What is the current status of ADS-B for ultralights?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ultralight ADS-B?
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OP, I am happy that you ae still here.

As you said, 1500 feet agl is the turbine traffic pattern altitude, and you should not have been there at the airport.

Next, as a professional pilot, you should have been talking on the big airport tower or approach frequency, they have the big hazards.

CTAF is used by the traffic landing at the airport you were over, and would not haver been looking up for you.

If you were actually in the pattern to land, the airliner/bizjet would have been 500 feet above you, no issue.

The UL's were created for pilots who wanted to fly low and slow, plus cheap. It simply costs more to fly among the big boys, such as Cessna's, Pipers, and Beech Bonanza's. More than one radio to monitor 2 frequencies at the same time, transponder and mandatory ADSB, crash locator beacon, and enough speed to get out of the way of larger airplanes.

The big time pilots are also expected to brief the flight for such things as air traffic routes and nearby airport traffic patterns.

I have 800 hours in the air, cross country, Maine to the Florida Keys, west into Texas, and Colorado, north into Nebraska and Michigan. A properly planned flight, no matter how far, should not have such surprises.

You want airliners to watch out for you, but your class of flying machine was never intended to be in their airspace. Just because you have enough horsepower to get there does not mean that you should be there.

A question that has been bothering me, why didn't that neat app on your phone tell you sooner? Screen too small? Get a tablet and have effective ADSB coverage so that you have plenty of time to maneuver. That should solve you problem, without cluttering up airliner screens with effectively, mosquito's

I had a friend that had a powered parachute, and thought it neat to fly the pattern at the local airport, land and chat with other pilots who happened to be there. There was twin engine bizjet traffic there, but hey, he was a PPL licensed pilot with valid medical, and at a public airport. The crop duster there did not like his presence either.

The FAA cut a special niche for UL, and expect you to fly in it.
 
Sorry, but I have to agree with a lot of the other comments. Not sure what you mean by a Commercial Pilot, but sorry, even when IFR in big iron you are responsible to See and Avoid. Now in a VFR ultralight, there is zero question you need to have your eyes constantly on a swivel.

As for ADS-B **IN** you can easily get a portable ADS-B In reciever to work with the ForeFlight you probably have on you company iPad. The Sentry Mini is pretty popular with Cubs, so probably would work well in an unltralight. But there are other options out there.
 
geezer said:
The UL's were created for pilots who wanted to fly low and slow, plus cheap.
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I'm not an UL guy, but I speculate that the folks that originally created an UL, were just trying to fly. full stop. It evolved into simple and cheap just through the nature of DIY and the availability of technology of the time.
I rekon that cheap became an attractive quality for it but flight would have been the goal.
I don't think low and slow was ever a conscious specification for the folks that created the first UL
 
Brad W said:
why?
Is there a FAR limiting the max altitude of flight for an UL to something lower than 3,000ft?
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geezer said:
The FAA cut a special niche for UL, and expect you to fly in it.
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17,999 msl in E airspace (except E to surface next to an airport). I'm pretty much between 4 and 6k in FL and have been to 12k in West Texas at the Nationals. Ultralights were an outgrowth of Hang Gliding. Someone said, let's put an engine on this puppy. The UL and HG orgs split off quite some time ago. HG's were flying in the Owens Valley of CA with O2 in the high teens back in the 70's. No cross country flight is going to happen without getting to the top of lift, generally 6-8k on the east coast and higher over the western deserts.
As an aside, a lot of the national level HG competitions are towed out of GA airports. Big Spring in Texas being a prime example. The airport loved us coming once a year for a week and the town of Big Spring welcomed us, particularly when oil prices were low and the hotels weren't full of oil people.

Here's a pic of my High School buddy over the Owens Valley. He converted an oxygen mask to work with a portable bottle in his harness.
Screenshot 2025-08-24 at 9.15.38 AM.png
 
Ultralight ADS-B said:
Could be misunderstanding me, or I may not have been clear. I was at about 1500 AGL over an uncontrolled airport. I was listening and transmitting on the CTAF for that airport. That all seems reasonable and not inappropriate to me.
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Not to me. The default pattern altitude for large aircraft at uncontrolled fields is 1500 AGL. I'd fly around at that altitude all day in a j3, but not near an airport other than entering the pattern. If I was flying an ultralight, I'd stay far away from any airport that I wasn't taking off or landing from.

Plenty of gliders have transponders. So it's not a technological problem to hook one up to a battery. Perhaps there's a regulatory issue.
 
The regulations could have been worded better, but effectively an ultralight vehicle is a class of aircraft to which Part 91 doesn't apply but 103 does.

But if it weighs even one pound over the 254# empty weight limit it becomes an unregistered aircraft subject to part 91, though the FAA has been lax enforcing that.

Back to the OP's situation, ATC routing a jet at 1500 AGL over an uncontrolled field is a bad idea.
 
The regulations could have been worded better, but effectively an ultralight vehicle is a class of aircraft to which Part 91 doesn't apply but 103 does.

But if it weighs even one pound over the 254# empty weight limit it becomes an unregistered aircraft subject to part 91, though the FAA has been lax enforcing that.

Back to the OP's situation, ATC routing a jet at 1500 AGL over an uncontrolled field is a bad idea.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Regardless of all the cute back-and-forth here about ultralights, aircraft, definitions and who has right-of-way, there IS an underlying issue that the FAA has, for whatever reason, deliberately ignored a not-insignificant portion of the flying community by their precious ADS-B regulations. Pilots of Cubs, Champs, Chiefs, Taylorcrafts, Luscombes, and other aircraft that are legal to fly as aircraft without electrical systems are frequently criticized on this forum and elsewhere for being collision hazards, while repeated efforts and inquiries on some people's parts to see if a portable battery-operated ADS-B out solution could be implemented have been withstood. It would seem to me that the OP would be well to bring some documentation of the incident to his local Congressional representative and ask them to look into asking the FAA to make a provision for a battery-operated anonymous ADS-B out solution that would allow for aircraft in such categories, and ultralights, etc. to be "seen" especially by fast-movers.

I know that if one was priced in the Uavionics range, I would absolutely buy one and use it whenever flying certain aircraft without electrical systems, if only to aid those more dependent on it. I'm still cool with see-and-avoid for myself, if I don't have an ADS-B in device, but knowing how people I've flown with fly, I'd really like to show up on their fishfinder.
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Every pilot has to identify (perceive) the risks involved with each flight. That includes mid air collision risk.

If you opt to land at an airport primarily used primarily by low speed aircraft without electrical systems, I.e. gliders, you have to be identify and mitigate the collision risk. The opposite is true for those low speed non electrical system aircraft if they opt to land a busy airports with higher speed aircraft.

Transponders, radios, and electrical systems in aircraft can and do fail. Pilots sometimes make errors entering frequencies. CTAF, ADS-B and TIS-B is only an aid.
 
Half Fast said:
That definition is so broad it could apply to a football.
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Under your definition, so could a rock. But I don’t suggest you strap yourself to a rock or a football, call it an aircraft and try to fly.
 
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Clip4 said:
Transponders, radios, and electrical systems in aircraft can and do fail. Pilots sometimes make errors entering frequencies. CTAF, ADS-B and TIS-B is only an aid.
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And that’s exactly the reason why a portable anonymous ADS-B might be the best option. Such an ADS-B wouldn’t require being on the correct frequency, or depend on a finicky portable radio that in my experience doesn’t always have good 360° signal transmission. It might fail, but it would work more often than not, and would provide a higher percentage of mitigation.

See and avoid is great, but if you’re flying from the back seat of a J-3 Cub while solo, your chances of seeing and avoiding a jet in your rear quadrant are realistically very low.
 
RyanShort1 said:
And that’s exactly the reason why a portable anonymous ADS-B might be the best option. Such an ADS-B wouldn’t require being on the correct frequency, or depend on a finicky portable radio that in my experience doesn’t always have good 360° signal transmission. It might fail, but it would work more often than not, and would provide a higher percentage of mitigation.

See and avoid is great, but if you’re flying from the back seat of a J-3 Cub while solo, your chances of seeing and avoiding a jet in your rear quadrant are realistically very
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What do you power it with during an electrical failure and how does it help if the device fails?
 
Clip4 said:
What do you power it with during an electrical failure and how does it help if the device fails?
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Really? Modern batteries are relatively reliable and if it works 80% of the time it improves the safety margin. A decently robust portable unit with say 4 hours of battery life is going to work more than 80% of the time. If it fails, you’re exactly where you are already today… or where ANY aircraft is with an electrical failure, so no net negative.
 
The answer is the FAA should allow portable transponders and ADSB.

I suggest OP fill out a NASA form, the designed purpose is to put situations like this in front of the safety systems peeps.

A Sentry and foreflight help a lot.

Sadly, our community has some sort of perceived "class" system where many pilots think "lessor" pilots don't deserve the use of the NAS, even when flying within the rules. This case is about UL, but the same people will argue NORDO aircraft, UL, Skydivers, Helicopters, LSA, EAB, etc. should not be allowed in "their" space.
 
Partly a response to jbarrass ideas of classes of pilots. The big question is whether flying in busy airspace is wise for low performance equipment. He upgraded to a Cessna, and flew with no transponder, and no recent annual.

This will have to be a hypothetical, as my sources are 2nd or 3rd hand, but are from pilots

Small town municipal airport, thus taxpayer owned.
Several industries in town have out of town owners, who use corporate jets to visit.
One long runway with an instrument approach.
Short runway is narrower, but not very short, no IFR.
Local anti authority guy with a powered parachute arrived more or less in line for a straight in landing on the instrument end.
As he cruised down the long runway, just above the white concrete, planning to land near the office and main hanger, a jet on an instrument flight plan did not see him until within about a mile, and just half a mile from touchdown.

They did a full throttle go around, passing not very high above him, scared him, as it would scare any one. Next, he was washed with turbulent air that nearly collapse his chute, with him at about 30 feet altitude. If they had not climbed directly over him, wingtip vortices could have dumped him completely.

He was furious with the jet pilots when they landed, they were equally furious that he was over the runway with such a hard to see craft. They thought he should have been over the grass beside the shorter runway.

Several bystanders witnessed this exchange live. The parachute guy wisely quite stirring the pot when he realized there could be an investigation by the FAA.


If he had lost the parachute lift and fallen to the runway, who would have been liable for his death?
 
geezer said:
Partly a response to jbarrass ideas of classes of pilots. The big question is whether flying in busy airspace is wise for low performance equipment. He upgraded to a Cessna, and flew with no transponder, and no recent annual.

This will have to be a hypothetical, as my sources are 2nd or 3rd hand, but are from pilots

Small town municipal airport, thus taxpayer owned.
Several industries in town have out of town owners, who use corporate jets to visit.
One long runway with an instrument approach.
Short runway is narrower, but not very short, no IFR.
Local anti authority guy with a powered parachute arrived more or less in line for a straight in landing on the instrument end.
As he cruised down the long runway, just above the white concrete, planning to land near the office and main hanger, a jet on an instrument flight plan did not see him until within about a mile, and just half a mile from touchdown.

They did a full throttle go around, passing not very high above him, scared him, as it would scare any one. Next, he was washed with turbulent air that nearly collapse his chute, with him at about 30 feet altitude. If they had not climbed directly over him, wingtip vortices could have dumped him completely.

He was furious with the jet pilots when they landed, they were equally furious that he was over the runway with such a hard to see craft. They thought he should have been over the grass beside the shorter runway.

Several bystanders witnessed this exchange live. The parachute guy wisely quite stirring the pot when he realized there could be an investigation by the FAA.


If he had lost the parachute lift and fallen to the runway, who would have been liable for his death?
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The jet didn’t yield the right away to the aircraft being overtaken, alter course to the right and pass well clear and those are the regulations that apply to the jet.

Each aircraft (Aircraft means a device that is used or intended to be used for flight in the air.) that is being overtaken has the right-of-way and each pilot of an overtaking aircraft shall alter course to the right to pass well clear.

Would anyone be held liable? No, the jets insurance would have settled out of court with no admission of responsibility. The UL’s stupidity would have been part of the settlement negotiations.
 
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Brad W said:
why?
Is there a FAR limiting the max altitude of flight for an UL to something lower than 3,000ft?
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Because he nearly killed everyone in that jet and possibly people below. He is safer down low (500’ agl perhaps).
 
Lindberg said:
But those are all "real" airplanes. The UL is not. The regs are clear: the UL pilot was in the wrong.
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The regs are very clear that ULs must yield right of way to everything in the sky.

BUT,....

The reality of the situation is that it’s tough for a 25mph air vehicle to get out of the way of a fast-moving jet and it would help safety if ATC didn’t vector a jet toward an UL. Regardless of regs, safety could be improved if ATC knew where an UL was operating.
 
Half Fast said:
The regs are very clear that ULs must yield right of way to everything in the sky.

BUT,....

The reality of the situation is that it’s tough for a 25mph air vehicle to get out of the way of a fast-moving jet and it would help safety if ATC didn’t vector a jet toward an UL. Regardless of regs, safety could be improved if ATC knew where an UL was operating.
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The Jet, as best we know, did not need to change course, so UL did not actually need to get out of his way. Again, no reg was violated. He was legal in that airspace.
Agree it would be better if there was a way for ATC to know where he was. Also would be good for a UL to not be on a known approach path for a class D. Having said that, all the fly lower, get out of "my airspace" tone is a bit much. If it had been a jet pilot complaining about a Cub in exactly the same situation, we would be eviscerating the arrogant jet for thinking they own the sky.
 
Hang 4 said:
The Jet, as best we know, did not need to change course, so UL did not actually need to get out of his way.
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As best as we know, as reported by the OP, the jet didn't change course because it had no idea he was there. Do you think it would have flown by him 400' away of it had?
Hang 4 said:
Again, no reg was violated. He was legal in that airspace.
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So no reg was violated because there wasn't actually a collision, just a near miss? But 103.13(b) says, "No person may operate an ultralight vehicle in a manner that creates a collision hazard with respect to any aircraft." Not "a collision," a "collision hazard."
 
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So how was he operating in a manner that created a collision hazard? The regs allow flight in class E airspace. He was in class E airspace. He didn't purposely fly in a way to create a collision hazard. Again, it would be great if there was some way for a UL to generate radar return so he could be seen by ATC.
UL pilot was using ADSB in (app on phone) to maintain traffic awareness, talking on CTAF, as well as see and avoid. By the logic of that reg, there's very little safe way to operate an ultralight, yet somehow it gets done on a pretty regular basis, including out of airports. Since we don't know which airport nor the proximity of the class D that the jet was flying into, it's hard to evaluate how likely it was for jet traffic to go through the spot he was in. He said it was his local airport, so I'm guessing where he was was not on the glidepath of an approach.

There are stupid people, doing stupid stuff with ultralights (and jets and GA planes). The OP doesn't sound like on of them.
 
Hang 4 said:
Again, it would be great if there was some way for a UL to generate radar return so he could be seen by ATC.
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A small radar reflector is easy enough to make, but does this particular field even have radar? Many (most?) Class Deltas do not. Having ADSB-Out would seem a better, and more universal, solution.

Beware, though - ADSB does have a lag. I know when I get a visual on an aircraft that's on my traffic display, the aircraft is often significantly past the ADSB displayed position.
 
Hang 4 said:
So how was he operating in a manner that created a collision hazard? The regs allow flight in class E airspace. He was in class E airspace. He didn't purposely fly in a way to create a collision hazard. Again, it would be great if there was some way for a UL to generate radar return so he could be seen by ATC.
UL pilot was using ADSB in (app on phone) to maintain traffic awareness, talking on CTAF, as well as see and avoid.
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I guess we just disagree about whether flying within 400' of an aircraft that you're nearly invisible to creates a collision risk.

Hang 4 said:
By the logic of that reg, there's very little safe way to operate an ultralight, yet somehow it gets done on a pretty regular basis, including out of airports.
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Stay away from other aircraft. Just don't go where they are. ULs aren't supposed to be able to fly wherever the heck they want. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

There's a guy who operates a powered parachute out of the field adjacent the road at an airport I operate at. He makes radio calls, and stays far away from airplanes, in three dimensions.
 
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Lets consider outcome B.

OP files the ACRS, the appropriate boards analyze the safety issue, and implement a new rule. ADS B is now legal for UL's, and MANDATORY for all flight above 1000 feet AGL. These devices would have mandatory tested and calibrated altitude sensing devices, and an alarm to notify the operator if the battery was low, allowing them to descend to a legal altitude before failure of transmission occurs.

OP would be safe and happy.

Most of the UL owners would be screaming about pricing them out of the sky, and rightfully so.

It is a shame that his cheap? app did not warn him that he should look over his shoulder early enough to turn away soon enough to give him the safe space he wishes to have.



Consider also, the airliner did see him, felt there was no possibility he could get in front of them, and flew straight ahead, in compliance with their vector. Their comfort level may have been quite different than his.

Bottom line, legal and mandatory may come at the same time.

I remember clearly the anguish as transponders became mandatory, then obsolete as new mandatory features were added. The Geezer flew in Cubs that were started by hands on the prop, and took first check ride in C 150 with only one radio.

The electronics in the last C172 I flew in cost more than we paid for the aircraft.

Is his the future of UL you wish?
 
Hang 4 said:
Since we don't know which airport nor the proximity of the class D that the jet was flying into ...
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A few have indicated that the jet was flying into Class D airspace but I don't recall seeing anything to confirm that. In post # 27 the OP indicates that it may not have been when they said "it was 3000 MSL, or 1500 AGL. ADS-B is not required for aircraft at this location, although it is close to such an area."

Unclear whether he speaks of the airspace where the jet is going or another nearby area. Nevertheless it appears to have been a place where such traffic might be expected and a great place to keep that head swivel lubricated. At our un-towered field we have jets passing over on a regular basis but they are usually at 9-10K on their way to the class C airport ~ 30nm away.
 
The Geezer remembers that crash, especially since it was near where his uncle lived in Texas.
 
Half Fast said:
A small radar reflector is easy enough to make, but does this particular field even have radar? Many (most?) Class Deltas do not. Having ADSB-Out would seem a better, and more universal, solution.

Beware, though - ADSB does have a lag. I know when I get a visual on an aircraft that's on my traffic display, the aircraft is often significantly past the ADSB displayed position.
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As a professional pilot and a foot-launch paramotor (powered paraglider) pilot as well, I've been interested in this whole discussion. I would love to have a portable ADS-B Out unit, but I do realize that it's a potential slippery slope from "available" to "mandatory" and that does concern me. For me, it would have to be small and battery-powered, since there aren't a whole lot of places to mount it, and anything I add is extra weight I have to carry on my back.

I do often wonder how visible I am to airplanes and other aircraft. Obviously my body with the motor attached is pretty small and would be hard to see, and the lines will be almost invisible. But my wing has a "wingspan" of about 30 feet and a maximum chord of about 10 feet, which is in the same range as a lot of single-engine airplanes. Plus they are typically brightly colored (not white like a lot of airplanes) - mine is bright green and blue. So am I harder to see than a Cessna 172, or easier, or about the same? has anybody seen one while flying an airplane?

I've never seen a paramotor while I'm flying an airplane, so I have no idea. I have definitely seen other paramotors while flying a paramotor, but we're usually near each other on purpose so I am already aware of them.
 
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