Airborne weather radar (for the poor)?

This is probably what you’re looking for

This sort of thing has been examined by many people over many years.

It started with projects which transmitted data using SMS messages. These are fine for tafs and metars (various small scale projects were implemented, using e.g. a PC-connected GSM phone running some code to parse an incoming SMS query for the ICAO codes) and could even do radar images (AFAIK nobody did anything with it although I did send details of one implementation to Avbrief – who weren’t interested).

I have the ADL150 too but frankly at c. 20-30 quid a month this is way too expensive for most GA (VFR) pilots. Especially as nearly all VFR traffic flies at low levels, where one can get sufficiently goo 3G/4G reception on any phone.

So the market for a service which works better than the intermittent 3G/4G is actually very small. It is mostly just hard-core IFR pilots.

I don’t believe Skydemon’s ground based transmission project will go anywhere because it is UK only, UK GA is really tight with money (look at all the boycott calls re £30 airports on the UK chat sites) and it flies mostly below 2000ft where you can get data on any phone It may work for Skydemon to lock-in more customers (any publicity is good, especially if it looks innovative and gets you column-inches) but really anybody who knows which websites to get wx from doesn’t need it.

And anybody who can write some PHP and has a fixed IP can set up a private wx site which grabs the data (from e.g. meteox.com) and delivers it in an efficient format. I have access to two such sites; one I paid someone to write and the other started with that code (I gave it to him) and added to it. Neither can be published because all the wx data is copyright etc etc.

Then there is the telegram wx bot operated by Autorouter (Achim and Tom, the two developers, have unfortunately vanished from here, having benefitted hugely from EuroGA to launch it ) and this provides a big range of features including airport webcam images. It is limited at higher (typical European IFR) altitudes by a combination of poor mobile data connectivity and the phone’s poor ability to make use of very brief connection periods. I have frequently done say a 5hr flight and all telegram wx bot requests arrived together just as I landed

The images are also not georeferenced; for that you need the ADL or some other custom solution, although it is actually quite easy to knock up a private wx site which delivers a radar image on which the client browser (which is running on a phone or a tablet and thus has access to the GPS location) paints a picture of the aircraft in the right place. I have access to one such site but it almost never seems to work.

And at the top end people use certified wx delivery solutions such as the MLX770, GSR56, etc and all these use Iridium (like the ADL does, except the ADL uses the small-packet service which is cheaper). They typically cost c. 10k to install and are expensive to run. I have heard of 100 quid a month but to many people that is nothing if it works (which is not always the case).

As Peter wrote for years we have investigated about all options and with current technology no new approach seems to be available. I have even remotely considered building nano satellites, buying disused AM broadcasting facilities and much more. But all this simply does not work out. The bottom line is GSM/3G/LTE for low level flight in populated areas and Iridium for anything else.
But those two approaches can obviously be optimized. The satellite approach can mainly be optimized with better software and data compression. The GSM/3G/LTE approach could maybe be optimized with multi antenna systems running tweaked software instead of using of the shelf phones.

You could do clever stuff with a rooted phone (in terms of picking up very brief connection opportunities) and I have suggested this to everybody who would listen, for years, but there are problems:

• the market would be very small, especially given that GA usage is dominated by IOS and that is a lot more hassle to root than Android
• over some countries there is no usable reception e.g. nothing at all over Belgium (Vodafone) or almost nothing over France

So it would be yet another “works on Tuesdays” solution.

The other satcom player, Thuraya, is cheap and fast, but quite unreliable and a total joke on customer service.

Peter wrote:

UK GA is really tight with money (look at all the boycott calls re £30 airports on the UK chat sites)

I don’t believe that’s true: don’t confuse being “tight” with being annoyed about not getting value for money. There are a few airfields charging £30 landing fees where a typical VFR pilot will feel ripped off: high fee, but short opening hours, no kind of worthwhile services, and still miles from anywhere useful requiring another £30 in taxi fares to go anywhere, and all the while your aircraft is racking up expensive parking fees. Especially when you compare with airfields in, say, France. Or even other good airfields in the UK. I can understand quite a lot of pilots being annoyed at having to spend more money on landing, handling, parking, taxi fees than they spent on avgas to arrive at the airfield in the first place.