Given that a lot of planes carry more than one person, what does the number of pilots have to do with funding aviation infrastructure?
I assumed that :
I don’t mean I would like ADSB to be fully private, it was just for a theoritical estimate.
Update on UK’s Flyer news on the UAT experiment :
Two new sites have recently been added to the trial: Wycombe Air Park and Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey. Farnborough and Popham are to follow once approved.
Flying at FL140, I got great coverage from the Goodwood station as far as ETRAT on the French coast, with Radar, METAR and TAF in Garmin Pilot and Foreflight (but still no METAR on the GTN). Hooray!
https://www.flyingmag.com/new-free-weather-products-coming-soon-to-ads-b-feed
Even better information coming soon to ads-b …………………….in the states
I think it is worth commenting on the costings. Peter is right, my idea about an advertising based system probably wouldn’t work unless they could add a line “sponsored by XYZ” in the METAR!
I can understand the issues with a “volunteer network” but to put things into context, a fairly sophisticated ICOM (PMR) Private Business Mobile Radio which can operate in both the old Analogue and new Digital modes (and can send data in the Analogue mode) costs £ 284 ex VAT. This puts out 25 watts output and covers the VHF frequency in question. A 1/4 wave whip antenna is £ 15 ish. (Remember this is the real world not Aviation pricing)
Looking at the coverage of the three existing 25 watt transmitters I could imagine that 20 transmitters would do a reasonable job covering the UK. Perhaps one on the hanger roof of every local Airfield connected to the internet which is already paid for ……so a non-relevant cost.
So, the transmitter equipment is less than £ 10,000 to cover the UK and perhaps some nice government department would look at the graph below which shows accident data in the U.S. after ADS-B weather became available. Perhaps the UK Government could provide the data at Taxpayers expense to save a few lives. It would probably be better use of public resources than the hundreds of UK Police monitoring the internet for “hate crimes” ……..ie people being nasty to other people on Facebook!
I am about to have SIL1 ADSB out connected from a Trig GPS source. I also have Power Flarm with a dedicated display to show ADSB and Flarm traffic so I don’t need traffic displays or ADSB in or out.
I would be interested in picking up the Uavionix weather trials in the UK which now have 5 ground transmitters
https://www.uavionix.com/blog/uat-in-the-uk-part-iii/
As this is a trial I don’t want to spend too much money as it could potentially disappear quite quickly, however the cheapest “weather only” receiver I can find is this kit based on a Rasperry Pi 3.
The construction all looks a bit rubbish to me.
I’d prefer find a simple pre-assembled item with GPS and Wi-fi built in that could plug into the cigarette lighter or USB. I’m surprised there aren’t more receivers out there. I need weather only. I fly VFR with twin i-Pad minis running Sky Demon. Flarm can connects to one i-Pad via Wi-fi leaving the other i-Pad display weather.
Does anybody know of any other options to display the UK weather trials on Sky Demon?
Yes it is a real spare-bedroom workshop job, but I guess that if they made it properly, in the fairly low volumes it would cost too much, but the raison d’etre (you know I had to copy/paste that from google) in that market is that it has to be cheap.
It could be built properly but you will need to find a good hobbyist to do it.
Archer, you can check OpenFlightSolutions who assembles stratux hardware in a neat box. Its price seems to have decreased to 240$ but I am still looking for any private user to publicly announce it works great with SD. The developer says he tried it OK.
Any of the following portables should work with ForeFlight. Stratux or any of its clones, Stratus, Scout. Of these, I would suggest Scout. It is made by uAvionix and is under $200 USD.
Any of these panel mount/installed solutions will also work with ForeFlight: GTX 345, GDL 88 and either a FS210/FS510, a FreeFlight ADS-B receiver.
