On Thursday, April 11, 2013 2:33:51 PM UTC-7, Paul Remde wrote:
Hi,



I imagine someone on this newsgroup can point me in the right direction on a

technical/FAA question.



Becker offers 2 versions of their AR6201 radio. The original version has

frequency spacing that can be set to either 25 mHz or 8.33 mHz. The new,

slightly lower cost option has frequency spacing fixed at 25 MHz It is my

understanding that the 8.33 MHz spacing is required in Europe, but not

currently in the USA. Customers are asking me whether the FAA has any plans

to go to the 8.33 MHz spacing in the near future - so they can be better

equipped to select the radio version that makes sense. At a recent soaring

seminar someone stated that they thought the FAA was going to require radios

with the 8.33 MHz spacing starting in 2020.



Can anyone help me?



Thank you in advance.



Paul Remde

Cumulus Soaring, Inc.

Yes Google would answer all your questions. 8.3 kHz ain't happening in the USA anytime soon. And one issue there is the FAA in their "wisdom" have been playing with Nextcom, a VDL based future digital voice system. (VDL is one of the existing digital link technologies that was also a potential ADS-B carrier, but is effectively not used for ADS-B).

http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/comm...XCOM_1201.html

and see

http://www.roger-wilco.net/8-33-khz-...-what-is-this/

Presumably would be introduced in transport category and other high-flying aircraft. Yes the same folks that thought going dual-link ADS-B was a good idea... your tax dollars at work, sigh. It would not surprise me to eventually see 8.3 kHz spacing in the USA, and that would actually be a good think IMNSHO vs. trying to go digital.

Any mentions of cellular communication standard here are irrelevant, terrestrial type cellular systems don't work well with aircraft in the air and "spamming" multiple cells. For digital links there are technology (like VDL) that are already fairly well understood. FM based systems (like FRS, which is low-power and also irrelevant here) are also non-starters, being FM does not inherently solve bandwidth issues and FM suffers from capture effect/overtalk issues (why we use AM to start with).

Darryl