On 4/5/15 7:11 PM, Mike Schumann wrote:
On Sunday, April 5, 2015 at 4:45:31 AM UTC-4, wrote:
Amazing how big a mess the FAA has made of the ADS-B thing isn't it? It seems like it had the potential to streamline things and provide useful situational awareness about other traffic with a relatively simple and inexpensive device - sort of a like a universal implementation of FLARM-like technology in all aircraft. So much for that.

My club held off on FLARM for a couple of years as some members thought that ADS-B would make it redundant. We're now installing it to club ships and the tow planes as funds allow and many of the privately owned gliders have it. In my case all it took was one flight to be convinced of the usefulness of FLARM and I was a bit skeptical of its value in our location at first.

I wouldn't ignore ADS-B as the long term solution to the collision avoidance puzzle. It's almost inevitable that this technology will be the cornerstone of collision avoidance for UAVs that are going to start sharing our US airspace.

The confusion of having two standards (1090ES and UAT) is unfortunate. The FAA (and originally MITRE, which developed the UAT standard) had good intentions. UAT provided the bandwidth needed for the kind of system that would permit a proliferation of other new services far into the future. Conversely adding 1090ES to the Mode S transponder standards provided such limited bandwidth to support ADS-B that there was legitimate concern that this technology would not work in some of the high density US airspaces (NYC, Atlanta, and Chicago), if all commercial and GA aircraft were so equipped.

Standardization on UAT would have been the ideal solution. Unfortunately this did not happen due to the lack of availability of a common frequency thru-out the world and the reluctance of the international aviation community to support this standard. If the FAA had insisted on UAT as the North American standard, it would have dramatically simplified the whole system at the cost of requiring dual equipage on a relatively small number of airliners used on international routes.

For most GA and commercial aircraft, operating within range of ADS-B ground stations, the current mixed UAT / 1090ES environment works well. The big issue is the lack of reliable ADS-B ground station coverage for low altitude operations in remote areas.

However, even in these environments, the future looks promising. There are now low cost dual frequency ADS-B IN receivers on the market that receive both 1090ES and UAT signals. Within the next year or two, single band ADS-B receivers will probably disappear from the market, due to the low cost of the much superior dual band receivers.

The big question is whether POWERFLARM will evolve to fully support this emerging ADS-B environment by incorporating a dual band ADS-B receiver and/or supporting the ADS-B ground station TIS-B capability, or if it will become irrelevant by the introduction of new low cost ADS-B IN solutions designed for the much larger GA community, incorporating not only dual band receivers, but also more sophisticated collision avoidance algorithms that take into account non-typical GA traffic like gliders, parachutists, and balloons.


The problem described not a few posts ago was how misinformed, and just
plain wrong, people had helped delay the introduction of PowerFLARM to a
location where it sounds like it could have been useful/wanted. And
those folks did that by harping on ADS-B,... let me guess influenced by
all that Bernald Smith/Miter/UAT pipe dream crap that too many folks
listened to including yourself. But don't let that stop you, and all the
previous harm done, keep on coming back, keep on telling people there is
something just around the corner...

---

So where is it again you fly? What glider do you own and what ADS-B
avionics have you been flying with? For how long? How long have you been
flying with a transponder? And how much practical experience do you have
flying with FLARM? All questions I've asked of you for before and you
never answer. So let me take a stab at that whole situation and if I get
any of this wrong I apologize and feel free to correct me...

You are a member of the Minnesota Soaring Club, you don't own your own
glider, you don't fly cross country much, you never fly competitions,
and you don't own or fly with a PowerFLARM or ADS-B Out? Is that right?
Just trying to judge your background for all the stuff you post about.
And from a technology viewpoint maybe you could let us know what
experience you have with high-technology, electronics, avionics, or say
actually getting any technology product to market?

You've been on r.a.s many times describing what seems like a dangerous
environment with lots of GA traffic where you fly and why gliders in
that environment apparently urgently need ADS-B equipment. And lots of
us have been baffled about why FLARM never seem appreciated by you since
it seems at times you might also fly with other gliders and/or towplanes
especially if operating from a club/gliderport. I've also asked you
several times where exactly you fly and you never answered. So let me
try there as well, again sorry for any mistakes and feel free to correct
any errors.

I believe you fly with the Minnesota Soaring Club, operating out of
Stanton Airfield. So based on all your past r.a.s posts you seem to
have serious concerns about (mostly GA) mid-air collision risks in that
location. Given those risks I would hope you have convinced the
Minnesota Soaring Club to at least equip their gliders with transponders
so at least ATC can easily see them if they fly within SSR radar
coverage and any PCAS, TCAD and TCAS equipped traffic also have a chance
to detect them as well. That would seem a prudent thing to do for any
glider club operating in what sounds from your past posts to be a high
traffic/high risk-environment. So I have to admit I was a little
surprised when I noticed that you had described to the SSA Executive
Committee back in 2011 that none of the Minnesota Soaring Club Gliders
were transponder equipped. I'm just going by your concerns you have
raised publicly, but in the four years since your comments to the SSA
has the club since corrected this apparent safety problem by installed
transponders and/or ADS-B Out in its glider fleet? Maybe you could give
everybody here an update about your mid-air collision concerns with the
Minnesota Soaring Club?