On May 21, 2015, at 3:27 PM, Nigel Andrews <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yes the mandate does not mean everyone. Interestingly enough the attitude of > the US pilots has changed. A friend of mine attended a convention in the USA > a month ago and the general feeling now is that most prefer to be > voluntarily fitting ADS-B out be it UAT or 1090 or both as they see the > benefits in being able to see others and have their glass screens issue > warnings if a potential collision is arising. Most are installing ADS-B OUT because once you’ve spent money on the TSO GPS source and the ADS-B transponder, the incremental additional cost of ADS-B IN is pretty small. In the US (and unlike Australia), ADS-B IN comes with extra services. The low-bandwidth data channel used in extended squitter mode is used to provide near-real-time weather info, so anyone flying with EFIS/PFD systems gets something roughly equivalent to a time-delayed weather radar with traffic avoidance data superimposed on it. That’s desirable enough to spend a few grand on. For less than $5k in the E/AB market, you can equip your glass panel with some stupidly impressive situational awareness capabilities. Australia has chosen not to go down that route. There’s very little benefit to a GA pilot from ADS-B: There’s no weather data provided, and collision avoidance with IFR traffic is virtually unchanged because most IFR traffic has TCAS which works perfectly well with mode-C transponders, and virtually no VFR traffic has ADS-B OUT. ADS-B provides traffic density benefits to airlines, and cost benefits to ATC, and there’s no great incentive to VFR aircraft operators to pay their own good money to subsidize Qantas, Virgin and Air Services Australia’s operations. > Remember ADS-B also can give > you airspace clearance as ATC will be using this more and more. Air Services will be happy to work with mode-C for the indefinite future. They’re installing ground stations and satellite transponders for ADS-B, but they’re not decommissioning their existing radar systems, so if you’re sufficiently well equipped to get clearances now you’ll continue to be sufficiently well equipped to get them well into the dim dark future. > We should be pushing the UAT version of ADS-B, far superior to 1090 > transponder technology and offers a full datalink capability so weather > warnings, ATC directions etc can be broadcasted. We only went down the road > of using 1090 here because a lot of the commercial aircraft were fitted with > mode S transponders and only needed to add an approved GPS source to go > ADS-B That ship has sailed. Australia had this argument a decade and a half ago, between Air Services and the airlines, before private aviators even knew there was an issue they needed to get upset about. By the time any of us worked out how poor the Australian variant of ADS-B was going to be for private VFR, it was all over bar the shouting. It ain’t going to change now. - mark _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
