978 or 1090?

[jnmeade]

How can one tell if a typical GA aircraft with no obvious history of 18K or international flight uses 978 or 1090 ADS-B out? FAA registration data doesn't seem to tell.

 

[asicer]

How can one tell if a typical GA aircraft with no obvious history of 18K or international flight uses 978 or 1090 ADS-B out? FAA registration data doesn't seem to tell.

Look up a flight on https://globe.adsbexchange.com and under "Stuff", see if it has DO-260B (1090Mhz).

 

[jnmeade]

ADS-B version: none

 

[asicer]

ADS-B version: none

If that says "none", go look at the "signal" section. It should say "ADS-R or UAT" (976).

 

[jnmeade]

It says ADS-B. (I assume the "R" in your message was a typo?) Thanks for the primer. Useful to know.

 

[asicer]

It says ADS-B. (I assume the "R" in your message was a typo?) Thanks for the primer. Useful to know.

The 'R' stands for "Rebroadcast", meaning the ground station received a 976Mhz message and re-transmitted it on 1090Mhz. DO-260 is the technical standard that covers 1090ES and DO-282 covers UAT. But adsbexchange seems to be a bit weird. From the live view, everything seems to report DO-260B v2 but as soon as I click on a target's history some will switch to "none" and some will remain as DO-260B v2. Those that switch will also have a signal source of "ADS-R or UAT" but I have not seen the "ADSB" and "none" combo. Maybe that indicates a fault of some sort? 1090ES aircraft will usually report "ADSB" and "v2 DO-260B".

 

[WDD]

I'm thinking that your typical GA airplane with an ADSB compliant transponder is going to do ADSB Out on 1090 ES.

I don't believe Stratus or Gamin make panel mounted transponders that broadcast on 978. There might be a relatively small percent using something like the Garmin add on GDL which does use 978, but that would only be for those who didn't want to replace a non ADSB transponder.

Is this just a curiosity question?

 

[brcase]

I'm thinking that your typical GA airplane with an ADSB compliant transponder is going to do ADSB Out on 1090 ES.

I don't believe Stratus or Gamin make panel mounted transponders that broadcast on 978. There might be a relatively small percent using something like the Garmin add on GDL which does use 978, but that would only be for those who didn't want to replace a non ADSB transponder.

Is this just a curiosity question?

There are also quite a few GA aircraft using these which are 978mhz.

 

[asicer]

There are also quite a few GA aircraft using these which are 978mhz.
View attachment 152952

There's even a few more equipped with the echoUAT, which (if not already obvious) is also UAT.

 

[cowman]

For practical purposes it seems like it would be easiest to just find out what equipment it has installed and look that up.