Messages

1

Technical Support / Re: GPS acquisition fail - due high pressure?

« on: December 28, 2016, 02:49:24 pm »

I typically have it indoors when at home. Generally the GPS dongle can see up to 8 or more satellites, but it can take a while to get it to report a fix.

At the airport I had it outside on the grass for a while (10 mins or more) before taking the screenshots. Then powered off/on again and got a similar result. I just found it strange that the GPS reports OK but SD couldn't get a fix (although did state the number of satellites found to be the same).

I have another similar dongle and will try that one instead next time.

2

Technical Support / GPS acquisition fail - due high pressure?

« on: December 27, 2016, 09:01:13 pm »

Strange scenario today. I've found the PAW can take some time to acquire GPS position, especially if I try this at home vs airport (60 miles away). But today I found the GPS would acquire 3D Lock, but this wasn't being reported/accepted by SkyDemon.

I wondered if this was because of the very unusually high pressure today (QNH 1044).

Screenshots of SD and PAW status and config pages attached

3

General Discussion / Re: Receive Only

« on: December 12, 2016, 07:52:15 pm »

I'd agree that ADS-B is likely to be a better choice to transmit your position than PAW because it would almost certainly use an external antenna and can thus operate at higher power than P3i (which is limited due to regulations of the unlicensed frequency it uses). But you'd still want to receive P3i to pickup those aircraft equipped with PAW but not ADS-B out. Hence the RF bridge is needed in either case.

Agree that in your situation, transmitting PAW as well may be superfluous, but it seems the software can be configured to cater for that.

4

General Discussion / Inline switch

« on: December 12, 2016, 07:44:07 pm »

I have ordered a big plastic box to put everything inside. Will see how that works.

I realise that if the battery is also integral, then I'd need some method of switching the power on and off (instead of just pulling the USB plug out).
I came across a USB to micro-USB cable with a switch in it, rated at up to 2 Amps. Many examples of which here's one.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Micro-USB-Power-Supply-Chargings-Cable-With-ON-OFF-Switch-150CM-For-Raspberry-Pi/112175217593

It's too long, and there may be shorter ones available.

Has anyone tried one of these?

An alternative is to physically break the cable and fit a rotary or slider switch of some sort into the box case, which might be a more robust longer term solution.
There would be a chance that a rocker switch could easily be switched on inside your flight bag and drain the battery unintentionally.

5

General Discussion / Re: Flight experience with Mode C

« on: December 12, 2016, 07:34:28 pm »

Thanks for the feedback. I will update the config to Mode CS+Filter(Beta) and see how that works.

Yes, Mode S transponder (GTX328) onboard.

I have ordered a big box to pack it all into and will post about that on the relevant thread.

6

General Discussion / Re: Flight experience with Mode C

« on: December 12, 2016, 08:30:04 am »

Sorry about the misunderstanding. Herewith a screenshot of the Configure page.

Airfield QNH was between 1023 and 1025 that day (Friday).

7

General Discussion / Re: Flight experience with Mode C

« on: December 11, 2016, 06:07:43 pm »

Config attached.

As you can see it's a "homebuilt" unit based on the recommended parts.
Pi 2B with 20161124 software, Ublox GPS dongle, Mini DVT receiver, Ralink Wi-Fi USB
Powered by a fully charged Anker power block.

I may make putting it into a single box a project for the Christmas holidays, but will post a separate thread for that.

8

General Discussion / Flight experience with Mode C

« on: December 11, 2016, 08:39:13 am »

I thought I'd share some general feedback and experience from a recent flight.

I flew up to Wellesbourne on Friday with the latest PAW software loaded. It was relatively easy to switch profiles while the engine warmed up at the hold, useful because I often fly different aircraft. Audio was plugged into my headset (which gives it lower priority than the aircraft radio). Physically, I still have some issues with separate PAW box and battery, loosely arranged on the coaming. The antenna are too big and don't fit vertically on the coaming of the PA28 - I'll consider trimming one down as per another post here. The audio cable was also clumsy - I overheard one PAW expert at Flyer Show say they use a Bluetooth link for that, so would like more info on that.

I saw my second ever PAW box onscreen which was the Wellesbourne tower. This showed up initially without, then with the hash marks on SkyDemon. Not sure why they appeared only later, when closer.

There was another aircraft rejoining the circuit as I was performing an overhead join and it was very useful to see and hear visual and audio warnings, allowing us to look carefully for where it should be - a bit further out that I might have expected from the radio calls. There were other aircraft around and I got a stream of other warnings/notices etc. Clearly some related to aircraft stationary on the ground. This was also the case on departure, where we got warnings about ground based/stationary craft. It was a fairly busy day, so there was a stream of activity and I'm sure plenty of transponders switched on.

On the return leg I got periods with several warnings of a Mode C 100 feet below us. It seemed to me this was almost certainly our own aircraft. It was quite disconcerting to think it might not be.

I didn't see any other PAW aircraft on the screen, only Mode S/C.

I believe that some (not all) Mode S equipped aircraft indicate a ground mode, driven by the GPS and enabled below a certain speed. Does PAW ignore those, and is it a significant proportion of Mode S equipped GA aircraft anyway?

9

General Discussion / Re: Flyer Live

« on: November 29, 2016, 09:04:26 am »

The Flyer Live website indicates that Keith will host a separate PAW Masterclass at 3pm on Friday.
https://www.flyer.co.uk/live/seminar-programme/

I hope my earlier post didn't sound condescending - I've heard the introductory PAW talk a couple of times but am keen to hear what's new, how many are being used (and what for), further improvements to overcome current problems and understand more about some of the inner workings of the system.

I'll be there on Saturday and will drop by the booth for sure.

10

General Discussion / Re: Logging Screen Content Format and Meanings

« on: November 29, 2016, 08:56:44 am »

Thanks for the quick answers. I hadn't visited the site recently so the "Pages" documentation section was new to me.
I hadn't spotted it from the dropdown menu on the main website.

The ADS-B airliner did show up as a little white plane on SkyDemon, not a white ring, with 30,000 feet flitering.

Surprised that the commercial ADS-B out messages didn't include any of the ADS-B DF17 packet contents - all these fields on the right hand side were blank. I guess they aren't actually used for anything by PAW, so just wondered why they are displayed and why they are blank.

11

General Discussion / Re: Flyer Live

« on: November 28, 2016, 05:47:19 pm »

I also see that you're giving a 1 hour talk on both days. All good stuff.

Will this be the "standard pitch" explaining the concept and product etc (which I've seen before), or will there be much in the way of new content/developments?

12

General Discussion / Re: case for all the bits and speaker

« on: November 28, 2016, 05:45:24 pm »

Ideally, I'd like a box that encases the battery too, so it's just a single combined unit.
And smaller antenna that those that come with the PAW bridge and ADS-B dongles.

In my opinion this would make it much more accessible and easy to carry around - a significant advantage that the SuperFLARM has today.

Mine has been getting some rough treatment at the bottom of my flight bag and I am concerned about it's lifetime.
I'm expecting the ADS-B dongle to go first.

13

General Discussion / Logging Screen Content Format and Meanings

« on: November 28, 2016, 05:28:37 pm »

The logging screen available to view at 192.168.1.1 on the tablet web browser lists "targets" - presumably this is everything the PAW detects but not necessarily all appear on SkyDemon. For example, the attached screen only displayed a single aircraft (the Norwegian Boeing) despite the widest filter settings on the SD configuration page.

I wondered what the various column headings mean and which ones I might expect to see warnings for.
I couldn't find any documentation that explains this

I'm guessing that

Hex = the unique ICAO code for the aircraft, as stated on G-INFO or elsewhere.
Reg = aircraft registration letters
SQ = ?? (Signal Quality? Seems to be used to rank/order the list)
Mode = Transponder modes active, C = Mode C, S = Mode S, A = ADS-B (these are all independent).
D (km) = Distance to target in kilometers
A (FT) = Altitude in feet
BR ?? (Only shown for the ADS-B aircraft)
SIG = Signal Strength (guess)
Ver
MACp
SDA
NICa
SIL
SILs

Not sure what other transponder modes might be shown (FLARM and PAW perhaps?)

I believe SIL is related to the quality of GPS data source used to drive an ADS-B out

EDIT: I have realised that there are several Mode C rows almost certainly related to the same aircraft at around 8200 feet. I think the altitude has been adjusted from the Mode C Flight Level (which is to the nearest 100 feet) based on the current barometric pressure. So some correlation would be used to determine if that's heading towards me (signal getting stronger) at a similar altitude before warning.

Mode A traffic wouldn't be shown.

The squawk code isn't shown for any entry.

Finally, is it possible to have Mode S enabled to identify and aircraft but Mode C disabled so you don't know the altitude (eg if someone selected ON rather than ALT on a Mode S transponder).

14

Technical Support / Downloading track log file

« on: August 23, 2016, 09:30:03 am »

I saw there is a Java program to analyse track log files for previous flights.
http://forum.pilotaware.com/index.php/topic,535.0.html

Could someone explain how to download/access track log files in your PAW and whether these are overwritten for each new flight or deleted after a set time/disk space/other factor?

Thanks

15

General Discussion / Re: Odd Mode-C traffic

« on: August 22, 2016, 12:55:55 pm »

I can't comment on the other points, but a key difference between Mode-S and Mode-C is that Mode-S includes a Hex code while Mode-C only has a squawk, so you'd never get a hex code from a Mode-C transponder.