Messages

2356

General Discussion / Re: Track File : Post Processor

« on: July 07, 2016, 10:15:18 am »

Hi Ian,

What Mode S range setting are you using? Also what vertical separation do you have selected? I suspect most of the Mode S contacts which you 'weren't seeing' were probably high power transponders e.g. CAT. Unfortunately this is an issue we have to live with, with Mode S, though reducing your separation level to say +/- 1000ft removes most of these. Changing to a shorter 'Range' would also help, but might have meant you saw the Puma before you got the alert. Just a question of balancing your settings to flying conditions.

Regards

Peter

2357

General Discussion / Re: Ground Station

« on: July 06, 2016, 09:05:15 pm »

Attached is a picture of the  PAW in the loft space.

The roof was dry no cloud below the grob.

Just had a departure from about 800 yds away from my house

107ft Sig 189

Hi again Eric,

Not too bothered about the Grob, I'm quite happy that was Mode S - as I say, the signal strength fits with an aircraft using a higher power transponder (such as a Trig TT22 or similar) - which outputs up to 250 Watts as opposed to my TT21,s 125 Watt maximum.

The problem is the entries that Alan is saying are definitely ADSB equipped aircraft, so should be showing a DISTance from you in your traffic table. One thought was attenuation from a wet roof, but you say the roof wasn't wet - I take it it's not made of, or lined with metal (e.g. aluminium foil on insulated plasterboard)?

Another thought was that you are very near Blackpool and quite close to Wharton. When CAT is on the ground, the ground radar returns are effectively mode S at very high power, and show up as such on the PAW traffic screen. During testing near Edinburgh Airport, we noticed these were often strong enough to trigger Mode S 'Danger' alerts from well over a mile away, which is why we developed the Ultra Short Range setting specifically to deal with this type of scenario. I also noticed that some of them don't engage ADSB until well into the climbout, which might have explained aircraft less than say 2,000ft, but not at the heights yours are showing at, so doesn't help to explain those.

I will give it some more thought.

Regards

Peter

2358

General Discussion / Re: Antenna Question?

« on: July 06, 2016, 08:18:58 pm »

Hi Lee,

The PUK antenna was first mentioned by Gerry Dace 'Mig29fuk' back in November 2015. He was getting a couple of HAM radio mates to check it out for him and fitted it into his aircraft back in May. See...

http://forum.pilotaware.com/index.php/topic,441.msg5686.html#msg5686

I also bought one to test, but haven't yet had time. I will PM Gerry and ask him to come on and let us know how he is getting on with it.

Regards

Peter

2359

General Discussion / Re: Ground Station

« on: July 06, 2016, 04:39:56 pm »

Sorry Peter, not strictly true.
G-GDFF is definitely ADSB as I've just tracked him in the air right now, & as  EJM11 is displaying the full SIL & SDA data he must also be ADSB and I'd be extremely surprised if the other Ryanair, EI-EKW, wasn't ADSB too.
Strange but true.

Alan

OK Alan, point taken, so I'm a bit confused now. My comments to Eric were based on the results shown in his traffic table. As you are aware, HEX + SQuawk + ALT  + SIGnal strength - with no DISTance is the known signature of a Mode S transmission (we've looked at plenty!!) - no horizontal position information, so PilotAware can't calculate its distance from your receiver.

So what Eric seems to have been seeing is a combination of clear ADSB (EI-EKN), clear Mode S (The Grob G-CGKS) and what appear to be Mode S responses from what you have clearly observed to be ADSB equipped aircraft - namely G-GDFF and EMJ11 (sorry Eric I overlooked the significance of the SIL /SDA entries in the case of EMJ11, but couldn't have known about G-GDFF - at least not without looking it up on FR24 or G-INFO).

Eric, I'm wondering - was it raining at yours at the time? You say your 1090MHz antenna is a 1/4 wave with ground plane inside your loft. Heavy rain or snow on the outside of a slate or tiled roof is a known cause of significant attenuation of radio signals at this sort of frequency. I'm beginning to think this might account for only the high power 'pulsed' CAT Mode S return from these CAT ADSB transponders being strong enough to 'punch' through the wet roof to your antenna, and hence the lack of an ADSB based positional DISTance in the table. Best explanation I can think of at the moment anyway. Anyone else got any ideas?

Regards

Peter

2360

General Discussion / Re: Ground Station

« on: July 05, 2016, 10:53:14 pm »

Hi Eric,

The Grob was definitely straight Mode S.

Extended Squitter (ADSB) would have shown the distance between you both - based on your relative GPS positions - in the 'DIST-KM' column of the traffic table - as EI-EKN on the top line. The rest on your table are all 'Mode S'.

I'm just slightly surprised to see a signal strength over 200 at 4 miles, but then again if it was clear line of sight and I seem to remember you saying that you have your antenna up on your roof ridge in the clear. It is of course possible that that particular Grob is fitted with a higher power transponder, which could put out up to 250 Watts, rather than the 'normal' GA type which generates about 125 Watts. This is the essence of the difficulty in trying to establish effective alert 'distances' from bearingless targets (i.e. raw transponders).

Regards once again

Peter

2361

General Discussion / Re: Ground Station

« on: July 05, 2016, 08:28:43 pm »

Hi Eric,

A Grob Tutor (from G-INFO). Squawking Mode S at 6,500 feet QNH. From the signal strength, it looks like it went straight through your overhead, or certainly very close - hence the Mode S Danger Alert on your Nav Screen. I seem to remember you are now full Pi2 with Bridge, so you will also have got the full PAW Audio Warnings as it went through - though you may not of course have been present. I take it you have your Mode S separation set at quite a high level? Out of interest, what 'Mode S Detect Range' did you have set?

Regards

Peter

2362

General Discussion / Re: Loose formation flying

« on: July 04, 2016, 10:53:18 pm »

Not sure that counts as 'Loose Formation Flying'. Definitely shows a degree of dedication to testing though!! Either that or complete lunacy 

Regards

Peter

2363

General Discussion / Re: Track file format

« on: July 04, 2016, 08:21:33 pm »

And methinks if he's been 'playing' with it, a great in to get Tim to do the needful so it works the way we want it to!!

Peter

2364

General Discussion / Re: Ground Station

« on: July 04, 2016, 08:18:24 pm »

Better watch out Jeremy, he's after your discount!! 

Seriously though Brinsley, I'm not particularly surprised you weren't getting many P3i contacts en route to Sywell. I can't believe the number of fellow aviators who haven't even heard of PilotAware - let alone got one. We seriously need to spread the word and get our colleagues to buy in to the project.

Only 2-3 km from a ground station, however, definitely sounds like something isn't right. Hope you get to the bottom of it.

Regards

Peter

2365

General Discussion / Re: Loose formation flying

« on: July 04, 2016, 08:05:02 pm »

Hi Alan,

Maybe that's why I keep disappearing on your screen LOL     

Peter

2366

General Discussion / Re: Connect to Trig TT21

« on: July 04, 2016, 09:42:58 am »

Hi,

Like Tony, I also have a 'mouse type' GPS - in my case an American 'Byonics GPS4' successfully connected to my TT21 to provide ADSB out, though didn't actually wire it up myself. I have no experience of connecting the PAW to a transponder though.

Worth reading this thread http://forum.pilotaware.com/index.php/topic,201.msg2895.html#msg2895 .

As Tony says, the connection itself is fairly straight forward, though you may need a special tool to put the pins into the connectors. The pinouts are all shown in the Trig manual. If in doubt give Trig a call, they are very helpful and will usually upgrade your unit to the latest firmware FOC if needed.

Regards

Peter

2367

General Discussion / Re: Track file format

« on: July 03, 2016, 10:30:30 pm »

Richard,

Where an aircraft only has a Reg and not a separate Flight ID, PAW displays this in both formats where you have 'Alternate' selected in (Configure).

Regards

Peter

2368

General Discussion / Re: Is a GPS dongle needed?

« on: July 03, 2016, 12:53:40 pm »

Hi again homeuser,

Appreciate you want to still use the iPad GPS. Yes you can use the NMEA GPS app - sorry I don't know the settings, but I for one have certainly had much more reliability using a dedicated GPS on the PAW - I use a VK-162 GPS mouse as sold on the hardware site, keeping the iPad GPS as a fallback if the PAW ever fails or needs to be switched off for any reason. If you go for an internal app you are totally relying on its effectiveness - hence why Lee stopped using his own CollisionAware app in the first place.

Regards

Peter

2369

General Discussion / Re: Enhancement Requests

« on: July 03, 2016, 11:32:35 am »

Morning homeuser,

Yes, I totally see where you are coming from. I'm sure Lee will come on and let us know whether / why not this is feasible in due course. Just wanted to let you know the alternative, which we know does work.

Yes you can use two cards, but you need to do a 'full overwrite with size adjustment on' SDFormat as per page 34 of the Pilotaware Operating Manual here http://www.pilotawarehardware.com/dl/PAWOperationManual.pdf the first time you use a new card.

The great benefit of the auto-update is that once each card has your Mac and license details on it, they stay there and you don't need to spend ages re-formatting cards and re-entering details each time like we used to. Definitely a big step forward.

Happy and safe flying

Regards

Peter

2370

General Discussion / Re: Update Option

« on: July 02, 2016, 11:34:35 pm »

It would be great to be able to update the software over WLAN/WiFi. I have a Semi-fixed installation on our Mooney and there it is very hard at the hangar to make internet available over Ethernet. Easily available is a WiFi Hotspot via a mobile phone...

But I understand there is no such way (yet?)

Thanks!

Hi homeuser,

I fully sympathise as I also have my main unit semi-fitted in my flexwing, but unfortunately Lee has previously advised that this is not possible as the PAW wifi is configured as a server and in order to connect to download from another server it would need to act as a client. See this link:

http://forum.pilotaware.com/index.php/topic,4.msg4621.html#msg4621

Richard and I, however worked out a method using a 'spare' PAW or simply a spare raspberry pi - most of us now have spare PiB+'s from the early Beta trials - as a surrogate to allow you to take the card from your fitted PAW home or to a point where you can connect to your club router via ethernet and update your main cards's software via the surrogate. Any spare Pi will work for this - it does not need a bridge, GPS or whatever fitted, though a wifi dongle helps you to check that the download to the card has been successful.

See this link:

http://forum.pilotaware.com/index.php/topic,465.msg5924.html#msg5924

...and the following reply number 18 for how to do this.

Hope this helps

Regards

Peter