Extending my squitter

The thing is that if you equip an N-reg in the USA, or actually anywhere outside the EU, you would enable all the emissions.

Then if you fly to Europe, you are hardly going to disconnect the wires / reconfig the avionics as you fly across the first national frontier into the EU.

So a lot of N-regs in Europe are radiating the whole lot. In light GA terms that usually means a GTX330 having all the stuff connected to it and radiating what Europe calls Enhanced Mode S which is banned on non-qualifying aircraft (below 250kt TAS, below 5700kg, etc). Nobody gives a damn…

The only people who care are avionics installers who interpret the regs strictly. Not all do…

Even in the USA, ADS-B is quite new to light GA so even with the planes recently imported into Europe, my wild guess on the ADS-B equipped % (ADS-B IN or OUT) is way below 1% and it will be many years before this improves.

And a tiny % of that 1% is going to have ADS-B IN merged onto their TAS/TCAS data. In fact Avidyne – the TAS market leader – are not yet offering it on their TAS boxes, and possibly never will, though I believe there is a Garmin box which can be used to merge the ex-TAS traffic stream with an ex-Garmin-ADS-B-IN traffic stream and present the combined stream to your MFD or whatever, so you can get the ADS-B-OUT-emitting traffic on your MFD without waiting for Avidyne to find more $$$. There were threads on this here – I believe NCYankee had all the details.

So radiating ADS-B in Europe is currently a very small priority. Mode C is the best thing of all, plus it is visible to airliner TCAS systems so if you really screwed up…

Currently, a high % of light GA flies without transponders of any kind; this is instantly and blindingly obvious to anybody flying around with an active TAS system.

Alan B

Air avionics will sell you the paperwork for a minor change to fit this equipment, it is valid for most light aircraft but I should check yours is on the list before you part with any money.