GDL-90 intermittent or ADS-B outage?

[azure]

I'm not even sure this belongs in Maintenance Bay. A week ago Friday, and then again on Monday night, I noticed that I was not seeing any traffic on my GMX-200 display at altitudes where I normally do see traffic, and even though I knew that there was traffic in the area (from listening to Detroit Approach, and I spotted a few visually as well). I have a GDL-90 UAT interfaced with the MFD and though I had an issue earlier in the summer with target altitudes being missing or displayed as nonsense, that seemed to be resolved after my avionics technician re-initialized the GDL-90. This is very different: those two flights, I wasn't seeing any targets at all. I put a call in to my avionics guy but he never returned my call... probably because he's swamped as his field was closed for a week and a half.

I say "those two flights" because today, magically, traffic was back. Lots of it on my screen, though all of it was clustering around the DTW Bravo and there was none at all in at least one area where normally it's quite busy, namely in the PTK-FNT corridor. But that could have been due to weather as most would have been VFR, and ceilings were lower up that way.

So now I wonder whether I've got an intermittent in my GDL-90 or whether one or more GBTs in my area were out last weekend through Monday. If there was an ADS-B outage would it be NOTAMed? I checked and didn't see anything. Yet my GDL-90 was sending a heartbeat to the MFD, and I was also seeing normal (or at least not to me suspicious) NIC and NACp numbers.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

If there was an ADS-B outage would it be NOTAMed? I checked and didn't see anything.

That's a GREAT question... I'd sure think it would be NOTAM'd, but I don't think I've ever seen it NOTAM'd. Similar question would apply for TIS coverage. When you fly outside TIS coverage, the G1000 tells you "Traffic not available". I would imagine it would do the same if TIS ground-based hardware failed, or wasn't working at the time of airplane avionics startup, but if there was a known outage, would I see a NOTAM for it?

What kind of on-board "health check" or system status monitoring does ADS-B provide? I've never flown where it's available or in an airplane equipped with it.

 

[azure]

What kind of on-board "health check" or system status monitoring does ADS-B provide? I've never flown where it's available or in an airplane equipped with it.

The "heartbeat", a series of one-per-second (I think) pulses, and the NIC and NACp numbers (mine are 8 and 9; I don't know whether that's okay or not, the only thing I've read is that they shouldn't be zero). The SYS -> INFO page on the GMX-200 says whether the data from each remote unit is valid (it thinks my GDL-90 data is valid, but then again it also said it was valid when it wasn't showing altitudes).

Oh, also if the MFD isn't getting valid data from the UAT, the GMX-200 is supposed to display a "flag", the name of the service in a box on the left side (I guess it would say TRAF for traffic data from the GDL-90).

As far as I know, that's all the info the pilot is given, anything more specific requires connecting a terminal to the serial port.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Um - I think you have all the cool toys and I want to fly your plane.

 

[SCCutler]

Um - I think you have all the cool toys and I want to fly your plane.

A famous member of the International Aviation Press, and you'd do that for him?

What a guy!

 

[azure]

A famous member of the International Aviation Press, and you'd do that for him?

What a guy!

Uhhh... I must be missing something here. Who's this "him"? My plane used to be owned by a guy who belonged to the so-called IAP. But now it's mine, and I'm not a "him". :wink2:

 

[SCCutler]

Uhhh... I must be missing something here. Who's this "him"? My plane used to be owned by a guy who belonged to the so-called IAP. But now it's mine, and I'm not a "him". :wink2:

Ummm.... wouldja believe, "Oops"?

Been a bad week. Sorry.

 

[azure]

'Sokay.

(Oh, and mine too. I am fast learning that as an instructor, I can play with star chart software all day and not run into the bug that could cause the students to waste an hour of class time. The students, OTOH, will "find" it immediately. ALL of them. )