On near misses, I’ve had one in CAS (well the ATZ of an aerodrome with full ATC) when a student pilot misidentifed the plane he was supposed to be following – he was supposed to follow me, but instead went to follow the aircraft I had been instructed to follow.
You’ve got to keep your guard up even with full ATC.
(Incidentally, calling ‘airprox’ I decided would be extremely unhelpful in the situation – there were already many aircraft in the circuit and the student was quite obviously early solo and flustering him would not have been productive).
I learnt to fly at Fairoaks (EGTF) 3 years ago, and personally I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t turn on their transponder. None of the instructor I flew with ever asked me to turn the transponder off. One instructor was quite worry about busting CAS and asked me multiple times to stay well clear of it.
So I’m surprised to see in forums that apparently people don’t turn on their transponder.
Thanks to everyone who responded to my initial post. I’m working on a project that is looking at ADS-B take-up and possibly trying to find ways to fund some of the approvals so this information may help inform the debate.
What I gather from the responses is the feeling that very few if any owners will spend on an STC-approved fully certified ADS-B OUT system unless the rules on access to controlled airspace change and they have no option because they don’t perceive any direct benefit. What the majority want is ADS-B-IN for improved situational awareness and collision avoidance, and the ability to see all ADS-B targets regardless of the transmitted position data quality. This is definitely preferable to having some (SIL-0) targets being disregarded by certified displays, as not everyone flies with a non-certified tablet using a stand-alone ADS-B IN system such as Powerflarm, PilotAware etc.
Therefore if ADS-B OUT systems could be certified with a SIL=>1 even when using non-compliant GPS systems, then this would do the job for on-board the aircraft, but ATC would still have the targets blocked from their displays which would meet their obligation to not use the data for airspace separation where SIL=3 is required. Of course there are some ANSPs who would also like to see all data regardless of SIL, to aid with addressing airspace infringements, but that’s a separate issue.
For those who have compliant equipment (e.g a GNS430W/GTX330ES, TT31/GTN650 etc) there doesn’t appear to be an appetite to pay for the STC to allow a legal interconnection and operation, so it’ll only happen if the STCs are freely available.
The best way to improve collision avoidance would be to get all aircraft equipped with a transponder and ensure they are always used.
Have I got this correct?
The best way to improve collision avoidance would be to get all aircraft equipped with a transponder and ensure they are always used.
Obviously I agree with that sentence, wigglyamp, because turning on existing transponders to Mode C, and installing them in the planes which don’t have them but could have them, is the best thing to leverage at this point in GA, but I suspect that’s not what you were after 
This simple proposition is made ineffective by the stupid ban on new Mode C installations. Everything new now has to be Mode S and that gets the civil liberties guys really excited and ensures close to zero takeup within a significant chunk of GA which is currently transponder-less.
Therefore if ADS-B OUT systems could be certified with a SIL=>1 even when using non-compliant GPS systems
Could you give an example of the sort of avionics scenario you are thinking of?
What bothers me most is upgrading my TAS605 to ADS-B IN and seeing almost nobody because only SIL-3 emitters are displayed. And this isn’t just me – most modern-ish IFR planes come with TAS factory-installed, and a lot of people are retrofitting it. But I don’t see how your STC could change that because that behaviour is implemented in Avidyne’s firmware.
I learnt to fly at Fairoaks (EGTF) 3 years ago, and personally I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t turn on their transponder.
That is IMHO because the people who fly most are not hanging around any flying school/club. At any given airfield, they turn up, fly, land, go home.
Most people who get a PPL give up within a year or so, so very few are entering this pool of long-term flyers.
Also IME schools/clubs discourage experienced pilots hanging around, because they are seen as usurping their instructors’ authority, and might lead to PPL students spending their limited funds on cost sharing with these pilots, rather than spending it on lessons
OTOH Fairoaks may be different, due to its extreme proximity to CAS so people flying out of there need to be on the ball.
wigglyamp wrote:
For those who have compliant equipment (e.g a GNS430W/GTX330ES, TT31/GTN650 etc) there doesn’t appear to be an appetite to pay for the STC to allow a legal interconnection and operation, so it’ll only happen if the STCs are freely available.
As I understand it the STC’s are freely available for the combinations you list. It is more an issue of an STC not existing for a particular combination. For example between a Trig and a GNS480. Both use a fully compatible interface, but there isn’t an STC that I am aware of for the combination. For the GNS480, STC’s exist for combination with the Garmin transponders. The GNS480 uses the identical interface for ADS-B Position source as the GNS430W/530W and GTN units, all of which are on the STC for the Garmin GTX330ES and GTX3X5 series. The Trig has an STC to work with the GTN and GNS430W/530W series, but not with the GNS480, so sans an STC, it can’t be used as the basis for the combination of a GNS480 and a Trig.
Unfortunately, NCY, those STCs have not yet been validated by EASA yet. They are not “Basic STCs” and so it is time consuming and potentially expensive to get them validated. It will happen, and we will put pressure on the Agency to make it happen soon. But at the moment there is no simple certification basis for configuring ADS B out in European with a C166b transponder.
Jesse wrote:
there is a junkwerk brand of transponders which have all kind of issues, failing SLS, pulse timing out of tolerance, frequency out of tolerance and a bunch more
So certification is not a guarantee especially if this is a known problem and maintenance orgs and NAA don’t do anything about it (ETSO removal, AD).Hopefully the GPS testing and certifying is a bit better else the only-SIL-3 for TAS and ATC is even more illogical.
That’s correct; certification is awarded for reports which the manufacturer prepares and hands over to the FAA or EASA. You don’t (normally) have certification agency reps watching the testing. So it is possible to get a piece of junk certified. And you could just forge the documents.
In practice this is rare but what does happen is that some stuff which is certified turns out to be unreliable in the field. But certification (in GA) is not a measure of reliability 
Certification is also not a measure of manufacturing QA, although to get the FAA approval for a manufacturing facility you do need to have a recognised QA process in place. (I don’t know what EASA requires). I looked into this years ago for a potential FAA-PMA product. It turned out to be virtually impossible to do in Europe, for a small business, for various reasons one of which was hosting a delegation of FAA inspectors for a number of days. I got the impression that ISO9000 would suffice for the QA side, and everybody knows ISO9000 can be implemented as a complete sham and IMHO most of the time it is.
This may not be possible in certified avionics, but three years ago I changed my King KT76A for a Garrecht VT2000 transponder. The old unit was behaving erratically and the Garrecht unit fits into the KT76A tray. I connected it to an old Garmin GPS for the NMEA input and it has worked flawlessly. I have found it quite useful as ATC know my callsign and who I am before contacting them. This has saved me from an airspace violation on one occasion and got me off lightly on another. I have heard commercial aircraft enquire about my presence only to be reassured by ATC that there is no conflict. I also have a PilotAware receiver, but have not used it in the cockpit as it is rather a kludge and there is not much traffic where I fly.
Simon
Actually, sites like adsbexchange or flight radar are the reason I won’t install ADS-B (no matter what SIL-Level) unless I am forced to, and I know several people who value their privacy more than a quasi-nonexistent chance of a mid air collision. Knowledge about other kinds of aviation and tactical flying get’s you out of most traffic anyway. But perhaps my “comfort zone” has been a lot narrower than those of people who never have thermaled with the pulk of 30+ other gliders within 300ft vertical distance. I don’t tend to call it an airprox if I see another aircraft. And since you always have to account for a plane with defect avionics, you should have the eyes out anyway.
If ADS-B would be mandatory, I think many of these sites will get sued over violation of privacy rights, since the refuse to make a simple opt-in for traffic to be displayed. I would be fine if the data would solely be used for aviation purpose (e.g. collision avoidance or ATC service), but the data is not ment to be broadcasted to everyone and his dog so he can file complaints every time we go below 500ft during flight training, water flying, ridge running for instance. Even today many glider pilots get reported due to alleged busting of bird sanctuaries, despite the necessities of the gliders choice of flight paths. This is based much on FLARM and OGN, but the principle is the same.
Sites like FR, ADSBexchange and alike are actively undermining flight safety and many pilot’s I know have no issues turning the stuff off because of them – and they rightfully feel no obligation to give away their rights to sites that earn millions with essentially stolen data.
