I think it would be great if everyone had EC and we didn’t have to think about bearingless targets. I’m sure it will get better, as Ian suggests but there are still plenty of Mode C/S bits of kit hanging around. The ones that cheese me off a bit are people like the CTC school at Bournemouth etc. Their aircraft spend a lot of time in the air, in a busy part of the country and yet they don’t do anything more than blurt out Mode S.
But in the presence of ground stations the mode-S stuff may be MLAT'ed? I went for a jaunt in an aircraft I helped fit a PAW to and most of the targets last week had a bearing, only two or three without in close to an hour's flying.
I, too, am at a loss with Tim’s attitude. He constantly says he doesn’t want to put out a ‘warning’ that ‘an aircraft is in your vicinity but we don’t know anything more’. I’ve said that is somewhat facetious as we do know other information and it does alert someone, as opposed to no alerts and a sudden face full of Cessna. I certainly look harder when the circle appears (and my PAW audio talks to me), so think it is a genuinely good thing. However, it is his very, very good train set, so I suppose he gets to do what he wants
Ah yes, complacency, MySpace, Friends Reunited...
As I use SD more and more, I start to see the annoyances of SD, one of which is the way it incorrectly plots some NOTAMs that are correctly plotted by free resources elsewhere.
Coming from free flying we've had two then three then four superb free apps, all of which better Skydemon but are not optimised for power.
XCSoar, LK8000, XC Track and XC Guide. XCSoar will work on hacked e-ink readers like the Kobo.
I've given up reporting issues on SD. I'm left with the impression the train set is perfect... but after one or two (software) crashes recently I've taken to running Easy VFR on a second device.