ADS-B Stratus note

Clark1961

Clark1961

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Used the new Stratus on a trip from Denver to Houston and back.

Had service from about 35 miles south of Denver for the rest of the trip. Radar depiction was excellent in terms of correlating with what I could see out the window. Updates for the region radar appeared to be less than every ten minutes. Never did get lightning depiction. Dunno what's up with that. A few other things were missing like sat images. TFR data did update in flight but it didn't show TFR expiration particularly well.

Also finally found the transponder problem - broken coax at the antenna connector. If you ever need avionics work done in Houston, Brazos Avionics at EFD does an excellent job. James has been around a long time and sticks with it until the problem is solved. Just an excellent job.
 
Were you getting GPS on the iPad through stratus? My dad is having a problem with his unit. The folks at Appareo said there will be a fix released in a few weeks but just curious in the mean while.
 
Yup, WAAS GPS location through Stratus. Accuracy was a bit sensitive to location in the cockpit. It really didn't like being put in the map shelf in the panel. It was sorta okay with laying on top of the soft cooler on the pax side.
 
Also, other note - no way the ground station has enough time to update traffic (even if it was displayed). Airline & GA jet traffic around DFW would have been way behind and the MOA west of Sheppard would have given the ground station a nervous breakdown. Even ATC was way behind the T-38 that passed about three miles in front.
 
Sounds like Colorado Springs area is up but not on the coverage chart yet. Interesting.

How high we're you on this end of the trip?

That bandwidth thing... I've been saying that...

Looking forward to more PIREPs...
 
Clark1961 said:
Also finally found the transponder problem - broken coax at the antenna connector. If you ever need avionics work done in Houston, Brazos Avionics at EFD does an excellent job. James has been around a long time and sticks with it until the problem is solved. Just an excellent job.
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Good to hear! You sure seem to have good luck with out-of-town maintenence.
 
Awesome. I just got my skyradar and can't wait to test it out at altitude. Getting NEXRAD inflight is going to be a great add-on to my tri-monthly trip across TX.
 
denverpilot said:
Sounds like Colorado Springs area is up but not on the coverage chart yet. Interesting.

How high we're you on this end of the trip?

That bandwidth thing... I've been saying that...

Looking forward to more PIREPs...
Click to expand...

8500 over COS - I believe that the Stratus was still "seeing" the tower near Trinidad. Stratus reports all the towers it is receiving at any time. Will have to record and plot the tower coordinates next trip that way.
 
Clark1961 said:
8500 over COS - I believe that the Stratus was still "seeing" the tower near Trinidad. Stratus reports all the towers it is receiving at any time. Will have to record and plot the tower coordinates next trip that way.
Click to expand...

I was going to ask if it had stats on what it's "hearing". That's cool!

(Now I want one. Damn it. Was going to wait but... Surveying coverage areas and their behavior as the system is built is really tempting for thus radio geek. Ha.)

I wish my coding skills were good enough to write something like Unitracker does in the scanning world. Feed a discriminator tap to a PC and let it control frequency so one could map where various transmitters work and don't work by adding GPS to the mix.

Sounds like a reasonable facsimile of that information is available in the UI of this gadget. Very tempted to buy one now. :)
 
hindsight2020 said:
Awesome. I just got my skyradar and can't wait to test it out at altitude. Getting NEXRAD inflight is going to be a great add-on to my tri-monthly trip across TX.
Click to expand...

Skyradar looks like a nice option for the wingx users. Likely better than the Stratus. Let us know how it works, will ya?
 
denverpilot said:
I was going to ask if it had stats on what it's "hearing". That's cool!

(Now I want one. Damn it. Was going to wait but... Surveying coverage areas and their behavior as the system is built is really tempting for thus radio geek. Ha.)

I wish my coding skills were good enough to write something like Unitracker does in the scanning world. Feed a discriminator tap to a PC and let it control frequency so one could map where various transmitters work and don't work by adding GPS to the mix.

Sounds like a reasonable facsimile of that information is available in the UI of this gadget. Very tempted to buy one now. :)
Click to expand...

If you want to try it out yer welcome to borrow it some time. Just remember where it came from... :wink2:
 
Clark1961 said:
If you want to try it out yer welcome to borrow it some time. Just remember where it came from... :wink2:
Click to expand...

I'm heading to Alaska next month. I've been thinking off adding a stratus to my game plan, but I dont think it will matter much going through Canada.

Does the stratus only receive the 928 UAT? Or is it recieving both 1090 and UAT? I forget. The coverage map is only good along the coasts right now.
 
BillTIZ said:
I'm heading to Alaska next month. I've been thinking off adding a stratus to my game plan, but I dont think it will matter much going through Canada.

Does the stratus only receive the 928 UAT? Or is it recieving both 1090 and UAT? I forget. The coverage map is only good along the coasts right now.
Click to expand...

Stratus is single band UAT.
 
Clark1961 said:
Never did get lightning depiction. Dunno what's up with that. A few other things were missing like sat images. TFR data did update in flight but it didn't show TFR expiration particularly well.
Click to expand...
I don't think there's any lightning data on any ADS-B weather display. Lightning info is only available from private companies and they charge a lot for it. I'm not sure that sat images are in ADS-B either but I'm not sure about that one way or the other.
 
gismo said:
Does the Stratus display traffic as well as weather on the iPad? There is no weather on 1090 ADS-B.
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no traffic via stratus. The developers are currently refusing to display it on foreflight.
 
Clark1961 said:
no traffic via stratus. The developers are currently refusing to display it on foreflight.
Click to expand...
So I'm still wondering why Bill appeared to be disappointed that the Stratus doesn't receive 1090 ADS-B.
 
So is the Skyradar mentioned, the Stratus equivalent for WingX? My FF subscription is up for renew in about three weeks so I'm still keeping my eyes open before renewal.
 
Clark1961 said:
no traffic via stratus. The developers are currently refusing to display it on foreflight.
Click to expand...

I don't blame them. If weather has delays up to 20 minutes just imagine traffic delays of 20 seconds or more. The only way I would trust for traffic detection is via direct link from plane to plane. Anything else via a ground UAT station would involve a delay or a missed update.

José
 
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