ircphoenix
En-Route
So ADS-B does nothing?
Good to know.
Good to know.
How to Verify ADS-B output
- Thread starter petrolero
- Start date
denverpilot
Tied Down
It provides things that already existed for reasonable prices at the cost of billions that your grandkids' grandkids will still be paying for when NexGen II The Sequel is announced.
Analyze it. See what it got you against the full price. Cost/performance analysis. Include the ground network and the forced avionics upgrades in the price and tell me it couldn't have been done orders of magnitude cheaper and better.
ircphoenix
En-Route
I can't hear you over the sound of my $13,000 dollar GPS unit that does less than my cell phone does while utilizing serial ports that were being phased out of existence before my GPS even got manufactured.
Of course it could have been done better. But it's difficult to cheaply 'upgrade' a system that hasn't been invested in for 40 years. It's easier to rip out and start over. Probably more cost effective. But turns out you can't do that for the entire NAS.
Isn't the plan to rip out VOR stations? I know VORs and markers are being ripped out as we speak.
denverpilot
Tied Down
LOL. Exactly.
About all he FAA can claim in the tech world is that they've managed to make it more expensive and further behind the tech curve than any other application of the same technology in any other commercial business sector.
OMG! Look! The GPS got a touch screen!!! Hahaha.
ircphoenix
En-Route
I promise you that a lot of that has to do with the manufacturers too. The manufacturers know that those of us with certified planes are screwed. Can't tell me that the FAA REQUIRES the manufacturers to increase costs 2-3x on their certified products versus non certified, when they are literally the same exact thing.
denverpilot
Tied Down
It's a corrupt system. Which is why I always ask someone who is touting the wonderfulness of ADS-B what their pecuniary interest is in it. Most work for one of the entrenched avionics manufacturers or the FAA.
Anyone who works in OTHER tech fields when shown a block diagram of ADS-B and what it actually does -- wonders how a whole industry got trapped in 1995.
Timeline wise, aviation tech is stuck back at the days when Western Electric made all the analog telephone sets because nobody else was "certified" to plug into a POTS line. That phone might take out the Central Office if you forgot to build an isolation transformer into it!!! The horrors!!!
Sure we get nice things with ADS-B like traffic alerts that may or may not be accurate. Even when they are accurate they come with strings attached.
Can't just transmit up ALL of the traffic, have to filter out those naughty targets not sending out their own ADS-B signals and have lots of code to filter and make "hockey pucks" of coverage.
Because -- easier to say it's a requirement to transmit that way.
Can't just have guys like Jay sending "un-certified" GPS coordinates into the system either! My god! A completely insecure and non-authenticated system might get some bad data once in while! Holy crap!!
LOL! It's a total engineering joke.
Here's a thought. Display all traffic, even traffic with unapproved data sources or lack of altitudes. Just display it in a different freaking color. Always. With no special filtering code and no hockey pucks.
And oh yeah, that brings Mode-A and Mode-C traffic into the game for free... No mandates required.
Duh. Big red truck.
Last edited:
Jay Honeck
Touchdown! Greaser!
THANK YOU.
Even as a non-engineering, liberal arts educated aviation themed hotelier, I have been saying this for years. The over - educated idjits in the FAA have screwed this ADS-B system up to the point where it simply does not work reliably, and it is all because of stupid, easily corrected decisions made at the highest levels.
I've had ADS-B in/out in the panel since 2014, and it ain't worth a bucket of warm spit, simply because I don't have a certified GPS source, and they have disabled it as of 1/1/16. Worse, our passive receive-only ADS-B (on our tablet, using a GDL-39 receiver) has become totally unreliable for traffic, down here on the Gulf Coast -- and there is NO WAY TO REPORT THIS OBVIOUS FAILURE except via email?
Really? REALLY? A multi-billion dollar system with zero checks and balances, and no way to help them buff off the rough edges?
They've got 3 years and 4 months to get this cluster-frick fixed.
ircphoenix
En-Route
Yep.
denverpilot
Tied Down
What motivation do they have to fix it? They're listening to people like John who knows every damned thing there is to know about the nitty gritty of the specs, but when told the trees are spaced too far apart to be called a forest, gets angry and blocks input from users mandated to buy his stuff, whatever that stuff is, by law.
(Like I said, I assume he has a pecuniary interest, and I say that because nobody spends as much effort as he obviously has to know the specs inside and out unless they're building either the ground or the air portion of this mess... But maybe he's just a really dedicated hobbyist. I don't know for sure.)
In his view, it's all fixable. Because when you're buried heads down trying to save the mess, that's the mindset you have to get yourself in. I've seen in before in other doomed engineering projects.
The difference between the projects I've seen and this thing is that nobody could MAKE customers buy the other ones by law. And that's where this system and the response of people to it, goes way off the rails.
If the assumption is that the mandate must still occur and there's no stopping it, then the mindset changes to the standard grief cycle. Denial, acceptance, blah blah.
No one as yet has adequately explained why this turd NEEDS to be required. It serves no particular purpose for aviation that wasn't available in a better and cheaper form. No one has yet refuted that. Not who properly acounted for the full system price tag, anyway.
Jay Honeck
Touchdown! Greaser!
That ship sailed years ago. ADS-B is now "too big to fail".
It just astounds me how, no matter what the government touches, it turns to poop. I simply cannot name a single domestic government success in my lifetime. That's over half a century of failure, yet we keep doubling down.
Didja ever wonder why Lasik surgery now costs less than having a sliver removed from your foot at an emergency room? Lasik is cash, and competition is fierce. Sliver removal is government regulated.
Which explains everything we need to know about ADS-B.
dans2992
En-Route
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2013
- Messages
- 3,897
- Display Name
Display name:
Dans2992
One thing I've learned that was enlightening is that the traffic picture uploaded from the ground to you is only sent via _one_ ground station.
The system determines which station is receiving your ADSB-out signal the strongest and sends the traffic uplink from that station.
In the case where the strongest station (from your belly-mounted 1090 out antenna) is behind you, and your portable ADS-B in antenna is on the glare shield, traffic sent to you could be missing.
The system determines which station is receiving your ADSB-out signal the strongest and sends the traffic uplink from that station.
In the case where the strongest station (from your belly-mounted 1090 out antenna) is behind you, and your portable ADS-B in antenna is on the glare shield, traffic sent to you could be missing.
denverpilot
Tied Down
Yep. Because ack/nak hasn't been around for three decades... Couldn't possibly have the station intending to receive something respond that it received it...
Spray and pray is way better ENGINEERING. Haha.
denverpilot
Tied Down
Well, there are bandwidth limitations... Broadcasting the traffic in say, Chicago, out the Denver area transmitters is not good design either.
But broadcasting versus sending and confirming reception is generally bad in what's essentially a "cellular" network.
(Really, telecom engineers have been doing this since AMPS... We're talking late 80s...
Multi-tower, multi-receiver, and once they got to GSM... authenticated, even extensible enough to encrypt, confirmed reception of critical data, transmission power level control for coverage overlap, etc etc etc...
If only someone knew how to engineer such a thing... And FAA didn't have to go it alone... LOL...
denverpilot
Tied Down
And before that... The two way paging folks...
dans2992
En-Route
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2013
- Messages
- 3,897
- Display Name
Display name:
Dans2992
Right, I realize there are bandwidth limitations and other concerns, however what do they plan to do after 2020 when everyone should be ADSB equipped? I guess at that point, the "hocky pucks" won't matter much because nearly all targets will already be broadcasting.
denverpilot
Tied Down
That would appear to be their goal, yes. Make everyone transmit...
Press button, receive bacon.
T210doc
Filing Flight Plan
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2011
- Messages
- 16
- Display Name
Display name:
T210doc
Has anyone else had problems getting into the "automatic site" to check ADS-B performance linked earlier in this thread? On iDevices and laptop I am unable to get in. I had a GTX345 installed earlier this summer and was just curious....I notice when I power up the avionics in the hangar on external power supply to explore Garmin's new GTN software, that flightaware sends me a notice that my plane had flown. The day the 345 was installed, FA showed I had been to KGXY and KGNB (both >50nm away) within minutes of each other
JohnAJohnson
Cleared for Takeoff
There is a problem with the flight test. What the FAA isn't telling us is that if you are outside of radar coverage, you will have red all over this report. Doesn't matter if you are sitting on top of the ADS-B tower, you'll have MODE 3A and BARO ALT errors, and a few others.
This is why the rebate certification must be done in Charlie or Bravo. It ensures ground radar (necessary to get a Mode 3A output) is available 100% of the time. The 30 minute test also ensures that you didn't spend too much time climbing up into radar coverage or diving back down out of it, to get the averages to work out.
I spent weeks troubleshooting a Navworx installation, using the report at https://adsbperformance.faa.gov/PAPRRequest.aspx. Would have been nice of the FAA to say ground radar was necessary since I don't get radar till 4500' AGL but have ADS-B at 1000' AGL.
Last edited: