Messages

16

Technical Support / Re: Pilotaware gps stops working

« on: November 21, 2022, 05:02:51 pm »

Yes it does seem odd but the controller was clear that we had just turned into a simple dot on his radar at the point where the message came up about loss of gps. I’ll take this up directly with Trig and see if they have come across this before.

Going back to the original question about the blip in gps feed from PAW to SD and Trig, is there anything we can do to stop this happening? I know intermittent and infrequent faults like this are really hard to diagnose! Many thanks.

17

Technical Support / Re: Pilotaware gps stops working

« on: November 19, 2022, 09:28:34 pm »

It was Solent zone and all was working fine before and then again after the reset so probably only offline for a couple of minutes but enough to give the controller a scare! The Trig did show a message that position info had been lost but it seems that the controller couldn’t then see things you’d expect them to see under the Trig’s basic Mode S such as call sign, altitude etc which was a surprise.

18

Technical Support / Pilotaware gps stops working

« on: November 19, 2022, 05:39:01 pm »

Today we had a second incidence of PAW Rosetta stopping working for no apparent reason. We have it connected to SD and suddenly SD showed it had lost gps position. The Trig transponder, which has gps input from PAW, also showed it had lost gps position. Switching PAW off (actually switching off the Charge 4 power supply that feeds PAW and several other things) and back on again restored gps to Trig but you then have to re-link it to SD, and reconnect igrid etc. which is not ideal to do in flight.

We also saw that when the Trig lost its gps input from PAW it didn’t function at all in any mode. Awkward as it happened in the middle of a zone transit and controller had to confirm which dot on his radar we were. Is that usual when a Mode S ES/ADS-B transponder loses its gps input then it doesn’t just revert to being a Mode S?

Any idea why PAW should suddenly cut out like that? Other than these two incidences of spontaneous shutdown it has worked really well and we love it! Many thanks. David

19

Technical Support / Re: Mode C Reporting

« on: October 28, 2022, 06:41:33 pm »

Peter. Thank  you once again for the extremely comprehensive reply. It’s amazing that PAW has such incredible support! I’ll digest this, read more on the subject at the link you sent  and carry on experimenting with settings. David PS good idea to have split this subject off from my original post I made so that it has a better title for future searches and focusses on the complexities of this issue.!

20

Technical Support / Mode C Reporting

« on: October 27, 2022, 09:18:18 am »

Peter,

Just picking up on one of your comments [in the earlier 'Maximum range on Vector for PAW vs ADS-B' thread]:

"Also be aware that the list of traffic shown at the bottom of the Traffic Screen (with ‘C xxxx codes’) is ‘under investigation’ as part of the ‘Mode-C’ identification process and usually proves to be one of the aircraft positively identified further up the chart rather than a ‘Pure Mode-C’ signal - after which the ‘Cxxxx’ entry is automatically filtered out."[/i][/i]

With reference to the new attachment here, we have sometimes seen a contact pop up seeming to indicate it is exactly in our position, (although it often quickly disappears), but it has the 'Cxxxx' designator you mention above. We are not sure what this means. Is this 'co-location' where the Mode C contacts you mention are automatically shown until they are filtered out?  These sort of contacts get the heart rate going and we're not sure whether we should be concerned or not!

21

Technical Support / Re: Maximum range on Vector for PAW vs ADS-B

« on: October 20, 2022, 09:52:11 pm »

Peter and Paul. Thank you both for the comprehensive replies which help me to understand the whole system better. What you have said explains what I am seeing on Vector and gives me confidence that I should be well visible to other suitably equipped aircraft and likewise I am able to see them. I’m also reassured that my ADS-B out is working very well! On a local flight today I was easily able to see various aircraft at similar heights come up on SD and then be able to spot them for real. PAW really enhances the effectiveness of the normal scan but of course does not replace it.  I hope you will continue to encourage everyone to be transmitting something so that more aircraft become more visible to others. The PAW system is so simple to install and use, yet is so effective! Thanks!

22

Technical Support / Re: Maximum range on Vector for PAW vs ADS-B

« on: October 19, 2022, 11:37:21 am »

Thanks, Peter.

Good to know that you consider both of my transmission types to be working well! I'm all for shouting out to the world where I am! However, is there any way to determine how well the PAW-supplied ADS-B receiving aerial is working, other than by seeing what traffic comes up on my radar/SD view and hoping that it's a true representation of all the ADS-B traffic out there? eg can I compare what ADS-B traffic I 'see' in the cockpit, with what ADS-B traffic the Atom ground stations are seeing (which hopefully is everything)?

23

Technical Support / Re: Maximum range on Vector for PAW vs ADS-B

« on: October 18, 2022, 08:08:11 pm »

Dear me, Paul! How could I be so dumb as to not connect you with that Atom station after we talked all about PAW when you kindly did that check for us?! Sorry about that and thanks for the great explanations of this issue. The transponder/ADS-B/PAW is working really well and seems to have helped us get some useful zone transits. It’s also great that my wife can now track us wherever we are and can see us coming back! Hope you have been enjoying some flying yourself in that beautiful aircraft of yours and that we’ll see you at the airfield some time. Maybe we could do some kind of EC promotion at the airfield to get more people using EC as many of the local flyers cannot be seen on anything which can be a bit scary when the air is busy!

24

Technical Support / Re: Maximum range on Vector for PAW vs ADS-B

« on: October 18, 2022, 05:42:51 pm »

Thank you so much for the very helpful explanation! I am intrigued about your station as I am based at Sandown and have seen your symbol come up on the aircrew tracker site and have wondered where exactly you are?! I’m really impressed by the whole Atom network and now have the i-grid as well which has given us very good traffic info in several recent XCs. I’m just surprised by how many aircraft still don’t have anything at all telling people where they are in the sky! Devices like PAW and SE2 etc are so easy to use and install, (and in the aviation world are a relative bargain especially with the CAA grant) that it feels like they ought to be mandated in anything that gets airborne and likely to cause you damage if it hits you!!

25

Technical Support / Re: Maximum range on Vector for PAW vs ADS-B

« on: October 18, 2022, 04:02:14 pm »

Thanks for the reply. Interesting about the 60km restriction. Is that a PAW Vector restriction of 60km for receiving signals or is my transponder somehow limiting its power output so it reaches no further than 60km(and how would it do that?)? Can you explain a bit more what the charts you posted are telling us? I thought the Atom stations only transmitted data on PAW frequency but received on everything?

26

Technical Support / Maximum range on Vector for PAW vs ADS-B

« on: October 18, 2022, 11:18:00 am »

I have PAW Rosetta, with external aerials on the aircraft belly, and it works very well. More recently I have connected it to my Trig TT22 to provide ADS-B out (SIL/SDA 0). On Vector, the signal pattern seems to be good for both PAW and ADS-B, but the maximum range for the PAW signal seems higher than for the ADS-B. Does this make sense given that the Trig TT22 should have a much higher power output than PAW or can you not make such a simple comparison? While both results seem acceptable, I'm just wondering if this is indicating that the TT22 is not working optimally and needs investigation? A/C ID is 403B4C. Thanks for any feedback on this! David

27

Technical Support / Re: Incorrect GPS position sent to Trig TT22

« on: September 18, 2022, 04:00:28 pm »

Thanks Alan. That’s very helpful. I think what you say may be correct ie that the coordinates displayed on the Trig are an approximation but do indicate that it is getting a GPS feed. The Trig display is to one decimal place on the minutes for lat and long. Have to do the maths to work out what that means in terms of potential error in meters.

We did do a couple of minutes check today with Trig on when airborne over known positions. When replotted on aircrew.co.uk/playback we could see that if we plot the track with just PilotAware selected in the ‘Transmission’ menu it is exactly the same as the track showing when just ‘ADS-B’ is selected. I assume this means that the position data the ground stations are picking up is the same whether transmitted directly by PAW or indirectly via the transponder and its aerial. Altitude data seemed to match too (I think PAW altitude data is derived from gps and effectively based on 1013 and ADS-B altitude data seen by Atom ground stations is the alt data from transponder’s barometer, which is also based on 1013?)

28

Technical Support / Re: Incorrect GPS position sent to Trig TT22

« on: September 17, 2022, 10:07:00 am »

Ian. Thanks for all your support here. Good to know we have the correct cable at least. Regarding linking it up to a computer: May take a while as I am not at the aircraft until next weekend. I also don’t have a PC with serial port (I have a Mac). Is there a way to get a Mac to ‘read’ what’s coming out of the cable? Even if I get hold of a PC, not sure where I would stick the orange and black wires from the cable!

29

Technical Support / Re: Incorrect GPS position sent to Trig TT22

« on: September 16, 2022, 07:36:21 pm »

This is the cable we have:

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/interface-adapters-converters/6877828

It was from a link in one of the PAW forums/info sources.

If we’ve somehow got the wrong one, then do let me know!

30

Technical Support / Re: Incorrect GPS position sent to Trig TT22

« on: September 16, 2022, 07:30:16 pm »

Thanks to both of you for the replies. I’m away at the moment and working only on my phone so can’t send a photo of the cable label. Not so easy to connect that cable to a PC since on the non-USB end there are only the black and orange wires remaining (the ones that go to the GPS input to the Trig). I could replace the whole cable but the one I got had bare wires on the non-USB end, not any kind of plug that would go into a computer.

Interesting comment about the data being effectively incorruptible. I guess we could go flying with the transponder switched to stdby and see whether by making a large aircraft displacement from origin,  the coordinates it is displaying could be made to change at all. Of course in stdby we couldn’t then trace what the transponder was transmitting as our position...