I would pay for this – but a fiver a month would be about the limit – during the spring/summer it would give me more confidence going on a trip if I could be sure of having information on thunderstorms etc, it would encourage me to go on longer trips as well.
As for mobile data – yes in the SE of England but I can tell you over Germany and France even at 5000 feet you are not getting a reliable signal.
Sferics (TS data)
Wx radar
IR image (cloud tops, etc)
There are various sites for tafs and metars.
Thre are private sites which collect the data into a single interface. Check your PMs.
Yes I think there is an increasing amount of “blacklisting” of a phone which is in contact with multiple ground stations. So you are flying along and have a strong signal a lot of the time, but no mobile data and no SMS… nothing. France started doing this a few years ago. Germany also mostly no longer works (with Vodafone, at least). Belgium is completely blank and has been for years. But this is FL100+ and I have no recent low level data.
Not sure if the article is accurate.
If the US kind of information such as weather and traffic would be available widely and say £5 would be added into a package for navdata e.t.c. I am quite sure people who have the equipment would simply shrug and pay. It is a sight cheaper than Golze or similar solutions.
From my pov the problem would not be to get the people to pay a relatively cheap subscription but to “make” them install the equipment in the first place. See Mode S, see ADSB-out, see 8.33, people will do it grudgingly but not out of free will. The difference would be that the “what’s in it for me” factor would be hugely different.
It would therefore depend strongly on whether it’s mandated or if not if there is “cheap” hardware which allows the use of the data. UK or non UK, I think there would be lots of pilots who would take this kind of information on board immediately if it becomes available. Dumping existing services would free the money for that…
I agree, but this is the “US/FAA way” versus the “European way”. In the US they used TIS (traffic info) as a carrot to adopt Mode S. In Europe, GA has almost no power and almost no representation, so there is no need for carrots; you just use a stick 
It is a bit sad but did they really think they would make users pay ? how ? Encrypting the signal ? It would remove the big plus of their system which was exact same technology as in the US
Of course, nothing is to be expected from the CAAs. But their permission was already a thing.
I thought they would finance the stuff permanently as part of some communication for selling some products to GA.
It can’t be that expensive. We did the calculation in another thread. Airfields can offer spots, power supply and internet connection to the transmitters, it brings them some publicity. GA groups could participate (AOPA, LAA, FFA in France)….
This stuff is one of the only practical safety improvements these days (compared to some cartoon). Is still anyone interested in GA safety ? EASA ? I thought I had heard about plans, roadmaps, strategies….
This is one of the greatest safety improvements available to GA, and costs peanuts. The fact that the aviation “safety” authorities won’t pay (with money that is coming from the regulated anyway) shows how much they really care about safety.
This is very interesting news. As most know I make a living from satellite in flight weather and indeed it is about the upper 10% of the market which is willing to pay for this kind of service. Every year the AERO show is a reminder of this. Pilots come up to my booth and say this is all great but as a 20 hour / year VFR pilot they can not justify to pay anything for it.
With this customer base in mind I still believe the ADL system is the most economical way of providing an in flight weather service. All kinds of broadcast services (different kinds of ground stations, satellites etc.) just do not work out.
It is a bit sad but did they really think they would make users pay ? how ? Encrypting the signal
That was the original EASA proposal for LPV approaches. They were going to mandate the use of the Galileo satellites (not allow the US GPS ones) and the “extra precise” signal was going to be encrypted. They were going to sell the decryption keys. The Galileo website claimed the system will create 100,000 jobs. A pity I didn’t print that website to a PDF 
I think somebody forgot that most avionics are made in another country…
This is one of the greatest safety improvements available to GA
I am not actually sure about that. Practically everybody who flies a plane cannot do anything (beyond a local jolly down the road and back again) without a smartphone or some internet access device, so they can already get tafs and metars. The audience for this is the UK VFR community (mainly SD users) and you can brief VFR flights well enough. I have read hundreds of accident reports and don’t ever recall reading one where somebody crashed because they flew into a TS or decided to scud run in OVC002 and none of this was in the taf or the metar. In just about all cases it is right there in front of you. And the sferics, radar and IR image data is easily available. Over a large area, in the context of a much longer flight, say flying VFR from the UK to Spain, that is different, but nobody was ever going to provide these ground stations all over Europe anyway. And anybody burning enough avgas to be doing that can afford the Golze box 10 times over
Oh yes that one is always great value One’s life story is on there… The problem is that I can’t remember the URL. The obvious one doesn’t go back far enough.
