Low Cost ADS-B Transceivers

On Mar 17, 9:27*am, mattm wrote:
On Mar 17, 11:12*am, cfinn wrote:



I did some study on the Power Flarm and set in on the presentation at
the Little Rock Convention. It is interesting, but doesn't provide the
capabilities of ADS-B UAT. The plus is that it contains an IGC flight
recorder. It provides very good traffic location for Flarm and ADS-B
1090ES equipped aircraft. It works similar to a PCAS for mode C and S
transponder targets and receives their altitude reports and senses
distance. The traffic location is a good guess and alerts to get your
head up. I'm not sure what it would report if the transponders
altitude reporting was missing as you would have froma mode A
trasnponder. You do not have any of the ADS-B FIS (Flight Information
Services) such as Nexrad weather radar, TFR's, METARs, SIGMETs, etc.
Most importantly, only other aircraft equipped with Flarm would see
you! You would not be visible to ATC or aircraft equipped with TCAS,
PCS, etc.

In addition to all the FIS information that you can receive over ADS-B
UAT, you are visible to ATC. You are also visible directly visible to
other ADS-B UAT equipped aircraft. ADSB ground stations relay your UAT
position information to aircraft equipped with ADSB 1090ES. Those same
ground station also transmit all traffic ATC is following (primary
radar, Mode A/C/S transponder, ADSB 1090ES, ADSB UAT). Now you have a
much more complete picture of traffic, expect for Flarm only equipped
aircraft, and ATC and many other aircraft can see you!

I have nothing against Flarm and think it was a great technology.
However, it hasn't been adopted in the US. Why not go with with the
newer technology and receive the additional benefits along with the
safety of visibility to ATC and others? The pricing ranges for power
Flarm that ware discussed at the convention, would be similar to the
total cost of a Flight Recorder and the anticipated cost of the ADS-B
UAT.

Charlie

Have any of you considered this device?

http://www.powerflarm.aero/

It seems to have a lot more capability than just ADS-B

Bob- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I remember when TCAS was showing up in the 80's, and my friend was
complaining
that they should just use GPS location info to resolve conflicts. *It
seems that day
is finally here.

Yes except TCAS (strictly TCAS-II) is the only thing that issues
resolution advisories, to tell pilots what to do to avoid another
aircraft. It is the only cockpit technology that allows say an
airliner to deviate from an aircraft they can's otherwise see. And
TCAS only does that against transponder equipped threat. We need to
remember we are dealing with a system that thinks everybody has a
transponder (at least where the jets fly).


The FLARM nmea sentences are designed to add the conflict information
to an
existing GPS datastream. *It would make life pretty easy if the ADS-B
conflict
information was forwarded using the same sentences. *

I believe that is what the PowerFlarm does, the Flarm serial protocol
is publicly documented so anybody can use it, but there will still be
devil in the details to check out for an particular device-software
combination of exactly what the capabilities are.

Most of the PDA
apps already
read the FLARM sentences and integrate them into their display. *I
don't know how
you would integrate the weather data into a 4800bps nmea datastream,
though.

The display of other data may be problematic unless features are added
to existing soaring software/flight computers (e.g. CLearNav). Be
careful of demos of that stuff running on a PDA, since switching
between your current soaring software to some other application can be
a pain/unreliable, esp. on Windows Mobile.

The downside of FIS-B is that you may not have reception on the ground
(it will depend where you are) so getting weather or other data off
FIS-B before you fly may not be possible. That is one benefit of XM
Weather over FIS-B (I have XM Weather in my Garmin 496 - nexrad storm
cell and real-time TFR data has been useful in the glider on
occasions). XM Weather is not free, basic FIS-B is, it's not clear
what enhanced FIS-B data will cost in future if it is delivered.

Darryl