Aviation Consumer and Collision Avoidance

OK, let's get something straight here -- I am the Jon Spencer (and it's Jon,
not John) who wrote that article. I have talked to almost nobody about that
article. In fact the only people with whom I have discussed technical
details were two people who called me from SureCheck.

If you are one of those people, it would have been more honest to identify
yourself as such (if not, then I've never had any conversation with you).
Furthermore, if you are one of the people from SureCheck, saying you "know"
me is disingenuous at best -- I've spoken to you once.

Finally, whoever you are, I never said that the SureCheck performed better.
It was my opinion that it was so close that it was really a matter of what
features were important to you. Paul and I did the testing together, and he
said he felt the Monroy had a very slight edge. As we do with any article,
we discussed this. I have been writing for many years and I have no qualms
about disagreeing with my editor if that seems to be warranted. After
bouncing it back and forth, we decided to go with the Monroy by a hair. Let
me emphasize that this was not an editor imposing his opinion, it was a
discussion between editor and writer, both of whom participated in the
testing (in fact, we swapped seats so for part of the testing he flew and I
tested, and for part of the testing I flew and he tested), followed by a
joint decision.

Oh yeah, the "razor's edge" headline and your implication that there was
something unethical about the editor writing that -- the editor writes all
headlines. That's part of his job. The writer suggests a head, but rarely
expects it to be the final one since the headline is related to the rest of
the issue as well as the specific article.

Now, technically does the editor get the final say on recommendations? Sure,
that's his job. The editor gets final say on everything, pretty much on the
basis of job description. But a good editor, and Paul is one of the best
I've worked for, makes recommendations in concert with his writers rather
than imposing them.

As for bias, we answer to nobody on our recommendations except for issues of
fact, and we are careful as we can be on that. There is no "final editor"
other than Paul, and Paul is one of the most doggedly ethical and outspoken
people I know. Knowing Paul through some club (assuming that's even true...)
would buy you nothing with him when it comes to reviewing your product. He'd
be happy to sit down with you over drinks and tell you your product is a
piece of crap if that's what he thinks.

Frankly, I sincerely hope you are not associated with SureCheck. Accusing
Aviation Consumer's editor of bias based on his membership in a club with
another business owner is pretty tacky.


Jonathan Spencer
Aviation Consumer




"Loran" wrote in message
om...
You know, I actually know John Spencer and when I asked him about this
article, he let me know that he said the monro 300 did not perform as
well as the surecheck vrx. So I asked him why the "razor edge"
headline he said he didn't write that, but it is was a guy named paul
bertorelli who did that. But paul is also in a mooney club with the
guys from the monro company.

I thought that was a pretty interesting discovery, considering they
are supposed to be unbiased, I wonder just how unbiased their final
editors are.




(BHelman) wrote in message
. com...
Which quote they use is subject to a random sample obviously, because
they continue on that quote to explain why for capability they pick
the Trafficscope.

My point is they mention clearly that the price difference is
justified by the added capability of the Trafficscope.

Like they said, you get what you pay for.


Thomas Borchert wrote in message
...
BHelman,

Did you know that? The
issue editor skims through it and randomly picks something to add to
a
title.


I'm a journalist...

In this case, the lead-in was a direct quote from the article, saying
"We give the Monroy a razor thin edge". While you obviously differ, it
should be possible to concede the article says just that - in the one
and only passage directly comparing the units.

It doesn't say "The Surecheck is way better" or something in that
vein,
even if you keep claiming it does. It doesn't say "The Monroy is way
better" or anything like that, either. But I never claimed that.

Thierry --

We didn't contact Proxalert when we started the article because we had never
heard of you. Your website did not turn up in the search engine, no
distributors mentioned you, and we never saw any ads. When we finally did
find your website there was no phone number listed. There was a distributor
listed on the site (Eastern Avionics, the only distributor in the US) and we
called them immediately. In fact, since we were in southern Florida at the
time, we planned to fly down to Eastern Avionics in Punta Gorda, borrow a
unit for the day, and include it in the article.

I spoke to Eastern personally. At first they didn't even know what I was
talking about. Finally they rummaged around in their database and found you.
But not only did they not have any units in stock, they also didn't have a
phone number for you!

So please, don't imply that all your contact information was in place and we
simply didn't do our homework.

Jonathan Spencer
Aviation Consumer


"Thierry" wrote in message
m...
We (proxalert) contacted Aviation consumer on mid february to offer to
send a Proxalert R5 for evaluation. They came back 2 weeks after
saying it's too late as they were unable to buy a device from a
distributor. Our contact info are available since November 2003 but
they never contacted us.

If you don't see a follow up very soon on the R5 the conclusion will
be evident ...


(Loran) wrote in message
. com...
You know, I actually know John Spencer and when I asked him about this
article, he let me know that he said the monro 300 did not perform as
well as the surecheck vrx. So I asked him why the "razor edge"
headline he said he didn't write that, but it is was a guy named paul
bertorelli who did that. But paul is also in a mooney club with the
guys from the monro company.

I thought that was a pretty interesting discovery, considering they
are supposed to be unbiased, I wonder just how unbiased their final
editors are.




(BHelman) wrote in message
. com...
Which quote they use is subject to a random sample obviously, because
they continue on that quote to explain why for capability they pick
the Trafficscope.

My point is they mention clearly that the price difference is
justified by the added capability of the Trafficscope.

Like they said, you get what you pay for.


Thomas Borchert wrote in message
...
BHelman,

Did you know that? The
issue editor skims through it and randomly picks something to add
to a
title.


I'm a journalist...

In this case, the lead-in was a direct quote from the article,
saying
"We give the Monroy a razor thin edge". While you obviously differ,
it
should be possible to concede the article says just that - in the
one
and only passage directly comparing the units.

It doesn't say "The Surecheck is way better" or something in that
vein,
even if you keep claiming it does. It doesn't say "The Monroy is way
better" or anything like that, either. But I never claimed that.

Hi! This is really Ronald Reagan, and I fully endorse the new Monroy!

The monroy spam keeps getting better and better.

What next? Albert Einstein? Maybe Tom Cruise?





"Jon S" wrote in message ...
OK, let's get something straight here -- I am the Jon Spencer (and it's Jon,
not John) who wrote that article. I have talked to almost nobody about that
article. In fact the only people with whom I have discussed technical
details were two people who called me from SureCheck.

If you are one of those people, it would have been more honest to identify
yourself as such (if not, then I've never had any conversation with you).
Furthermore, if you are one of the people from SureCheck, saying you "know"
me is disingenuous at best -- I've spoken to you once.

Finally, whoever you are, I never said that the SureCheck performed better.
It was my opinion that it was so close that it was really a matter of what
features were important to you. Paul and I did the testing together, and he
said he felt the Monroy had a very slight edge. As we do with any article,
we discussed this. I have been writing for many years and I have no qualms
about disagreeing with my editor if that seems to be warranted. After
bouncing it back and forth, we decided to go with the Monroy by a hair. Let
me emphasize that this was not an editor imposing his opinion, it was a
discussion between editor and writer, both of whom participated in the
testing (in fact, we swapped seats so for part of the testing he flew and I
tested, and for part of the testing I flew and he tested), followed by a
joint decision.

Oh yeah, the "razor's edge" headline and your implication that there was
something unethical about the editor writing that -- the editor writes all
headlines. That's part of his job. The writer suggests a head, but rarely
expects it to be the final one since the headline is related to the rest of
the issue as well as the specific article.

Now, technically does the editor get the final say on recommendations? Sure,
that's his job. The editor gets final say on everything, pretty much on the
basis of job description. But a good editor, and Paul is one of the best
I've worked for, makes recommendations in concert with his writers rather
than imposing them.

As for bias, we answer to nobody on our recommendations except for issues of
fact, and we are careful as we can be on that. There is no "final editor"
other than Paul, and Paul is one of the most doggedly ethical and outspoken
people I know. Knowing Paul through some club (assuming that's even true...)
would buy you nothing with him when it comes to reviewing your product. He'd
be happy to sit down with you over drinks and tell you your product is a
piece of crap if that's what he thinks.

Frankly, I sincerely hope you are not associated with SureCheck. Accusing
Aviation Consumer's editor of bias based on his membership in a club with
another business owner is pretty tacky.


Jonathan Spencer
Aviation Consumer




"Loran" wrote in message
om...
You know, I actually know John Spencer and when I asked him about this
article, he let me know that he said the monro 300 did not perform as
well as the surecheck vrx. So I asked him why the "razor edge"
headline he said he didn't write that, but it is was a guy named paul
bertorelli who did that. But paul is also in a mooney club with the
guys from the monro company.

I thought that was a pretty interesting discovery, considering they
are supposed to be unbiased, I wonder just how unbiased their final
editors are.




(BHelman) wrote in message
. com...
Which quote they use is subject to a random sample obviously, because
they continue on that quote to explain why for capability they pick
the Trafficscope.

My point is they mention clearly that the price difference is
justified by the added capability of the Trafficscope.

Like they said, you get what you pay for.


Thomas Borchert wrote in message
...
BHelman,

Did you know that? The
issue editor skims through it and randomly picks something to add to
a
title.


I'm a journalist...

In this case, the lead-in was a direct quote from the article, saying
"We give the Monroy a razor thin edge". While you obviously differ, it
should be possible to concede the article says just that - in the one
and only passage directly comparing the units.

It doesn't say "The Surecheck is way better" or something in that
vein,
even if you keep claiming it does. It doesn't say "The Monroy is way
better" or anything like that, either. But I never claimed that.

I'm not going to offer my two cent's worth about which unit is best
because I don't have a clue. But, I'm using the Monroy 200 that is
mounted in my panel, with a belly antenna. It sometimes indicates
traffic that I never see but most of the time I can find it when I
look. And it frequently alerts me to planes I probably wouldn't have
seen very quickly due to their relative location.

To me, one of the aspects I find valuable -- go ahead, call me weird
-- is that it is not totally reliable. I don't trust it to find all
traffic so I don't blithely rely on it. It doesn't identify direction
or altitude, and it doesn't identify mulitiple aircraft. So I keep
watching. Maybe I'd do the same if I had a unit that did everything
reliably, but since I don't I'm very pleased with this unit.

What kind of belly antenna are you using -- is it a DME antenna or a
transponder antenna? We tried both the Monroy and the SureCheck units with a
DME antenna (because it was on the plane and not being used) and neither one
worked at all. The SureCheck people said DME antennas don't work well, but
Monroy said they would, so we weren't sure whether it was this particular
antenna or DME antennas in general.

JonS


wrote in message
...
I'm not going to offer my two cent's worth about which unit is best
because I don't have a clue. But, I'm using the Monroy 200 that is
mounted in my panel, with a belly antenna. It sometimes indicates
traffic that I never see but most of the time I can find it when I
look. And it frequently alerts me to planes I probably wouldn't have
seen very quickly due to their relative location.

To me, one of the aspects I find valuable -- go ahead, call me weird
-- is that it is not totally reliable. I don't trust it to find all
traffic so I don't blithely rely on it. It doesn't identify direction
or altitude, and it doesn't identify mulitiple aircraft. So I keep
watching. Maybe I'd do the same if I had a unit that did everything
reliably, but since I don't I'm very pleased with this unit.

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 17:23:15 -0400, "Jon S"
wrote:

What kind of belly antenna are you using -- is it a DME antenna or a
transponder antenna? We tried both the Monroy and the SureCheck units with a
DME antenna (because it was on the plane and not being used) and neither one
worked at all. The SureCheck people said DME antennas don't work well, but
Monroy said they would, so we weren't sure whether it was this particular
antenna or DME antennas in general.


I have a transponder antenna located in center about three feet aft of
wheels.

Jon,

We tried both the Monroy and the SureCheck units with a
DME antenna (because it was on the plane and not being used) and neither one
worked at all.


There is a difference between DME and Transponder antennas? I was told there
isn't.

We use ours with a cheapo single-stick transponder antenna on the belly (see
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...ransponder.php - it's
listed as suitable for DME and transponder). Didn't work at first - which
turned out to be faulty antenna wiring. I would suggest your failure to use it
with a mounted antenna might be because of problems with the antenna.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Thomas --

Just spoke to Paul about this. Turns out you're right -- there is no
difference. Paul checked with his radio person and was told it's exactly the
same part number. Interesting because SureCheck was adamant that a DME
antenna won't work and a transponder antenna will.

JonS


"Thomas Borchert" wrote in message
...
Jon,

We tried both the Monroy and the SureCheck units with a
DME antenna (because it was on the plane and not being used) and neither
one
worked at all.


There is a difference between DME and Transponder antennas? I was told
there
isn't.

We use ours with a cheapo single-stick transponder antenna on the belly
(see
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...ransponder.php - it's
listed as suitable for DME and transponder). Didn't work at first - which
turned out to be faulty antenna wiring. I would suggest your failure to
use it
with a mounted antenna might be because of problems with the antenna.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

In all fairness I re-read the trafficscope manual, and I think what
they are suggesting is that they only approve of certain antenna
models.

My thought is they didn't want to give a "blanket approval" for just
any antenna on the market. This is understandable, considering
transponder-only antennas have smaller bandwidths than the broadband
DME antennas.

I used to work bench test transponders (in my much younger years) and
when I used the broadband antennas the power loss was much higher than
in the dedicated transponder antennas. The typical broadband antenna
had a VSWR of around 1.5, where the transponder antenna had a 1.2 In
Lamens terms, this COULD mean a difference of several dB depending on
ground-plane arrangements.

I have two of the commant blade antennas installed, one above just
rear of my comm, another forward of my transponder antenna, and
trafficscope functions flawlessly. One consideration I noticed is
that you do need to place the antennas 27 cm apart in a vertical
plane. When I asked them about this they explained that it helps their
splitter maintain phase balance.

In reading their publications, it appears that Surecheck gives more
attention to detail. They specify cable type, and antennas. This can
mean a major difference in range, especially if you took the monroy
advice and just wired up some lossy RG-58 and an unknown DME antenna.
At the frequency these guys operate at, a few extra feet of RG-58
could mean a range difference on more than a mile.


"Jon S" wrote in message ...
Thomas --

Just spoke to Paul about this. Turns out you're right -- there is no
difference. Paul checked with his radio person and was told it's exactly the
same part number. Interesting because SureCheck was adamant that a DME
antenna won't work and a transponder antenna will.

JonS


"Thomas Borchert" wrote in message
...
Jon,

We tried both the Monroy and the SureCheck units with a
DME antenna (because it was on the plane and not being used) and neither
one
worked at all.


There is a difference between DME and Transponder antennas? I was told
there
isn't.

We use ours with a cheapo single-stick transponder antenna on the belly
(see
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...ransponder.php - it's
listed as suitable for DME and transponder). Didn't work at first - which
turned out to be faulty antenna wiring. I would suggest your failure to
use it
with a mounted antenna might be because of problems with the antenna.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Thanks for that information. In a quick look on the web, all the antennas I
found were labeled DME/transponder (in other words, dual use) and all were
labeled "broadband" but perhaps there are some that specifically for
transponders that I didn't see. I noticed that SureCheck does say they got
better results with a blade antenna than the stick-and-ball type (which is
what we were using).

However, we were not getting poor performance, we were getting no
performance -- even when the other aircraft were a mile or less away (based
on the TIS display and visual ID). Of course, it's also possible that that
particular antenna had a problem. We did take the care to make up an
extension from RG-142 cable as recommended by SureCheck and we did check the
extension for shorts and continuity. Unfortunately, we did not have the time
to explore this further or try another antenna.

I believe we did say in the article that our results were inconclusive on
external antennas and that our problem might have been a bad antenna.

JonS



"BHelman" wrote in message
om...
In all fairness I re-read the trafficscope manual, and I think what
they are suggesting is that they only approve of certain antenna
models.

My thought is they didn't want to give a "blanket approval" for just
any antenna on the market. This is understandable, considering
transponder-only antennas have smaller bandwidths than the broadband
DME antennas.

I used to work bench test transponders (in my much younger years) and
when I used the broadband antennas the power loss was much higher than
in the dedicated transponder antennas. The typical broadband antenna
had a VSWR of around 1.5, where the transponder antenna had a 1.2 In
Lamens terms, this COULD mean a difference of several dB depending on
ground-plane arrangements.

I have two of the commant blade antennas installed, one above just
rear of my comm, another forward of my transponder antenna, and
trafficscope functions flawlessly. One consideration I noticed is
that you do need to place the antennas 27 cm apart in a vertical
plane. When I asked them about this they explained that it helps their
splitter maintain phase balance.

In reading their publications, it appears that Surecheck gives more
attention to detail. They specify cable type, and antennas. This can
mean a major difference in range, especially if you took the monroy
advice and just wired up some lossy RG-58 and an unknown DME antenna.
At the frequency these guys operate at, a few extra feet of RG-58
could mean a range difference on more than a mile.


"Jon S" wrote in message
...
Thomas --

Just spoke to Paul about this. Turns out you're right -- there is no
difference. Paul checked with his radio person and was told it's exactly
the
same part number. Interesting because SureCheck was adamant that a DME
antenna won't work and a transponder antenna will.

JonS


"Thomas Borchert" wrote in message
...
Jon,

We tried both the Monroy and the SureCheck units with a
DME antenna (because it was on the plane and not being used) and
neither
one
worked at all.


There is a difference between DME and Transponder antennas? I was told
there
isn't.

We use ours with a cheapo single-stick transponder antenna on the
belly
(see
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...ransponder.php -
it's
listed as suitable for DME and transponder). Didn't work at first -
which
turned out to be faulty antenna wiring. I would suggest your failure
to
use it
with a mounted antenna might be because of problems with the antenna.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)