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ADS-B - what practical relevance in Europe?

this PC-24 crossed some 3NM in front of me at a healthy speed, at around 9Kft, yesterday

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

That looks like a fairly nice day. I get the same on my Avidyne TAS / TCAS1, just picking up Mode C/S targets.

It might indicate that planes with transponders are also emitting ADS-B OUT (certified or not), but without flying there in my TB20 one can’t tell how many of those have turned off their transponders to avoid getting busted by the CAA.

It would be an interesting experiment to do. I reckon the CAA already has that data because picking up ADS-B is trivial, with a single receiver picking it up over hundreds of miles.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

There seems to be much confusion as to what can be fitted to aircraft and under what certification.

The optimum fit for GA aircraft is Certified ADS-B out and uncertified ADS-B in as it will catch most of the traffic, if you can add FLARM to this mix all the better.

That is my current happy place with a Garmin GTX33ES doing the ADS-B out (certified) and an Air Avionics AT-1 doing the ADS-B in and FLARM in & out. The Garmin GTX33ES was Certified as part of a wider Avionic upgrade and the AT-1 via CS-STAN.

Just for Peter I include a photo of the traffic view when heading towards his home airfield.

Silvaire wrote:

In those US areas you are likely not talking to ATC anyway when VFR – there is much too much traffic for everybody aloft to be talking to ATC.

There’s no need to talk to ATC, unless you have to. At the most crowded places, there are no ATC, no tower, no nothing. Only lots of different aircraft doing lots different stuff. Discipline and callouts on the radio is what gets it going without accidents. The only thing ADS-B (or similar functionality) would do, would be to scare people off. Too crowded to bother principle.

ADS-B shows aircraft, but doesn’t show intentions. As traffic systems go this is more like cluttering than making order out of it. I have used FLARM a lot, it’s useful, but I don’t see how this will magically solve anything regarding orderly traffic.

Whatever happened to the Google like glasses thing that had some going a few years back?

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

In France a study shows that between 1989 and 1999 there were 17 mid air collisions.They resulted in 42 deaths and 9 injuries.
Of the 17 case 3 involved collisions between a transport plane and a light aircraft, 3 were between light aircraft and gliders, 11 were between light aircraft and light aircraft.
9 were instruction flights with instructor on board.
2 of the collisions occurred when one of the aircraft was flying IFR.
The worst year was 1993 with 4 collisions.
So should the DGAC or EASA mandate ADSB or some other form of TAS or TCAS in Europe?
Between those years I am not sure whether mode S existed and if so whether it was mandatory for IFR flight in France.

France

NCYankee wrote:

Most mid air collisions involve a faster airplane overcoming a slower one, often where the slower one is in the pattern and the faster one descends onto the other aircraft. Often only the faster aircraft is going to be able to gain a visual before the collision, but even that is sometimes blocked by fusalage or other structure..

Not sure if pattern midairs are in majority around here… quite a few occur enroute, though I don’t have any hard data at hand.
The traffic around some big city hubs, London, Paris, etc, can be very dense…
For me it is Zurich, my homebase being located below the western TMA veil’s 5’500ft base. The field itself is at 1’300, and if one heads any other direction than say West, the TMA can go as low as 3’000, leaving little airspace available… this compounded with some quite intense aerial activity from all fields around makes flying on nice days a, I sure don’t like using this word, risky affair. Better have a good scan of your traffic alerting devices, and above all an eagle eyed lookout.

Unfortunately the outcome of any midair is seldom as lucky as for these 2 copulating examples…

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

FAA forecast for 2023 is a total GA fleet of 209,140 aircraft. Not all of these are required to have ADS-B Out in rule airspace because those without an electrical system are exempted in much of the rule airspace. Total number of equipped with ADS-B Out are 165,351 of which 155,906 are good installs, the rest are NPE (Non performing emitter). Some of the NPE are SIL=0, but not many. Most are due to a bad install or with missing required data. My Bonanza was NPE for a while because the pressure altitude was missing. The serial port I was using to send the pressure altitude from the transponder to the UAT ADS-B Out system had failed, fortunately there was a spare serial port available to resolve the issue.

So 79% are installed with ADS-B Out with 75% good installs. Not every issue, probably almost all that make an aircraft NPE, are unrelated to SIL=0, so the target is still likely to be displayed on my certified panel display. Pretty much all with a position and either a pressure or geometric altitude will show on my ForeFlight display, as it does not care about SIL or NPE status. The targets good or bad are received by my certified receiver, but passed on to ForeFlight via BT. What NPE status does is to prevent ATC to use the ADS-B Out position. The rule prevents non equipped aircraft to operate in the designated rule airspace without prior advanced permission via an automated system. Fortunately this does not apply to aircraft that are NPE, because they are equipped, just that they are inop or not meeting requirements. Such NPE aircraft can request permission at any time including in flight. As long as one has a working transponder with mode C, permission is generally granted by ATC. NPE aircraft also won’t get the ground station service of TISB, which generates an ADS-B like broadcast for aircraft that are not equipped,

I also agree with the sentiment that the ADS-B Out is the more valuable in that at least others with inexpensive receivers can see your location. It still takes two to tango. Most mid air collisions involve a faster airplane overcoming a slower one, often where the slower one is in the pattern and the faster one descends onto the other aircraft. Often only the faster aircraft is going to be able to gain a visual before the collision, but even that is sometimes blocked by fusalage or other structure..

KUZA, United States

Agree with you @Silvaire. I personally am not yet to the point where I can say that “I no longer prioritize visual contact”, as ADS-B is not mandatory in Europe. However, looking at the FLARM display is definitely part of my scan in busy areas. I purposely placed it on top of the panel when rebuilding it, so as to keep the eyes outside as much as I can.

I didn’t mean to downplay the importance of looking outside the plane, and understand that Europe is very different from the environment I’m describing. Even in what is now a US ADS-B OUT ‘mandatory’ environment I was myself the exempted guy without a transponder of any kind for years, in a different plane. Also, ADS-B is only ‘mandatory’ in the US in areas where traffic is very dense. However within those areas exempted traffic has got to be less than one in a thousand planes nowadays, and the reality is that I’ve never since 2020 had any traffic surprise me. That is very different than it was before, and I suspect the mid-airs that we had locally every couple of years are going to have decreased in number dramatically when the record can be examined after say ten years.

ADS-B in the US wasn’t primarily intended for on-board traffic awareness, it was for ATC’s use in ‘surveillance’. That’s because when the signal happens to be coming from an FAA ground station and not the other plane directly there is a delay and the location of the plane is not shown accurately. However in my experience in my environment that has not been a factor, I find it transforms your awareness of the traffic around you, and in practice it appears to me you can ‘see’ virtually everybody nearby in any dense traffic area where I fly. Also, in e.g. Foreflight their position can be shown on the VFR sectional in relation to terrain and other geographical features. It’s a completely transformational situation.

@LeSving, for traffic avoidance, listening to ATC, understanding what was said to you specifically out of an almost non-stop stream of words, forming a phrase, waiting for a gap and responding appropriately while simultaneously looking for the traffic visually (and often failing to see it) feels very, very clunky in comparison with glancing at a display every so often and simply acting on the much clearer info it provides. Also, a critical phase for traffic awareness is when say 10-25 miles from an urban area that may have several busy airports nearby, with converging traffic. In those US areas you are likely not talking to ATC anyway when VFR – there is much too much traffic for everybody aloft to be talking to ATC.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 21 Dec 16:14

Silvaire wrote:

Unsuccessfully….

The goal should be not to see other traffic unless it’s necessary – with traffic info it’s usually practical instead to change course slightly and avoid being that close, even when there’s a lot of traffic. You spot some of them by eye anyway but I no longer prioritize visual contact outside of the immediate airport traffic area in which everybody is maneuvering to or from the same spot, and thereby close.

ADS-B works, and it is interesting to me that after only three years of operating in terminal area environments where 99.9% of everybody has it and I can see them clearly on an iPad, this thread feels to me like I’m reading something from the Stone Age. How quickly we adjust and reset our expectations.

Agree with you @Silvaire. I personally am not yet to the point where I can say that “I no longer prioritize visual contact”, as ADS-B is not mandatory in Europe. However, looking at the FLARM display is definitely part of my scan in busy areas. I purposely placed it on top of the panel when rebuilding it, so as to keep the eyes outside as much as I can.

One of my biggest fear is drones, possibly operated “wildly” by uneducated / relentless pilots, outside of the prescribed zones and altitude.

etn
EDQN, Germany

Really the best thing for me is not having to hassle with ATC voice communication to avoid other traffic in dense traffic areas, at least for the most part.

This I don’t get. Visual is OK but audible is not? Or in other words, to sit in the cockpit with your eyes glued to a pad is “a good thing”, but to have a system where you don’t need to have your eyes glued to a pad is “a bad thing” ?

Where this even is an issue is at super crowded airsport sites with lots of background traffic to start with, gliders, skydivers and so on. In controlled airspaces these are controlled anyway.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway
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