the same features!

Again, I think we're mostly agreeing?
 
The issue with GPS and the reason it will always require lower tech backups is that there is no way I'm aware of to make the weak signals safe from jamming from more powerful terrestrial transmitters closer to the receiver. This is not a weakness of the engineering, it is an inherent limitation we have to live with to accrue all the other benefits. Besides widespread blackouts could take out the terrestrial stuff too, so in the end yes we have both more redundancy and much more capability.

GPS of course being generally the basic underpinning for Next Gen / ADSB and all the LPV approaches we enjoy today...


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The issue with GPS and the reason it will always require lower tech backups is that there is no way I'm aware of to make the weak signals safe from jamming from more powerful terrestrial transmitters closer to the receiver. This is not a weakness of the engineering, it is an inherent limitation we have to live with to accrue all the other benefits. Besides widespread blackouts could take out the terrestrial stuff too, so in the end yes we have both more redundancy and much more capability.

GPS of course being generally the basic underpinning for Next Gen / ADSB and all the LPV approaches we enjoy today...

Agree, as said above. Belt and suspenders approach is needed. I still think the current VOR system could use an overhaul. We can do GPS-style nav ground-based, if we modernized ground-based outlets, which currently consists of VORs and radar. Radar got a bit of a boost from ADS-B, but VORs remain moribund tech.
 
Agree, as said above. Belt and suspenders approach is needed. I still think the current VOR system could use an overhaul. We can do GPS-style nav ground-based, if we modernized ground-based outlets, which currently consists of VORs and radar. Radar got a bit of a boost from ADS-B, but VORs remain moribund tech.

A set of new solid state vors broadcasting azimuth and dme and id is all you need for the onboard computer to do RNAV...


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A set of new solid state vors broadcasting azimuth and dme and id is all you need for the onboard computer to do RNAV...

Indeed. Combine that with the parts I mentioned, which is interaction-free acquisition of the signals (no tuning, no OBS), and you have a working system. I just didn't want to be prescriptive of the technology used in my post. But, yeah, that's probably the first design I would think about using. I'd also want to add ADS-B-like data channels, both Tx and Rx. That way, we'd also have a secondary source for the reporting of the surveillance data. This would also be a good time to update the ADS-B protocol to get around things like the "hockey puck".
 
Beats 10K just for the parts though....

Saw that it looks like roughly 20 hours to install, so on the order of 2 AMU. Call it 5 AMU for a full install for a two-axis A/P with Altitude Preselect and GPSS? That is the best deal you're getting today.
 
Dunno. But I'll be talking to them next week in Wisconsin!
 
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