Scout is cheap but it only works with FF doesn’t it ?
I forgot to mention the Skyecho from uavionix which works with SD for sure, more expensive but not too much, and with a battery. It transmits too.
Was Scout known as PingBuddy before? When I click on PingBuddy in easyVFR support page (https://www.pocketfms.com/Mailings/2017/13JAN2017-EVFR/), it redirects me to Scout. If it supported easyVFR, there is a good chance that it also works for SkyDemon.
These receivers have become really cheap. Are these useful for receiving weather around Europe?
I have built a Stratux device myself (paid around £140 for parts). I trialed it on both SkyDemon and ForeFlight and found the results to come out somewhat mixed. My simple thoughts in short:
- Easy to build at home
- If the purpose built case is bought with it then it results in a very sturdy looking device
- GPS is accurate to around 4-8m in the UK (at least that is what FF says)
- A 22000mAH battery pack gives it around 8hrs of power
- Receives only ADS-B out signals in UK (none of this TIS-B or whatever it is) but the receiver strength is good. Note a lot of traffic OCAS doesn’t have ADS-B out so it’s a bit premature in UK market (think regulation makes this mandatory by 2020)
- The weather transmitted over UAT in the south of the UK appears spotty (note I haven’t tested it south of London at FL70+ so may be better there). FF sometimes doesn’t decode the weather correctly and you get random “?” on the screen over where “Flight Category” should be
For Skydemon specifically:
- connection to the device (via Wi-Fi) is very easy
- traffic / weather (where available) displays as expected
- main downside being that when you put the iPad to sleep (i.e. pressing the sleep button if in a mount / or closing kneeboard) it drops connection with the Stratux and as this happens SD ends your flight. So when you click “go flying” it starts recording but after putting the iPad to sleep it goes back to planning mode. Important to note this does not mean that Stratux loses it’s satellite fix or ADS-B signals – as soon as you click “go flying” again you are back up immediately. This has little consequences for situational awareness purposes but in terms of flight logging it totally screws up your flight log. Note: my Garmin Glo (Bluetooth connection) does not have this issue.
For ForeFlight specifically:
- comments similar to the above; I find that FF depicts the traffic in a slightly clearer fashion but then again I was having trouble with the weather information
- a similar connection issue exists in FF as well however not as severe – clicking the “Rec” button in the app starts the flight logging and this does not turn off when you put your iPad to sleep. However; when you look at your flight log post-flight there is a little GPS glitch at ever point where the iPad went to sleep (I presume). This glitch is just a straight horizontal line around the circumference of the earth – slightly inconvenient on a 300nm flight. Again, this does not happen with the Bluetooth connected Garmin Glo
- the AHRS chip (an optional add-on for Stratux) doesn’t work well for me. I calibrate it pre-flight but over the course of 30mins the synthetic vision gets more and more eradic and gives odd false bank indications (more testing required from my part)
I haven’t spent a huge amount of time googling for solutions online / playing around with the Stratux settings so all the above may be able to be fixed easily. Just giving my initial thoughts.
Jujupilote wrote:
Scout is cheap but it only works with FF doesn’t it ?
My understanding is that Skydemon requires an external device doing ADS-B in to have its own GPS receiver (which PilotAware and SkyEcho do, but Scout does not). Foreflight trusts the location services of the tablet when displaying the ADS-B in data from Scout.
Trials have begun in the UK.
the UAT standard is used. This dispells the theory that the frequencies used were:
1/ Used by the military.
978 MHz is a part of a frequency band that has been assigned to aircraft use and/or military. One military communication system existed (US developped and used by NATO countries). Since the FAA ADS-B mandate, the frequencies used by UAT have been excluded from the military system. All NATO systems have been updated.
2/ VORTAC are in conflict. Only one VORTAC in Europe (in Germany) is using the UAT frequency. Easily solved!
Uavionix and Skydemon, associated to the CAA are conducting tests. No traffic information for the moment, but weather information.
For or future, we should all be petitionning our elected officials, National Aviation Authorities and pilot associations to support this standard. The cost would be minimal as we already have Mode S transponders that send the data needed to ground stations.
What we need is our ATC to aggregate all data available to them and transmit it to the aircraft. We could use low cost UAT receivers to read the data stream.
My two cents
Emmanuel
It looks like Garmin is setting up a test ADS-B UAT station in EDNY (according to fliegermagazin for now until the end of the year):
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/forms/UATfeedback/
PepperJo wrote:
It looks like Garmin is setting up a test ADS-B UAT station in EDNY (according to fliegermagazin for now until the end of the year):
Will be testing this next week! 
Garmin’s announcement (for background on post above).
UK pilots are really cheap
I cannot imagine that the sums involved are large, but given the weather in the UK this sort of service is invaluable, or if not invaluable at least worth a fiver a month, did they ever poll pilots about how much we would be willing to pay?
More seriously, I have always said that these services are being set up just as a marketing gimmick to promote the sales of this hardware and sales of SD, and will evaporate when it is discovered that people will never pay. It was never going to work anyway because a one off hardware sale can never fund any long term provision of anything. The only people who keep getting money annually are SD and they were not going to carry the cost alone. And got a lot of criticism for saying it. But also 99% of UK GA flies at say 1000-2000ft, and at that level they can get mobile data on their phones. I would never pay for something which I can get for free on my phone when flying. Also everybody can get tafs and metars etc before flying and since most VFR flights are 0.5hr to 1hr runs, there is almost no need for airborne data.
So it isn’t just Brits. I don’t think anybody will pay for this sort of thing. IFR is different, higher altitude etc, hence the Golze ADL is such a great product, but at some €30 a month it isn’t cheap.
