ADS-B Practicalities

pstan

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Stan
Lots of ADS-B info out there, but I'm struggling with the practicalities. Consider it is the year 2021, and all IFR aircraft now have ADS-B out installed, so traffic is as heavy as today, or more so.

First, how will this expedite a high level flight between busy airports, say from Miami to Newark?


Can I expect a more direct route?
Tighter aircraft spacing, so on departure I can expect a more direct climb to cruising altitude?
Increased arrival rate at Newark meaning fewer radar vectors and less low altitude arrival flying?
Can busy airports (Miami/Newark etc) accommodate more movements?

Secondly, how will I use my ADS-B out during the flight, other than for traffic awareness?

Thanks for your thoughts

Stan
 
Secondly, how will I use my ADS-B out during the flight, other than for traffic awareness?

Thanks for your thoughts

Stan

You must have a fundamental misunderstanding of ADS-B out, it doesn't get you any ADS-B IN data.

There is no real pilot interface to ADS-B out, its just there, broadcasting extra data much like an altitude encoder, except the added information is horizontal position on Earth measured by a GPS sensor (perhaps over simplified as there is other parameters broadcasted).

ADS-B IN is almost like XM weather. I can read METARS, PIREPS, Winds Aloft, TFRs, NOTAMS, view NETRAD radar images, and more.

I never bought into XM weather, I just didn't need it. I didn't buy portable ADS-B receiver either. So with that all in mind my ADS-B out/in transponder is pretty amazing to me because I can pull up a METAR at an airport 300 miles away far beyond the reach of VHF comm radio range without extra work contacting FSS and much much more data right there at my fingers.
 
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Lots of ADS-B info out there, but I'm struggling with the practicalities. Consider it is the year 2021, and all IFR aircraft now have ADS-B out installed, so traffic is as heavy as today, or more so.

First, how will this expedite a high level flight between busy airports, say from Miami to Newark?

It won't.

Can I expect a more direct route?

Maybe. If you have a GPS and ATC likes sending you Direct.

Tighter aircraft spacing, so on departure I can expect a more direct climb to cruising altitude?

No.

Increased arrival rate at Newark meaning fewer radar vectors and less low altitude arrival flying?

No.

Can busy airports (Miami/Newark etc) accommodate more movements?

No.

Secondly, how will I use my ADS-B out during the flight, other than for traffic awareness?

Nothing, you don't do anything with ADS-B Out. It just does it's thing. You use ADS-B IN data if you like... weather, etc.
 
ADS-B IN? For most of us at the lower end of GA, there isn't much value. It'll save the FAA some money, though the payback will have to be in the $10B range, so not sure how long that will take.

You can get weather enroute, and see where most of the airplanes around you are, but enroute mid-airs are a miniscule hazard, very rare, so the ROI for that is near zero.
 
All very discouraging.

We will have aircraft transmitting their accurate position via ADS-B. Much more accurate positioning than primary radar or SSR I 'm thinking. Yet ATC separation rules will remain the same?
 
ADS-B IN? For most of us at the lower end of GA, there isn't much value. It'll save the FAA some money, though the payback will have to be in the $10B range, so not sure how long that will take.

You can get weather enroute, and see where most of the airplanes around you are, but enroute mid-airs are a miniscule hazard, very rare, so the ROI for that is near zero.

There isn't much value to ADSB-In? Are you crazy? I guess if you never leave the pattern.

Personally, I wouldn't go on a flight of any significant distance w/o ADSB-In.
 
All very discouraging.

We will have aircraft transmitting their accurate position via ADS-B. Much more accurate positioning than primary radar or SSR I 'm thinking. Yet ATC separation rules will remain the same?

I remember the first cell phones were in bags and the next generation was a brick. I think once the fleet hardware is compliant you will see positive changes.
 
There isn't much value to ADSB-In? Are you crazy? I guess if you never leave the pattern.

Personally, I wouldn't go on a flight of any significant distance w/o ADSB-In.
Seriously? I flew for 8 years without it, I could fly without it again. I do appreciate it though, it is plenty valuable as long as one does not rely on it to the exclusion of the Mark I eyeball.
 
All very discouraging.

We will have aircraft transmitting their accurate position via ADS-B. Much more accurate positioning than primary radar or SSR I 'm thinking. Yet ATC separation rules will remain the same?
With radar, all of the measurements are from a single source, so even if the actual location of any particular aircraft is somewhat in error, the relative difference in positions between two aircraft will be reliable - and that's what you need for separation. With ADS-B, each position report is from a different device which, while it may typically be more accurate as far as absolute position is concerned, each individual device is not regularly calibrated and you can't be sure that everyone is giving you an accurate value. So, not so good for separation.
Then you have the issue of "how much room do you need to allow for pilot screwups?". Even if you know everyone's position to the nearest millimeter, you still can't put them too close together because you can't predict exactly what a pilot will do - perhaps bend over to enter an approach on some gizmo or another and go off course for tens of seconds.
 
so how accurate are WAAS GPS coordinates? how accurate do they need to be?
 
I remember the first cell phones were in bags and the next generation was a brick. I think once the fleet hardware is compliant you will see positive changes.

The fleet hardware will be compliant in 18 months or so. What "positive" changes can we expect?
 
Yes, seriously. I flew without it, too, but I won't again.
Very soon I will have to, as when my plane gets back from annual my GMX-200 is going back to Garmin to fix a hardware problem that causes frequent crashes. I'd be more nervous if I still flew in busy airspace like the area I learned to fly in (southeast MI), but I would still do it. My feeling is that I don't want to be so dependent on this great new technology that I'm afraid to fly without it. Also, I know from experience that as useful as it is, there are occasionally targets that don't show up on ADS-B, even one or two that ATC calls out to me.
 
Very soon I will have to, as when my plane gets back from annual my GMX-200 is going back to Garmin to fix a hardware problem that causes frequent crashes. I'd be more nervous if I still flew in busy airspace like the area I learned to fly in (southeast MI), but I would still do it. My feeling is that I don't want to be so dependent on this great new technology that I'm afraid to fly without it. Also, I know from experience that as useful as it is, there are occasionally targets that don't show up on ADS-B, even one or two that ATC calls out to me.
It's not the traffic that I can't live without. It's the weather, pireps, notams and everything else.
 
All very discouraging.

We will have aircraft transmitting their accurate position via ADS-B. Much more accurate positioning than primary radar or SSR I 'm thinking. Yet ATC separation rules will remain the same?

Yes. ATC separation distances are based on time to collision, not how accurately you can watch the collision happen.

Inside a Bravo if nobody has had the speed restrictions waived, your maximum closure rate is 500 knots. Underneath or in a VFR corridor, 400.

There isn't much value to ADSB-In? Are you crazy? I guess if you never leave the pattern.

Personally, I wouldn't go on a flight of any significant distance w/o ADSB-In.

Don’t get on any airliners or military aircraft then, they don’t all have it. Many never will.

so how accurate are WAAS GPS coordinates? how accurate do they need to be?

Doesn’t matter. See above.

It’s not about accuracy, it’s about ADS-B not being able to be proven as a source. There’s no repudiation that a transmission actually came from any particular aircraft. Spoofing means that radar has to be primary.

It simply wasn’t designed to control traffic.
 
It's not the traffic that I can't live without. It's the weather, pireps, notams and everything else.
Well, I have XM for weather. But it's displayed on the GMX-200 too, so I will have to do without for a while, soon. And nearly everything I said about traffic, I would say about that stuff as well. It is all great to have at your fingertips, but IMHO not indispensable. Other than some weather details, in a pinch most of that information can be gotten by asking ATC.
 
There isn't much value to ADSB-In? Are you crazy? I guess if you never leave the pattern.

Personally, I wouldn't go on a flight of any significant distance w/o ADSB-In.
I might be crazy - some relatives and a boss or two thought so - but for GA, for traffic, it is truly a multi-billion dollar toy - if you look at the stats, we (lighter end of GA) just don't collide very often, and almost never do so in cruise. The sky is big, our planes are small. For our purposes, the ROI isn't there - the $$$ could have had a better impact elsewhere. The weather stuff is nice, but that was already available commercially - the Feds didn't need to spend $10B to bring us that.

Actually, it may be more valuable in the pattern - but for traffic, mostly useless, en-route. And you'll need eyeballs to see me in a year or two, as I won't be transmitting anything at all. Now that I think about it, you're scaring me a little, if you won't fly without it - that's a lot of faith to put in a complex system with a big number of failure modes, based heavily on software, and an easily disrupted positioning system.
 
When you get your monthly bill for ATC and weather services based on your flight activity, you'll see the real impact ADS-B has on GA.
 
All very discouraging.

We will have aircraft transmitting their accurate position via ADS-B. Much more accurate positioning than primary radar or SSR I 'm thinking. Yet ATC separation rules will remain the same?


ADS-B is only one part of the ATC picture. While all the proponents of ADS-B have been touting the increased coverage and higher update rate compared to traditional single source radar, the FAA and DOD have been working behind the scenes on radar upgrades. Just in the last 10 years, most terminal approach facilities have been going to FUSION mode. That is the overlapping of primary radar and SSR into one tracked target. That tracked target has gone from being “painted” from roughly once every 4.5 secs to as good as every second and with increased low altitude coverage.

Even with a “fused target” no real reduction in separation because like Nate said, you’ve got minimum pilot / controller reaction times and also minimum wake turb requirements. The FAA did decrease the old greater than 40 miles from the antenna separation (5 miles) to 3 miles but that was never an issue with single source radar anyway. What’s funny is, with FUSION, if you get an ISR (increased separation required) alert in the tag, the controller has to transition from the minimum 3 miles to 5 miles. A requirement that never existed before using single source radar.

Now, ADS-B is an important surveillance for oceanic and GoM operations and has reduced separation but for the CONUS It’s a supplement. In fact, ADS-B cannot be used as a sole source surveillance over the CONUS. Maybe in the future it will be but as of right now, we still need radar.
 
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Lots of ADS-B info out there, but I'm struggling with the practicalities. Consider it is the year 2021, and all IFR aircraft now have ADS-B out installed, so traffic is as heavy as today, or more so.

First, how will this expedite a high level flight between busy airports, say from Miami to Newark?


Can I expect a more direct route?
Tighter aircraft spacing, so on departure I can expect a more direct climb to cruising altitude?
Increased arrival rate at Newark meaning fewer radar vectors and less low altitude arrival flying?
Can busy airports (Miami/Newark etc) accommodate more movements?

Secondly, how will I use my ADS-B out during the flight, other than for traffic awareness?

Thanks for your thoughts

Stan

No

For one all the planes won't have it, as all the planes don't need it.

Two the reason for it isn't traffic, it's the S part in ADSB, we as pilots won't see any real benifit in efficiency

It's not the traffic that I can't live without. It's the weather, pireps, notams and everything else.

The weather is nice, but can't live without? You can just dial up the same weather stations and ATC 90% of the time will let you know about PIREPS or you can ask, as for to radar it's a little stale for real use.
 
The weather is nice, but can't live without? You can just dial up the same weather stations and ATC 90% of the time will let you know about PIREPS or you can ask, as for to radar it's a little stale for real use.

The data represented in Foreflight via ADSB-In absolutely destroys anything that ATC will relay to you in an audio format.

ATC isn't going to give me a formatted list of NOTAMS.
ATC isn't going to give me PIREPS georeferenced on a moving map.
ATC isn't going (to want to) give me TAFs for all the nearby airports.
ATC isn't going to give me RADAR coverage. I've heard the delayed/incomplete argument before. I find it beyond suitable for reasonable use.
 
The data represented in Foreflight via ADSB-In absolutely destroys anything that ATC will relay to you in an audio format.

ATC isn't going to give me a formatted list of NOTAMS.
ATC isn't going to give me PIREPS georeferenced on a moving map.
ATC isn't going (to want to) give me TAFs for all the nearby airports.
ATC isn't going to give me RADAR coverage. I've heard the delayed/incomplete argument before. I find it beyond suitable for reasonable use.

Your call, but I just don't get as much value out of that, some of it I get before I takeoff, the rest I ether get in the air (like the current wx) and the radar isn't really that useful for the important stuff.

But to,each their own.
 
The fleet hardware will be compliant in 18 months or so. What "positive" changes can we expect?

With time you will see smaller separation standards, expansion of the number of RNAV routes, reduction in random route clearances.
 
The data represented in Foreflight via ADSB-In absolutely destroys anything that ATC will relay to you in an audio format.

ATC isn't going to give me a formatted list of NOTAMS.
ATC isn't going to give me PIREPS georeferenced on a moving map.
ATC isn't going (to want to) give me TAFs for all the nearby airports.
ATC isn't going to give me RADAR coverage. I've heard the delayed/incomplete argument before. I find it beyond suitable for reasonable use.
I hear you, but we didn't need ADSB for those things, and/or there were sources that didn't require a fleet retro-fit and $10B. My personal experience, on the typical 3 or 3.5 hour leg I fly is I check NOTAMS and PIREPS preflight, and I get TAFS and Radar from our Aera. IFR on a nice day, I'm kinda hoping you'll be doing less reading and more looking, if you're VFR.

Anyway, not saying it's without value, just that its value to low end GA is grossly exaggertated - if you already had a WAAS source, then the sdditional cost to you may not have been too high - personally, I'd do the minimum (OUT), and my next airplane won't have it all. . .
 
I hear you, but we didn't need ADSB for those things, and/or there were sources that didn't require a fleet retro-fit and $10B. My personal experience, on the typical 3 or 3.5 hour leg I fly is I check NOTAMS and PIREPS preflight, and I get TAFS and Radar from our Aera. IFR on a nice day, I'm kinda hoping you'll be doing less reading and more looking, if you're VFR.

Anyway, not saying it's without value, just that its value to low end GA is grossly exaggertated - if you already had a WAAS source, then the sdditional cost to you may not have been too high - personally, I'd do the minimum (OUT), and my next airplane won't have it all. . .

I'm not too hot on the required ADSB-Out. I like to be anonymous as the next person, but I'm all about ADSB-In.

The Out requirement will end up costing me $2000-$3000 or so by Q3 2019. That's not the end of the world.

Let's say, even though this isn't the case, that to get In, you had to get Out. Well, $2000 is a fair price, to me, for all the goodies it brings you.

But, that's not even the case. To the end user, In is basically free. This thread keeps mentioning $10b. I didn't feel that. If I did, I don't even know how or when. Anyhow, for the hardware, In can be had the el-cheapo route with a $50-$200 Stratux and a cheap Android tablet. Do it a bit more professionally via Stratus and Foreflight.

Now, I get it. I've been flying less than ten years. I trained and grew into this kind of tech. It just makes sense to me. It makes NO sense flying without it. I can see older people flying barebones steam as viewing this wholly unnecessary, but I'd like to think you can see the value in it and not be so paranoid about the Out aspect.
 
I'm not too hot on the required ADSB-Out. I like to be anonymous as the next person, but I'm all about ADSB-In.

The Out requirement will end up costing me $2000-$3000 or so by Q3 2019. That's not the end of the world.

Let's say, even though this isn't the case, that to get In, you had to get Out. Well, $2000 is a fair price, to me, for all the goodies it brings you.

But, that's not even the case. To the end user, In is basically free. This thread keeps mentioning $10b. I didn't feel that. If I did, I don't even know how or when. Anyhow, for the hardware, In can be had the el-cheapo route with a $50-$200 Stratux and a cheap Android tablet. Do it a bit more professionally via Stratus and Foreflight.

Now, I get it. I've been flying less than ten years. I trained and grew into this kind of tech. It just makes sense to me. It makes NO sense flying without it. I can see older people flying barebones steam as viewing this wholly unnecessary, but I'd like to think you can see the value in it and not be so paranoid about the Out aspect.
You need to get past the age thing - plenty of us old guys are also tech guys, which for some of us is why we can afford flying, even at the low end. I started in avionics, went to software, have plenty of time in glass, etc., and that's not an unusual background for a sixty-something pilot. My argument was narrow focused on the marginal utility of ADSB for the cost, both personally, and nationally, for most of GA. I do see some of the utility, but also wouldn't miss it, either. The gee whiz aspect isn't a mover for me. I mention the $10B, though as you say, we only feel it indirectly, in FAA budget that could have served better causes, or at least more well considered tech.

Understand a lot folks flying for fun can care less; my bucket list includes a coast-to-coast trip in something without an electrical system. I admit I'll cheat, likely with a portable GPS, talking to FF on my iPad. And maybe a handheld radio.
 
The data represented in Foreflight via ADSB-In absolutely destroys anything that ATC will relay to you in an audio format.

ATC isn't going to give me a formatted list of NOTAMS.
ATC isn't going to give me PIREPS georeferenced on a moving map.
ATC isn't going (to want to) give me TAFs for all the nearby airports.
ATC isn't going to give me RADAR coverage. I've heard the delayed/incomplete argument before. I find it beyond suitable for reasonable use.

Those were FSS’ role not ATC. And we’re available via XM for a decade before ADS-B.

To address them one by one...

NOTAMS: You’re supposed to have those before you depart or you’re breaking the law.

PIREPS: I received hundreds of the things from ATC over the years and had no weakness in mentally picturing where the aircraft reporting them was. 290 at 15 miles from XYZ VOR isn’t exactly difficult to figure out in your head if you’re paying any mental attention at all to your route if flight.

TAFs: Never found it a problem to tune in he ATIS or AWOS along the route of flight of airports along the way to see if anything changed significantly from the weather data already pulled in flight planning.

RADAR: On board radar, Stormscopes, and talking to FSS worked fine in the hundreds of hours of VFR flight I’ve done on long XCs covering hundreds of miles. XM was also always available. I had access to an XM receiver and a laptop for many years that received delayed radar just fine. It came in handy for exactly three trips with fast moving storm lines in twenty years.

I “get it”. You grew up as a pilot with a LOT of data available. That doesn’t make the data NECESSARY it just makes it “nice to have”. I’ll budge a bit on this if you’re flying hard IMC on a regular basis, but I seriously doubt it. Not in the equipment you’re flying. And not in weather that needs immediate access to radar. If you’re doing that, you’re not going to survive very long.

I'm not too hot on the required ADSB-Out. I like to be anonymous as the next person, but I'm all about ADSB-In.

The Out requirement will end up costing me $2000-$3000 or so by Q3 2019. That's not the end of the world.

Let's say, even though this isn't the case, that to get In, you had to get Out. Well, $2000 is a fair price, to me, for all the goodies it brings you.

But, that's not even the case. To the end user, In is basically free. This thread keeps mentioning $10b. I didn't feel that. If I did, I don't even know how or when. Anyhow, for the hardware, In can be had the el-cheapo route with a $50-$200 Stratux and a cheap Android tablet. Do it a bit more professionally via Stratus and Foreflight.

Now, I get it. I've been flying less than ten years. I trained and grew into this kind of tech. It just makes sense to me. It makes NO sense flying without it. I can see older people flying barebones steam as viewing this wholly unnecessary, but I'd like to think you can see the value in it and not be so paranoid about the Out aspect.

You’re paying a LOT more than $3000 for ADS-B. Look at the tax deducted from your paycheck and realize that’s not even paying the interest on the debt, let alone the principal, which is growing. The spending is not sustainable.

If you don’t “feel” taxation you’re like a frog boiled in water slowly. Nearly 50% of your life’s work will be taken from you at gunpoint to pay for pet projects like ADS-B which are so marginal on their effectiveness and utility that you can replace them with an XM subscription for much much less money. And have no “mandate” involved at all. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it. If you’re addicted to reading all that data you live in flight and think it significantly affects the safety and outcome of the flight, you haven’t read enough accident reports yet.

Thus, pushing for ADS-B accomplishes exactly one thing eventually. Direct user fees. That’s why Out is mandatory. There’s literally no other reason other than the data center in New Mexico that spooges over the data as part of the unsustainable “war” on drugs.

You’re new here. We could discuss the horrid engineering of the whole thing again, but we’ve already done that years ago. Fire up the search box and dig back if you want to read where ADS-B’s huge engineering problems are. Even the existence of UAT because the original system can’t handle traffic loads that were already there, and growing, when the system was designed, is shameful engineering.

You like NOTAMS. You like data. As an exercise in learning about how bad ADS-B is as a system that wasn’t designed to safety standards already in place in the well-engineered air traffic system in the U.S. ...

Find an ADS-B outage NOTAM.

Clearly the whole system can’t be working flawlessly all the time, but where’s the warning when it isn’t?

It’s not a primary system, it’s not designed to be one, and it’s only real purpose is secondary surveillance, exactly what it’s named. The services it provides aren’t considered critical or they’d be engineered with outage warnings and reliability and coverage overlap in the design.

Coverage isn’t even planned to be complete away from high traffic density areas. Huge swaths of the country are uncovered below certain altitudes and it’s well documented. Look at the published engineering data and charts.

Nothing it does is all that much of a “need” and it’s not designed to be redundant like the rest of the airway “system”. It’s a very expensive “nice to have”.
 
ADS-B is necessary to prevent this well documented issue with RADAR systems (and yes, it is RADAR not Radar or radar - it's an acronym, not a word - and are you willing to bet your life on an acronym? I didn't think so.):
 
NOTAMS: You’re supposed to have those before you depart or you’re breaking the law.
And new ones can pop-up enroute. It's not a bad idea to check enroute. You can bother ATC/FSS or you can check your tablet.

PIREPS: I received hundreds of the things from ATC over the years and had no weakness in mentally picturing where the aircraft reporting them was. 290 at 15 miles from XYZ VOR isn’t exactly difficult to figure out in your head if you’re paying any mental attention at all to your route if flight.
Good for you. It's easier and more fool-proof georeferenced on a moving map.

TAFs: Never found it a problem to tune in he ATIS or AWOS along the route of flight of airports along the way to see if anything changed significantly from the weather data already pulled in flight planning.
Light years easier looking down at your georeferenced map. Especially not having to tune multiple stations and take your focus away from the primary frequency.

RADAR: On board radar, Stormscopes
Most GA doesn't have that.

and talking to FSS worked fine in the hundreds of hours of VFR flight I’ve done on long XCs covering hundreds of miles.
Every single time I've had to talk to FSS in-air was an exercise in futility. What a nightmare. 5+ mins of radio communication (off frequency I might add) for a 30 second pirep, pop-up, hot or cold area, you name it. The first time it happened I figured it was a fluke. The second time I told myself never again. Back to the tablet.

I “get it”. You grew up as a pilot with a LOT of data available. That doesn’t make the data NECESSARY it just makes it “nice to have”. I’ll budge a bit on this if you’re flying hard IMC on a regular basis, but I seriously doubt it. Not in the equipment you’re flying. And not in weather that needs immediate access to radar.

Of course it isn't NECESSARY in that the plane will fall out of the sky. I also don't need glass panels, steam gauges or an electrical system.

But it's there, it works great despite what you all think and there is literally zero reason not to use it except out of spite and unacceptance of new tech.



You’re paying a LOT more than $3000 for ADS-B. Look at the tax deducted from your paycheck and realize that’s not even paying the interest on the debt, let alone the principal, which is growing. The spending is not sustainable.
This reeks of paranoia. Show me, anywhere (please actually because I'm curious) the line item that shows the percentage deduction that I'm paying for ADSB.

If you don’t “feel” taxation you’re like a frog boiled in water slowly. Nearly 50% of your life’s work will be taken from you at gunpoint to pay for pet projects like ADS-B which are so marginal on their effectiveness and utility that you can replace them with an XM subscription for much much less money. And have no “mandate” involved at all. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it. If you’re addicted to reading all that data you live in flight and think it significantly affects the safety and outcome of the flight, you haven’t read enough accident reports yet.
I understand taxation. Again, I really do want to see what percentage of my paycheck is going to ADSB. You counter with XM, which is hysterically expensive per month for what it provides you when I get almost the same thing with ADSB. When lightning strikes and the other goodies are released this/next month it will be even better. There's a reason almost no one talks about their XM subscription, because they don't have one.




Thus, pushing for ADS-B accomplishes exactly one thing eventually. Direct user fees. That’s why Out is mandatory. There’s literally no other reason other than the data center in New Mexico that spooges over the data as part of the unsustainable “war” on drugs.
Paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.
 
And new ones can pop-up enroute. It's not a bad idea to check enroute. You can bother ATC/FSS or you can check your tablet.

Good for you. It's easier and more fool-proof georeferenced on a moving map.


Light years easier looking down at your georeferenced map. Especially not having to tune multiple stations and take your focus away from the primary frequency.


Not really actually, listening to the weather on your second comm is way better, ADSB also doesn' transmitted the ATIS code i.e. the letter "information Alpha".

But I will agree seeing a punch of PIREPS across the state on the map does help for big picture stuff.


That said, the PIREPS that I really care about, the ones ahead of me on my route of flight. I basically always get a PIREP from ATC and it is really easy to understand, "aircraft 123, a PIREP for moderate chop just in for a aircraft on the final for your destination XYZ airport"
Or I'll ask how the ride is

Radar
"ATC is depicting a area of moderate to heavy precipitation, your 12 o'clock 5 miles out extending 15 miles ahead"

Simple stuff, and again I've never had the delays like with ADSB/XM/etc from a controller, ATCs radar isn't as fast as onboard, but I think it's better than the ADSB/XM stuff.




Every single time I've had to talk to FSS in-air was an exercise in futility. What a nightmare. 5+ mins of radio communication (off frequency I might add) for a 30 second pirep, pop-up, hot or cold area, you name it. The first time it happened I figured it was a fluke. The second time I told myself never again. Back to the tablet.

You're doing it wrong, I get all that info from the controller I'm talking to, and it doesn't take close to 5 min


Of course it isn't NECESSARY in that the plane will fall out of the sky. I also don't need glass panels, steam gauges or an electrical system.

But it's there, it works great despite what you all think and there is literally zero reason not to use it except out of spite and unacceptance of new tech.

So that isn't exactly 100% ether.

I fly a plane that's pretty advanced, I have full ADSB, WAAS, strike finder, real onboard radar, sat phone, etc etc

But you have to know what's important and what isn't, lots of times, especially the XM/ADSB weather can be, as they call it "fake news", especially with quickly changing weather I've seen a significantly different cell painted on my real radar when compared to the next screen with the ADSB/XM "radar" and with older meters or AWOS vs the live one on my second comm.

Think it was Denzel Washington who said if you don't watch the news you're uninformed and if you do you're misinformed, same can be said with tons of information in the cockpit.

XM / ADSB are great, but you really have to know their limitations, and for a plane that doesn't need to know about weather hundreds of miles away, as in building a trend for a long multi state flight, or even for planning next leg of your flight, ADSB and XM are just not nearly as good as asking ATC, listing to the actual weather, looking out the window, trending your OAT and altimeter setting, looking outside and ofcourse onboard radar if you have it.

Again, for convective stuff I really put very very little merit on what those ADSB systems report, that's as someone who's viewed the data side by side with live onboard radar and strike finders, if you don't have onboard radar and you're around convective activity stay visual with it or just stay on the ground.

This reeks of paranoia. Show me, anywhere (please actually because I'm curious) the line item that shows the percentage deduction that I'm paying for ADSB.

I understand taxation. Again, I really do want to see what percentage of my paycheck is going to ADSB. You counter with XM, which is hysterically expensive per month for what it provides you when I get almost the same thing with ADSB. When lightning strikes and the other goodies are released this/next month it will be even better. There's a reason almost no one talks about their XM subscription, because they don't have one.

Well I'm not sure it's paranoid when the government is taking more of the fruits of your labor than you are "allowed" to keep, I mean to say what's another 10b is the same mindset of someone who blows half their rent check on a crappy tattoo and says well I just spent that much, might as well get some air Jordan's too, except in the case of the government it would wouldn't be spending their paycheck, it would be putting it on a credit card without the funding to pay the bill when it finally comes in.

I mean remember we are talking about the "great minds" who brought us this

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/06/07/social-security-could-run-out-2034/



Paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.

Yeah, the government would never roll out a system to track its citizen, especially the more powerful and mobile citizens who have access to private aircraft of any kind

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirtbox_(cell_phone)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethered_Aerostat_Radar_System

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recognition

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013–present)

Etc etc etc
 
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Really.... We were all debating issues which directly effect aviation and also our country, and ether people decided to censoring him, or the actual poster, who was making some good points and counter points, snow flaked out? Lest we debate issues which effect things we all obviously care about and try to find middle ground



Heck I just had something similar happen on Facebook, just on a different subject

IMG_1908.jpg





I mean if we can't discuss matters, even if god forbid the debate gets a little heated, or someone's "feelings" get hurt, where are we headed as a country?
Are we to just separate into in our own little echo chambers and watch the whole thing burn?


Kinda sad really :(
 
Don’t get on any airliners or military aircraft then, they don’t all have it. Many never will.

It's funny you mention this. My employer has been gradually installing ADS-B in our airplanes, but nobody is saying a word to us about it. Reminds me of the old joke about being mushrooms.

A couple of weeks back we were flying home from Dallas and I noticed the 'XPNDR FAIL' light had illuminated on our transponder. We were on transponder 2 at the time so we switch over to 1 and notice the light goes out. Switch back to 2 and the light comes back on. We query ATC about it and they said they didn't notice anything unusual, but we write it up anyway and don't think much more about it.

About twenty minutes later I notice that the clock/chronometer on my (FO) side is showing dashes instead of the usual UTC. Knowing that it gets its data from my GPS, I start digging through my FMS and sure enough our right side GPS has failed. I'm suspicious that this failure might be related to our transponder, but being a slack-ass airline pilot that's not in an ADS-B frame of mind, I don't make the connection until I start digging through our systems manual and find a two sentence blurb (within a manual that's 1392 pages long) about ADS-B. It says that transponder 1 gets ADS-B position information from the left GPS, and transponder 2 gets ADS-B position information from the right GPS.

So that would explain it. I just thought it was funny that we were flying around with ADS-B and weren't even aware of it. My Captain's response - "ADS-what? What the hell are you talking about?"

Mushrooms I tell you - mushrooms! :)
 
I mean if we can't discuss matters, even if god forbid the debate gets a little heated, or someone's "feelings" get hurt, where are we headed as a country?
Are we to just separate into in our own little echo chambers and watch the whole thing burn?

I have no idea what got that guy banned, but he was being unnecessarily toolish, IMO. That by itself doesn't bug me too much, but I know of one instance (that was subsequently deleted) that went way over the line with a personal attack, and perhaps it happened again. ::shrug::
 
I have no idea what got that guy banned, but he was being unnecessarily toolish, IMO. That by itself doesn't bug me too much, but I know of one instance (that was subsequently deleted) that went way over the line with a personal attack, and perhaps it happened again. ::shrug::

If someone here can't take a little name calling on the interwebz heaven help them when something that's actually serious happens,

Guess that's a difference between this this type of pilot



And this type of pilot





Oh well
 
Really.... We were all debating issues which directly effect aviation and also our country, and ether people decided to censoring him, or the actual poster, who was making some good points and counter points, snow flaked out? Lest we debate issues which effect things we all obviously care about and try to find middle ground
It means the mods banned him for some reason. I agree with you, I didn't see anything that crossed the line to warrant a ban, unless as someone else said, it was deleted by the mods.

I think the ban could be temporary, at least I hope so.
 
It means the mods banned him for some reason. I agree with you, I didn't see anything that crossed the line to warrant a ban, unless as someone else said, it was deleted by the mods.

I think the ban could be temporary, at least I hope so.

Well there’s was a name calling on the other thread and he was reported. Debating is one thing, personal attacks you get the ban hammer! ;)
 
I remember the first cell phones were in bags and the next generation was a brick. I think once the fleet hardware is compliant you will see positive changes.

Incorrect about the cell phones. The bag phone was essentially a car phone in a bag. The brick predated the bag. I had a brick in about 1987, but never saw a bag until about 89 or 90.
 
Seriously? I flew for 8 years without it, I could fly without it again. I do appreciate it though, it is plenty valuable as long as one does not rely on it to the exclusion of the Mark I eyeball.

I could fly with charts and a whizwheel again too, but I’d rather not.
 
Incorrect about the cell phones. The bag phone was essentially a car phone in a bag. The brick predated the bag. I had a brick in about 1987, but never saw a bag until about 89 or 90.

There were hard-mount "car" versions prior to the brick. Transmitted 5W of RF... the brick didn't.

The bags, as I recall, were allowed 2.5W (??? Been too long, I'd have to look it up... ???) whereas the brick only did about 1W (???).
 
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