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1

Technical Support / Hardware issue? Hardly seeing any traffic and radio interference

« on: March 29, 2017, 06:40:39 pm »

Hello again

I'm sorry to be asking for help only a few weeks after doing so concerning getting PAW to communicate with my TRT800H transponder to give ADS-B out.  The good news is that ADS-B out seems to be working perfectly; every flight I have done since appears clearly on FlightRadar 24, and each radar station I have asked has reported a good strong signal.  The bad news is that pretty much every other aspect of my PAW installation seems to be not working.

The basic problem is that I am seeing hardly any traffic.  I have experimented with antenna position and settings but to no avail.  I have never had a bearingless alert, despite being based at Ashcroft at the bottom of the Low Level Corridor which is usually very busy.  I'm also near Hawarden, Liverpool and Manchester yet see hardly any of their ADS-B traffic.  Today I flew along the southern edge of the Manchester zone; they were busy - even the A380 had to enter the hold - but hardly anything appeared on Sky Demon; see attached pic.

I have installed PAW in my MT03 open cockpit gyrocopter.  I have the 'official' USB GPS mouse mounted on the top of the instrument binnacle and it receives strong satellite signals.  The PAW is installed behind the instrument binnacle.  Power is supplied via either the recommended Anker 12V cigarette socket adapter or my Anker 20100 power bank; the problems I experience are the same no matter which supply I use.

Until today I used the 1090 MHz aerial installed within my nose cone, near my VHF aerial.  To see if this was the problem I cut it down to 50mm as advised elsewhere on the forum (making total length 69mm) and flew my Manchester route with it 'up top' just behind the windshield; this will have given a great view forward, albeit blocked by my iPad behind.  This made no difference; still hardly any traffic.  I have now moved it back to within the nose cone, and also now attached the centre-fed dipole to the interior side of my nose cone, as close to vertical as I can get it (pretty close).

As well as seeing hardly any traffic, I'm also now having problems with the audio out.  There are no alerts for me to hear as I'm seeing no traffic, but even pressing 'test' on the PAW web interface is no longer producing the 'Pilot Aware' voice.

Whilst flying my Manchester route there was very considerable interference on my radio, which disappeared when PAW was turned off (by removing the power).  I don't remember this from previous flights; it was so bad today that I could hardly hear the airborne Manchester commercials.  I use the recommended ground loop isolator between PAW and my intercom.  This interference problem only seems to have been an issue today.

Finally, on the logging page I see many repetitions of the following - 'Use of uninitialized value $eth0_ip in concatetenation (.) or string at htdocs/index.cgi line 152.'

Have I done something horribly wrong?  Or might I have faulty hardware somewhere in the system?  Numerous pics attached to hopefully show more detail.

Many thanks for any help you can offer.

Stu

2

Technical Support / Help please linking PAW to Funke TRT800H for ADS-B Out

« on: March 06, 2017, 11:20:05 am »

I have PAW Classic bought a week ago and running the latest software.  I installed it into my MT-03 gyrocopter yesterday with the unit and aerials installed behind the instrument binnacle and within the GRP nose connected to the GPS mouse which sits on top of the binnacle and behind the windshield with a clear view of the sky; it was able to see 11 satellites within the hangar!  My ATR833 radio aerial is also within the GRP nose enclosure and works fine so I assume that attenuation through GRP is minimal. The weather has been too poor to test fly, but on the ground it is seeing plenty of traffic so seems to be working OK.

My challenge is connecting it to my TRT800H transponder in order to achieve ADS-B out.  The transponder was installed under a year ago and is hardware version 6.1 with software version 5.3.  The Funke manual is a little unclear but I think my D-sub connector is the TRT800EMSS because the cables coming from the connector match the wiring diagramme under section 3.7.3.3 of the Funke manual.  However, the connector itself has ‘EM800’ on the label with no reference to EMSS; I have asked Funke for clarification but have not heard back.

I purchased the recommended RS232 cable from Farnell as here http://uk.farnell.com/ftdi/usb-rs232-we-1800-bt-0-0/cable-usb-a-rs232-serial-convertor/dp/1686450.  I was then faced with the conundrum of which cable to attach to which; after much research I have crimped orange USB to light brown transponder, and black USB to bare transponder – see attached pictures.  I was not entirely certain as to which of the two brown transponder cables to connect; I went with the less obviously brown one because it was contained within the grey cable sheath whereas the other clearly brown cable was outside of the sheath along with the red and blue power cables, so I took this to be the auto-on pin 14 connector and left it well alone.  I made the connections via crimping, which I have not used before and may therefore be the source of my problem.

The RS232 USB cable was connected to the top left USB port of the PAW (with the Ethernet port immediately to the left) which I understand is Port 1, so I selected ‘Funke’ and 4,800 baud for this port on the PAW configuration page and saved.  On the TRT800H set-up screens I enabled RS232 and selected ‘NMEA’; the baud rate appeared as 4,800 but position reported ‘No data’.  I tried rebooting the PAW and recycling the TRT800H to no avail.  Thinking that perhaps the top left port isn’t port 1 after all I then cycled through amending each port to Funke/4,800, but still the TRT800 showed ‘no data’ at the position field.

I was powering the PAW via the official lead from an Anker Power Core 20100, although inflight I intend to use an Anker dual USB cigarette socket adapter. 

Can anybody spot an error in my setup?  Might I have connected the wrong leads?  Can I interrogate the PAW’s GPS output via data logging to check all is OK there?  Might there be a fault in the RS232 cable?  Or might I simply have a poor crimping connection?

Photos hopefully attached to show the various parts of the setup.

Many thanks.

Stuart