Nate, please. The world marches out of step with your genius, we get it already.
Pretty rude. What did I say that wasn't true?
I'm all for lovely gadgetry to see snowplows on runways. Whatever.
I'm just not a fan of the price tag of systems designed to 80's technology that aren't adding much value.
That problem can literally be fixed with a $20 GPS + modem module and an FM radio's audio and PTT interface.
Especially when we're buying it all on credit. Lots and lots of credit. But this isn't SZ.
The problem for a long time at many agencies, not just FAA, is they're stuck in a much slower tech era and totally hogtied by their policies that these things need to be certified six ways from sideways before they're used.
If you handed the problem, with NO prerequisites for technology used or certifications by folks who haven't seen the outside world in ten years from behind the expensive mountain of paperwork they think makes it all safer, to say, five decent engineers... they could give you five very workable and safe-enough solutions in a week. And they'd be LESS complex and less failure prone, and when they did fail, cheap and easy to fix.
It's not about me or my skillset. I'm a friggin' idiot and I *can* build a tracking system for snowplows with COTS gear in one day. We're talking APRS here. Bob Bruinga at the U.S. Naval Observatory built that in his free time. Not me. With MINOR tweaks it'd be able to handle the job requirements as long as the data was passed back into the ADS-B data stream to the aircraft.
It's about wondering when we got so wrapped around the bureaucratic loan-funded axle that we can't do anything for less than a few billion dollars. And wondering why folks are so resigned to the really expensive methodology that really doesn't lead to any better solution but costs massively more money than really necessary.
I don't get the lack of concern over outrageously expensive solutions. In the private sector, we have to weigh that decision every day. What feature and functionality does an ADS-B device at $X dollars buy me over a simpler ad cheaper solution? And how many times a year are snowplows really on the runway in truly impossible weather conditions to see them? Is it really worth the price tag? Are we willing to accept any risk at all?
Obviously we are. Otherwise we'd simply close the airport and count all the trucks at the garage before reopening.
But I see no harm in asking if the solution our government, operating with essentially an open credit card, came up with. It should be possible to find a document showing the decision matrix showing the benefits over other systems proposed and why those benefits are worth the difference in price.
It's not about one person. It's about a whole lot of people wanting their money's worth on the investment.
Technology meanwhile gets cheaper and cheaper and totally blows the analysis out of the water.
I bet every snowplow out there has an APCO Project 25 radio already installed in it. And every one of those radios has a data port for GPS data. But could the airport feed that data to a system in a server that would translate it and shove it into he ADS-B system?
Oh no. Not that. Not FAA certified.
Tracking mobile vehicles is a problem already solved a million times over by better and cheaper tech than ADS-B. Been to a 911 dispatch center recently? Did you see the pretty map with all the police, fire, and ambulance vehicles?
ADS-B tech on those vehicles allows a high probability of vehicle detection and hopefully a reduction in the risk of incursions.
