Hi Peter
Thanks for your email. Sorry that you have been somewhat confused by recent posts on the forum please let me help to make things clear.
I fully appreciate that those of us who built and continued testing using ADSB only PAW(s) after the 'State of the Union Address' need to buy new Bridges to transmit and receive the PAW P3i signals. After the 'SOU' this was always going to be the case. Like Alan G however, I had understood that our existing 'beta development licences' would continue to work until their one year expiry date. Am I now right in understanding that these beta licences will ONLY continue to be valid for ADSB ONLY PAWs and that if/when we fit a new Bridge, the development licence will fall and we will have to purchase new 'full' licences to make the Bridges operational?
Worry not! Your fears on licensing are unnecessary and your original understanding is correct. In fact, its actually now going to be better than you thought. I will post the following message on the Latest News section so that others are not equally confused.
Post Beta Trial Licensing and Hardware Saleable Items The beta trial of PilotAware will be coming to an end on 30th April 2016 and PilotAware Bridges and complete kits will soon be available through pilotawarehardware.com. During the beta trial there were early trialists who built complete units that included ADSB-In and P3i radios. Also there were those that have, on the advice given in the “State of the Nation Address” on 15th October 2015, built ADSB-In only units without P3i radios.
Firstly, to be clear,
all beta trialists who supported the project and have registered for and obtained a licence up to 30th April 2016 will be issued with a licence that will be inclusive of the use of ADSB-In reception
and P3i transmit and receive. Furthermore,
all of these licenses will be re-set and extended so that they all expire on
1st May 2017. So this is a real bonus for
all beta trialists who will be getting more than they expected in the way of the initial complementary license.
As far as the hardware is concerned, in order that we cater for the requirements of all, apart from accessories such as remote antennas, remote GPS etc. there will be
4 main saleable items that will be available from the website.
1. Complete PilotAware Kits including recommended Rpi, Case, Bridge, WiFi, ADSB RTL-SDR, GPS, SD Card, firmware and power lead.
2. *†Bridge units qualifying for a discount for beta trialists who built PilotAware units
before 15th October and who return the ARF units to the Aviation and Hardware Technology PO Box which will be identified soon.
3. *Bridge units for beta trialists that built PilotAware units
after 15th October. No discount applies.
4. Bridge units for new customers who want to build a PilotAware unit for themselves. This will require the purchase of a Bridge and a first year licence at £15 and £12 per year thereafter. Prices ex VAT.
*As identified above for beta trialists no licence renewal is required until April 30th 2017.
†Alternatively the qualifying discount can redeemed against a new Complete PilotAware Kit.We have a list of who was issued with licences and on what date from our database.
Of more immediate concern - your 'press release' implies that those of us who continued testing ADSB only units or doing Mode C/S development work and demonstrating / promoting PAW whilst waiting for the new Bridge will only be offered Bridges 'at the back of the queue' after the first 500 full kits have been put together, i.e. some two weeks after the first fully functional kits are released. This is in direct conflict with the fact that we were told from the start that all enquiries/sales would be dealt with strictly in order of registration on the PilotAwareHarware site and seems a bit of a harsh way to treat your loyal band of long-term testers!
I guess from my post that it could be interpreted that the first 100 units were complete kits. This is not the case so sorry if this has also caused confusion. You will see from the 4 saleable items above that there are customers at different stages of engagement, all waiting patiently.
We do not want to be seen as disadvantaging any sector as all customers are important. Consequently 50% of the first batch will be built as complete kits and 50% will be available as Bridges only, of both full price and discounted variety.
We are encouraging our supplier to provide the second 400 Bridges as soon as possible as a follow on so that we can meet the demand and re allocate as necessary.
We really are working as hard as possible to get the units out to you juggling financial engineering and logistic issues on a daily basis. I hope that you can be patient for a little longer as we move to availability.
This is in direct conflict with the fact that we were told from the start that all enquiries/sales would be dealt with strictly in order of registration on the PilotAwareHarware site
This is not something that I recognise as the pilotawarehardware.com site registration was for communication when the units were available not for an allocation basis. To do this we would have had to distinguished between an enquiry and a sale by taking money which is something that we didn't want to do until we have product available.
I hope that this makes it clearer. More information will be available over the next week.
Keith Vinning
PilotAware Team
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