Messages

241

General Discussion / Re: RAeC Award for PilotAware

« on: May 18, 2016, 09:58:09 am »

Hi Guys

I cannot think of a more worthy cause to receive this accolade and I would like to add my congratulations to everyone concerned.

Just one life saved with this product makes all the effort worthwhile.

Great job.

Regards
Alan

242

General Discussion / Re: ADS-B LIVE – Experience ADS-B at a Fly-In near you.

« on: May 17, 2016, 10:52:51 am »

Hi All

Here's to being at the "lower end of GA".  The only way is UP.

With the help of PilotAware of course.

Regards
Alan

243

General Discussion / Re: PAW Freezes On Updating

« on: May 15, 2016, 06:46:52 pm »

Thanks Lee

I was beginning to believe my elder statesman's brain was more addled than I thought.

Alan

244

General Discussion / Re: PAW Freezes On Updating

« on: May 15, 2016, 05:31:54 pm »

Hi Lee

Having read this post and noticing it says version 20160511 I went to manual download page and checked there and the latest version is indeed 20160511.  As I currently have 20160509 I thought I'd give the web update another try after my difficulties the other day.  Again I definitely connected all before applying power and again I am getting a "root/servers/check.sh : error" message.
I note that you mention on another thread that the download happens automatically after 20 mins, do you have to be connected for this length of time before manual download works?

Regards
Alan

245

General Discussion / Re: When willl the PAW be ready?

« on: May 06, 2016, 10:21:19 am »

Hi Ian

The confusion arises from the fact that all the latest generation of Xponders are Mode S Which broadcasts only "Altitude" info as well as the ident. info and most of them, if not all, are capable of producing ADSB-out when attached to a certified GPS and will then give positional info too. (Lat/Lon).  Unfortunately a certified GPS is very expensive and so it is usually only the larger airliners that are so equipped.  This was the reason for the trials we have been reading about recently which have now resulted in some GA aircraft being allowed to fit un-certified GPS to their Xponders to enable this extra positional info to be broadcast.
Ground stations, air traffic etc, obtain positional info from mode S only aircraft via the primary radar.
It's the ADSB-out that allows any suitably equipped (PilotAware, other adsb receivers are available)  aircraft  to receive all of this info and display it.
Lee and the team have been putting in a lot of effort to try to enable bearingless alerts for Mode A/C/S but this has been reduced to only Mode S now as the A/C proved not to be that useful and were even more processor hungry than the system could support.
I think that's more or less how it all works and if I've missed anything or got any of it wrong I'm sure someone will correct me.   Hope I've not confused you even more.

Regads
Alan

246

General Discussion / Re: When willl the PAW be ready?

« on: May 05, 2016, 07:13:00 pm »

Ian

You will still see the ADSB contacts that you have always seen.  the Mode S referred to in this case are the non-directional or bearingless contacts that the engineering group were testing to assess the usefulness or otherwise of including these in the final product.  As these are derived from the signal strength being received from the various transponders it required more calculations and therefore increased processor demand which Lee has decided requires the better RPi2B.  As someone has already stated you will lose none of your existing functionality, still be able to fit the new bridge and use that but you will not receive bearingless warnings or voice alerts which are the added extras.  You will have everything you originally expected to have from your PAW but if you want to benefit of the extra functionality you will have to upgrade.  I'm in the same boat and I have been doing a lot of the testing on an RPiB+ and have experienced some of the dropouts referred to so I will have to invest in an RPi2B.
Hope that's clear to you and anyone else who is worried about this.

Regards
Alan

247

General Discussion / Re: When willl the PAW be ready?

« on: April 29, 2016, 04:46:41 pm »

Hi Keith

Thanks for your full and frank explanation of the current situation and your expectations for the next few weeks.  I'm sure that any impatience that may be coming through in anyone's posts is definitely not directed at the PAW team .  I, for my part, am just itching to get my grubby PAWs (pun intended) on  a fully functioning PAW in order to be able to demonstrate to anyone who I can capture for long enough to expound its virtues and persuade them to get one.

I had been hoping by now to have a fully functioning GPS attached to our transponder to enable further, more accurate range testing of the non-directional Mode C alerts but it looks like a fully functioning PAW might be first to arrive.

Congratulations to all for the great work.

Regards
Alan

248

General Discussion / Re: When willl the PAW be ready?

« on: April 28, 2016, 07:46:33 pm »

Hi Keith

I have the full spec PAW with the old Wireless-things Tx/Rx (which I added just after the SON Address so fully expect to pay for a new bridge) but assumed that the licence I had would still work until expiry date on the home screen.  Will the bridge only item be available at the same time as the full units you are referring to or am I going to have a longer wait for that.

Regards
Alan

249

General Discussion / Re: Audible alarm

« on: April 14, 2016, 09:11:28 pm »

Hi All
if its audible warnings you're  looking for try,  EasyVFR, it has audible warnings that definitely don't take responsibility from the pilot  simply give various alerts that should direct your  attention to your lookout.  It gives clock and distance alerts for ADSB traffic but only a "Caution Traffic" alert for Mode S traffic based on the experimental signal strength readings being passed from PAW.  (A work in progress by Lee and others including myself.)
I'm sure die hard SD fans will disagree but it is definitely on a par with SD and has features not available in SD.
And it's cheaper.     I'm sure both have their pros & cons but definitely worth a good look.
I'm well impressed with it and it is still evolving on a regular basis.

Regards
Alan

250

General Discussion / Re: New CAA low power portable ADS-B device spec

« on: March 26, 2016, 10:36:54 am »

Hi
No need to worry, there was no personal attack intended, just the thoughts rolling round my head at what seems to me a crucial point in the development of this great project, 
As i said,  I am now more interested in other contributors thoughts on where this goes in the future, especially those of the team who have committed so much time and effort for, so far, so little reward.
I am still 100% behind Lee and the team as even with two or more systems we are still much safer if we in the GA sector can see and be seen by each other.  Much of the research quoted states that the most likely event of a mid air is with like for like type of aircraft so the more PAW units that are out there the safer we will be.
The gliding fraternity have gone their own way with a system incompatible with any other as far as I am aware which I suspect was in response to the same problem. 
Following the trials, we are now able to fit non-certified GPS to our transponders that will allow SSR & PAW equipped aircraft to see them but ACAS/TCAS still can't see them.  ?
Yes, It's always preferable if everyone sings from the same hymn-sheet but that would require legislation and at what cost?

Alan

251

General Discussion / Re: New CAA low power portable ADS-B device spec

« on: March 25, 2016, 01:20:30 pm »

Hi Steve

Call me an old cynic but i was a little suspicious of your initial involvement in this forum  but had come to accept that you had a genuine interest in the efforts of Lee and the team to succeed.  Even making requests and suggestions to make the software useful for users to obtain the verification required to connect the non-certified GPS unit to their Xponders.
My comment of  "not a lot wiser as to how this effects the PAW project?" was somewhat tongue in cheek as it is fairly obvious that as PAW is not using 1090 mhz it would not apparently be supported in the newly announced process.  The dialog in all of the linked articles constantly  refers to "manufactures" and is obviously prioritised toward them.

If you consider my "Talk of "thwarting" PAW is just plain silly" then why do you believe there is a sudden rush to take this forward after all of the dalliance of the intervening years since first mooted.  I believe that the PAW project has given the "manufactures" & the CAA the boot up the proverbial that they required as they saw  a potentially lucrative market being snatched from under their noses
Your suggestion that PAW should adopt the 1090 Mhz route is as far as I can establish going to fly in the face of producing a low cost, self build unit that uses off the shelf available parts as I'm not aware of any readily available 1090 Mhz transceivers in this category.  I'm sure these will be far more available to the established manufactures & probably cheaper.
I now feel vindicated in my initial suspicion of your motives for being involved in this forum as I cannot believe that you did not know what was going to be contained in the CAA announcement.
That is not meant to be a condemnation or criticism of anything you have said or done by being involved in the forum but just my personal observation that  it was less than honest.

Having reviewed some of your posts Steve, I see the following from a post in another thread which i suppose demonstrated your thinking and I think was what alerted me subliminally to the fact that you were not totally on board with PAW but maybe I have to consider that you were more honest than I've given you credit for.

"I am a supporter of PilotAware but I view ADS-B Out as a much more valuable thing to broadcast than P3i.
Everyone with ADS-B In (including PilotAware) will see ADS-B broadcasts.
Only PilotAware users will see P3i Broadcasts.
ADS-B Out (i.e. transponder) antennas will be fixed externally installed therefore offer more reliable transmissions that P3i
ADS-B Out transmissions are more powerful
As has been said, things are still developing. ADS-B is not going to go away but how it is going to be used may well adapt with time.
And the usage of ADS-B may well have an influence on other things, airspace being an obvious candidate.

Steve"


Regards
Alan

252

General Discussion / Re: New CAA low power portable ADS-B device spec

« on: March 24, 2016, 05:02:42 pm »

Hi

Having read through the document linked to above and then the further reading document that it links to and then ploughed my way through the CAP 1391 document i am not a lot wiser as to how this effects the PAW Project.   My initial reaction is that the CAA are trying to encourage established manufactures to produce a device operating on the 1090 Mhz frequency for Tx/Rx for around a similar cost to PAW and that this would be the only system they would recognise or authorise.

I have to admit that most of the jargon and technical references in these documents are way over my head so if there is anyone out there who can translate it into "Dummies" speak for those of us without a degree in Avionics.
As far as I can deduce, PAW hit the target in that it can receive and alert us to other ADS-B and Mode S traffic in our vicinity but due to the proposed new RF Bridge being on *** Mhz it will only render us visible to other PAW equipped aircraft and not the ADS-B In equipped aircraft and therefore lacks the compatibility that they seem to be squawking about. (Pardon the Pun).

I look forward to others comments on this and hopefully to to be proved wrong that this is a deliberate attempt to thwart the initiative which has been demonstrated by this project.

Regards
Alan

253

General Discussion / Re: Enhancement Requests

« on: March 09, 2016, 07:46:56 pm »

Would that class as a "sweet" solution.     

Ah the vagaries of predictive text.

Alan

254

General Discussion / Re: How do you know if you are squittering ?

« on: February 23, 2016, 03:47:31 pm »

Hi

Have I not read elsewhere on the forum that these fields only become active after interrogation by ground radar.  There appear to be many commercial aircraft that don't reflect these settings all the time in the traffic screen.

Alan

255

General Discussion / Re: Mode A and Mode C

« on: February 19, 2016, 10:30:16 pm »

Hi All

This argument keeps appearing on this and other forums about the possibility of PAW (and other devices) generating false alerts that distract the pilot from other important tasks  and the possibility that it increases rather than decreases pilot workload and may diminish peoples perception of its usefulness over time.
Now I have to confess to being a relatively newly qualified NPPL and find this hard to understand.  I can vividly remember the syllabus for the NPPL in which every exercise  has a sub-heading "Airmanship".
At the top of this section the very first item was "Lookout". 
The whole idea behind the "Bearingless Mode a, c, s, Alerts" generated by PAW is to concentrate the mind on LOOKOUT, not to stare at the screen seeking information which is not going to be there.
Depending on your own settings in PAW and your navigation software you will be alerted to a target within +/- xxxx feet of your own altitude.  The only clue to its distance will be the colour coding, Green, Amber, Red.  If you then fail to obtain a visual on that target and it disappears without trace, no problem, if you do get a visual and it's no threat, again no problem, if you get a visual and need to take avoiding action, OK.  In all of these situations PAW will have done its job.  If you didn't get this warning whilst you were busy doing "something else important" as has been quoted and you encounter someone else also doing something other than "lookout" it could turn out to be the last warning you never get.
I've said it before and will say it again, there are no "False Alerts" generated by PAW (or other systems), it is telling you there is something in your vicinity that requires your attention and it's up to you what you do with that information.  Ignore it at your and others peril.
If a few minutes of extra vigilant lookout is considered extra pilot workload then it's a burden we should all be prepared to carry.

Alan