With so many devices compatible with the US ADS-B IN weather system, I wonder why didn’t yet anybody made a small, portable, UAT emulator on 978Mhz.
It doesn’t have to be powerful, just a a few meters in range in order not to interfere with anything, just enough to serve the MFDs, transponders, etc. inside the aircraft, that support the service.
Data could be easily fetched via GSM or Sattelite connection from various providers and continuously fed out through a small 978Mhz transceiver.
It doesn’t have to have all WINDS, METAR, TAF, TAF.AMD, PIREP, SPECI, Nexrad type, but it would be nice to see wx radar and metars.
The device shouldn’t cost too much, and it wouldn’t interfere with any tacans or other military applications. @Sebastian_G could use the idea, they already have the data.
Actual UAT weather broadcasts are being trialled in the UK now – there are currently five base stations transmitting UAT weather.
See here:-
A search on e.g.
uavionix AND UAT
digs up some previous threads.
One issue is the UAT frequency band and another is who is going to pay for the ground stations. It’s not hard to put up a few, perhaps as a publicity exercise by some hardware seller and/or by Skydemon, but if you want broad coverage it will take a lot more work. And if you are going to cover just say the southern UK, well you don’t need it because for low level VFR flight (perhaps 99% of the GA activity within the said area) you can just use 4G and your smartphone 
You can fly from Dover to Land’s End at 3000ft and get 4G all the way… well everywhere they have 4G on the ground. And then you get full access to all the usual wx sources, public websites, private websites, wx over the telegram app, etc.
The advantage of this unit would be it won’t need any ground stations.
It can be viewed as a mini personal airborne station, with a range of a few meters only, enough to feed all the avionics inside your plane, without interfering with anything else.
It can have Wi-Fi, GSM and Sat data in (automatically switch to Sat connection when you’re too high), and 978Mhz UAT ADS-B formatted data out. Or simply WiFi only to keep the manufacturing price down, you can always feed it from your smartphone Wi-Fi Hotspot or let’s say a Thuraya SatSleeve Hotspot.
Just get the weather data from one or more providers, georeference it based on its internal GPS receiver, format it as it would come from a ground based UAT base station, and spit it out on a low power 978Mhz transmitter.
OK; I get it. I missed the word “emulator”.
Producing such a gateway, and getting the data from cellular sources, would be a fair bit of work. A few years ago I was involved on a project to do tafs and metars over a Thuraya 7100 phone, 9.6k dial-up, displaying the data on a custom written linux app running on one of the then popular linux laptops. This was abandoned largely because we could not get the phone to hang up properly, and a failure to hang up would cost $hundreds in just one flight. 4G would avoid this problem, of course, but in many/most countries there is no connectivity. It works in the UK though.
The Golze angle is perhaps mentioned here and they already implement the GDL90 protocol over wifi.
AlexTB20 wrote:
With so many devices compatible with the US ADS-B IN weather system, I wonder why didn’t yet anybody made a small, portable, UAT emulator on 978Mhz.
I had this idea a while ago. Basically it would be like one of those low power FM radio transmitters used on car radios without AUX/Bluetooth. It would enable UAT compatible avionics to display weather data sourced from the ADL system.
But as SkyDemon and ForeFlight already display the ADL weather data over WiFi is there really an urgent need for such a product which would probably be somehow kind of illegal etc. Another idea would be to generate an NTSC radar image which can then be displayed by G500/G1000 displays. But again would many people pay much extra for such a solution if they can view the iPad in good quality for less money?
Uavionix and Golze already have all the data. From Uavionix perspective, why would I install 25W transmitters on top of a tower, having to struggle with 6 month trials and UK only, when I can sell a small device to each pilot, that he can use all over the world where FIS-B is not available?
At the current rate @Peter, we’ll all be dead by the time EU will be covered by ground stations. By the time Africa will have it, our grandchildren will fly in unmanned vehicles already :)
Too bad I already spent all this money in ordering a brand new Avidyne IFD540 MFD and a Lynx NGT-9000 transponder, just to be left with empty black screens where the nice colorful radar images, wind, metars, etc. would be displayed in US…
Another idea would be to generate an NTSC radar image which can then be displayed by G500/G1000 displays. But again would many people pay much extra for such a solution if they can view the iPad in good quality for less money?
This is digressing but I would. A panel mount display, always there, like a wx radar, is much nicer than fiddling around with a tablet which needs recharging and which has a touch screen so is getting mucked up all the time etc.
Too bad I already spent all this money in ordering a brand new Avidyne IFD540 MFD and a Lynx NGT-9000 transponder, just to be left with empty black screens where the nice colorful radar images, wind, metars, etc. would be displayed in US…
If you can get some stuff (anything) on the screen of a “PC” then there are possible solutions – example – which are technically really easy, for panel mount devices which can display NTSC video, such as used by older radars. Newer radars I believe use ARINC digital data, with “commercially secret” protocols.
What the IFD540 can display, see here. I never heard any more. 320×240 NTSC is ok for the Golze presentation, just about. Ideally one would want a higher resolution.
AlexTB20 wrote:
Too bad I already spent all this money in ordering a brand new Avidyne IFD540 MFD
I am not sure as I don’t have an IFD but didn’t somebody say a while ago it can read GDL90 formated data over WiFi. So basically connecting a Stratus 3 or similar in the US. In that case it would probably work with an ADL device over WiFi.
Then the ADL would be able with a small software tweak only to deliver the GDL90 data over RS232. So all GDL90 RS232 compatible devices could display the data. I think the IFD540 can also read this. But as the latest Germin stuff no longer supports GDL90 over RS232 it was not a high priority yet.
The ability to display Golze ADL data could be a big factor in favour of an IFD, versus a GTN.
I am amazed nobody seems to have progressed this.
