Messages

31

Technical Support / Re: A really weird one, PAW grabbed traffic and held it.

« on: September 20, 2019, 01:04:31 pm »

There's definitely a pattern of this issue because it happened to me today from Lee on Solent back to Sandy.   In the circuit I noticed that GAWPW was above and behind me, but ‘stuck’ a constant distance behind, and apparently flying backwards!
En route realised that there was GMISJ, GKEVH and GCECL also stuck.  GCECL was one of our group and according to my pilot aware he was flying through Southampton’s airspace at 0mph but 4000’ up.

GCECL eventually disappeared but I gained GCKDE.

Some screen shots and traffic captures below.  Interestingly GCIJO and GCIGG are both appearing as zero km away, they were flying with me but not that closely!  GCECL who was also with us is reported as 52km away.

When I finished the flight I turned off paw then turned it on again to download the track file; but found that nothing had been saved from this flight.  Prior two flights today both logged ok.

Geoffrey

Ps: unable to upload the photos as they were too big, and after I’d shrunk them I found that the forum wouldn’t allow .jpeg uploads, only .jpg.
Here they are therefore in Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rdnh4tuol2c8rny/AABF7_YMw8MHrZeq9UxVUDoma?dl=0

I've been looking at flightradar 24 for some of the registrations that appeared live on Skydemon latched to my flight.

GAWPW flew from Lee on Solent to Jersey, and I remembered their radio calls as I was getting ready at Lee on Solent
GMISJ flew along the South coast on the Sunday afternoon,  might have landed at Lee (there's a break in flight in PAW), but Skydemon shows it latched to me near Blackbushe
GCIJO, GCECL and GCIGG all flew back with me from Lee to Sandy,  but appear on PAW traffic logs as 0km from me

So pattern on all of them were that I was near to them as I left Lee but they got 'stuck' latched to my track as I headed North.

I will go back and see if there is a trace file on my plane, but when I looked after landing there didn't appear to be.

Geoffrey

32

Technical Support / Re: A really weird one, PAW grabbed traffic and held it.

« on: September 20, 2019, 11:25:30 am »

The reason why you don't see N95GT or F-GYKL on the Aircrew playback is because they are bearingless targets. You can see G-JFRV and G-EUXD on aircrew playback. I'm not sure why SkyDemon is showing bearingless targets as aircraft?

Its a bug in the replay from PilotAware -> SD
the Y component is passed as '0', instead of empty
I think I explained this earlier, its not an issue in SD, and it is not seen in live traffic
this is simply a replay bug.

Thx
Lee

So explains the latched traffic (including a ground station) I experienced in replay of a flight to Calais.

Any ideas about the latched traffic I experienced live on Sunday (screen shots posted separately).  Unfortunately no track file appeared to have been created so I guess difficult to investigate it

Geoffrey

33

Technical Support / Re: A really weird one, PAW grabbed traffic and held it.

« on: September 16, 2019, 10:40:46 pm »

Hi Geoffrey,

Thanks for that. I’m not convinced that the planes were latched*, but there is no doubt with the Ground Station, though as I said in my earlier post above, that wouldn’t be unusual if you were replaying a PAW Track file and receiving the local Ground Station ‘live’ via your PAW antenna at the same time.

...
Regards

Peter

Hi Peter,

You’re right to be sceptical of course, and when I first saw the playback I too thought I was being followed, but the plane behind and the two in front all stay exactly the same distance and height displacement from me, even when I climb or turn.
Some of this was similar to what happened live on Sunday, planes exactly same position horizontally and vertically separated, and as I mentioned I believed that g-cecl was infringing airspace when it wasn’t (photo of this in the folder from yesterday).

There isn’t a ground station at Sandy when I was playing this back although there is one about 4 miles away en route.

One other thing to add, this latched traffic on replay wasn’t a one off.  It happened several times with slightly different traffic positions depending on how long I ran with fast forward.  I did try no fast forward but I think the same happened.

I’ve sent Lee the track file, and replaying on aircrew doesn’t show any of this traffic.

Geoffrey

34

Technical Support / Re: A really weird one, PAW grabbed traffic and held it.

« on: September 16, 2019, 08:19:35 pm »

Hi Geoffrey,

Now I’m confused, so to confirm. We’re you seeing the ‘latched traffic’ during the flight itself or just during playback via PAW onto SD?

Regards

Peter

Hi Peter,  sorry for the confusion.

I don't recall any evidence of latched traffic on the flight on 2nd August,  but when I tried to playback the track on PAW I definitely did get latched traffic.   Here's a link to the video of the playback https://photos.app.goo.gl/JD1YQKRuhnxWV4P36 and you can clearly see another plane and a ground station following along with me.

Quite separately, yesterday, I experienced multiple latched traffic, in flight.  Screen shots of skydemon and the PAW traffic screen attached yesterday.   Most of the planes stayed latched all the way through the journey but some appeared and disappeared en route.

Geoffrey

35

Technical Support / Re: A really weird one, PAW grabbed traffic and held it.

« on: September 16, 2019, 08:15:25 pm »

Does GCECL also have a transponder in addition to PilotAware ?
if so do you know the manufacturer ?

Some screen shots and traffic captures below.  Interestingly GCIJO and GCIGG are both appearing as zero km away, they were flying with me but not that closely!  GCECL who was also with us is reported as 52km away.

This is more interesting. I notice you have vertical/horizontal filters selected. This is only really intended for systems such as skymap which does not have filters available, in SD, it has its own filters. So I am wondering if something screwy is happening with filters applied.

Thx
Lee

GCECL has a transponder plus PAW,  as does GCIJO.  GCIJO is a Funke.  I *think* GCECL is a Trig but I can check if you want to know.

I checked the screen shots I took of my PAW config and I have 'display all' for horizontal display range and '+/- 2000ft' for vertical range.   I probably set it to this for when I  used to use the PAW Radar screen to filter out overflying commercial jets,  and hadn't changed it since moving to Skydemon over a year ago.   No issues to take it off now.

Geoffrey

36

Technical Support / Re: A really weird one, PAW grabbed traffic and held it.

« on: September 16, 2019, 08:02:20 pm »

Hi Lee

I’ve had an experience of “latched” traffic on playback.   I very rarely play previously recorded tracks but I needed to look at this one, but when I played it back, fast forwarding to the interesting bit, I found that a ground station and another plane had got “latched” to me.

Couldn’t work out how to attach the file to a pm so uploaded to box and sent you a link.

Cheers Geoffrey

Hi Geoffrey
Thanks for this, I loaded this into aircrew, and I do not see any latched traffic, are you only able to see this when you perform playback via SD ?
...
Can you indicate a time I should look at ?

Thx
Lee

Hi Lee,

Until I 'discovered' aircrew on the weekend I was using PAW to playback the traffic.   I was fast forwarding the playback up until when I was transiting through Stansted TMZ and out the other side.  I FF'd (up to 16x I think) to get to roughly the right place and ended up with latched traffic including a ground station and another plane that was a bit behind and above me.  Here's a video of the playback on PAW https://photos.app.goo.gl/JD1YQKRuhnxWV4P36

When I play back in aircrew it doesn't show any traffic that I don't expect it to.

Geoffrey

37

Technical Support / Re: Can Alerts Be Turned OFF

« on: September 15, 2019, 11:23:00 pm »

Geoffrey, I would just make up a cable as required.

Yea that’s what I might have to do.  Tried ebay etc but couldn’t find a ready made solution

Thanks

38

Technical Support / Re: A really weird one, PAW grabbed traffic and held it.

« on: September 15, 2019, 08:14:22 pm »

Rog,
That just sounds like there was another aircraft following your route?
Red ring (other colours available  ) will always be centred on your aircraft.

There's definitely a pattern of this issue because it happened to me today from Lee on Solent back to Sandy.   In the circuit I noticed that GAWPW was above and behind me, but ‘stuck’ a constant distance behind, and apparently flying backwards!
En route realised that there was GMISJ, GKEVH and GCECL also stuck.  GCECL was one of our group and according to my pilot aware he was flying through Southampton’s airspace at 0mph but 4000’ up.

GCECL eventually disappeared but I gained GCKDE.

Some screen shots and traffic captures below.  Interestingly GCIJO and GCIGG are both appearing as zero km away, they were flying with me but not that closely!  GCECL who was also with us is reported as 52km away.

When I finished the flight I turned off paw then turned it on again to download the track file; but found that nothing had been saved from this flight.  Prior two flights today both logged ok.

Geoffrey

Ps: unable to upload the photos as they were too big, and after I’d shrunk them I found that the forum wouldn’t allow .jpeg uploads, only .jpg.
Here they are therefore in Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rdnh4tuol2c8rny/AABF7_YMw8MHrZeq9UxVUDoma?dl=0

 

39

Technical Support / Re: Can Alerts Be Turned OFF

« on: September 15, 2019, 08:12:35 pm »

I assume the alerts are coming from you PilotAware, so the SD mute will have no effect.

If you have connected by audio cable them a switch in the line will do the trick. If by BT, then turn BT off on your headset.

Yes it would be nice to have another way, I cannot immediately see how. Any software methods would mean switching screens.

I tried in vain to find an inline audio switch for my paw.  Anyone found a suitable source?

40

Technical Support / Re: A really weird one, PAW grabbed traffic and held it.

« on: September 14, 2019, 05:11:49 pm »

Hi Lee

I’ve had an experience of “latched” traffic on playback.   I very rarely play previously recorded tracks but I needed to look at this one, but when I played it back, fast forwarding to the interesting bit, I found that a ground station and another plane had got “latched” to me.

Couldn’t work out how to attach the file to a pm so uploaded to box and sent you a link.

Cheers Geoffrey

41

Technical Support / Re: Installing 20190621 - SDFormat and Software upgrade

« on: July 28, 2019, 02:06:55 pm »

I've been trying with limited success to upgrade my PAW to the latest software version.

...

Install SD card back in Mac and check its contents,  and then I notice that the os and overlays folders are both empty,  but in the ZIP file they have files in them.   Strange,

Manually copy the contents of the os folder back over to the SD card,  check the SD card has the files in it, it does.  Unmount the SD card,  remount it,  check the os folder and its empty.

Tried several times, deleting and recreating the folders, and each time same thing happens,  the os and overlays folders are OK on the SD card,  but all the subfolders disappear when I remove the SD card from the card reader (dismounting it properly to ensure all data written to the card).

Found another 16Gb micro SD card,  copied the files and directories to it,  this time when I unmount and remount the card the os folder retains the Raspbian sub-folder and the overlays folder retains all its subfiles,  but the Raspbian sub-folder of os empties itself each time.  Since this has the root.tar.gz in it, again sounds fatal.

So either these are both corrupt SD cards (unlikely?),  or SD card and sub folders just don't play well on a Mac.   I suspect these folders being empty is pretty much going to kill it booting up.

Following up on all my issues with installing the new PAW software on a new 16Gb Micro SD card.   Turns out that both the 16Gb SD cards I had were faulty !

After formatting them on a windows PC instead of a Mac I experienced the same issue that files would disappear from the subfolders after copying.   After repeated runs of Windows drive check I managed to eventually clear all the drive corruptions and had a 'stable' drive that files didn't disappear from,  so maybe I'll use it for music songs but certainly not going to run something as important as PAW on it.

Brian Montilla kindly lent me a spare new card and I was able to install the new software OK,  which gave me the safety net to then reformat and overwrite my original PAW 8Gb drive.  It took a while for the initial boot up but I could see the green and red lights flashing so I kept on waiting.   All booted and configured OK.

Looking forward to some good weather to try it out.  There was no other GA around when I went flying on Friday,  just jets into Luton. 
It certainly boots up much faster than the previous software version.  Thanks Lee.

So moral of the story is not to buy ultra cheap micro SD cards off eBay. 

Geoffrey

42

Technical Support / Re: Installing 20190621 - SDFormat and Software upgrade

« on: July 13, 2019, 07:24:56 am »

Do you not have a Windows PC you can try to format the card with?

Another option is to buy a pre-written SD card. Or get someone who lives near you to try it. Where do you live?

I'm going to try to find a Windows PC as my next step, yes.   As much as anything else its whether others have had these issues, its Mac specific, or whatever.

Guess I could buy a preformated SD card, but then I'm spending money that could be part way to upgrading to a Rosetta.

Thanks, Geoffrey

43

Technical Support / Re: Installing 20190621 - SDFormat and Software upgrade

« on: July 12, 2019, 11:47:17 pm »

I've been trying with limited success to upgrade my PAW to the latest software version.

Looking through my SD card collection I only have a spare 16Gb micro SDHC card,  but others seem to have got it to work so thought I would try the same.

Formatted the card with 'full overwrite' using SD formatter 5.0.1 on my MAC.  Checked the format, FAT32, so copied the files to the card and took it to the airfield to load in the plane.   Managed to miss the SD card slot in my PAW classic so had to remove the PAW from the plane to dismantle it and retrieve the SD card.

Powered it up, waited about 20 minutes, nothing happening, no Wifi hotspot.

Put the old card back in, works perfectly.

Brought the PAW home so I could plug it into the TV and see what's happening.

With the old software version, I get the software load details all scroll up on the TV until it gets to the login prompt and then the Wifi hotspot is active.  All good.

New software card, absolutely nothing happens, blank screen.

Reformat the card directly using MAC utilities as at least one help article says this will work https://support.mygeeni.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006585013-How-to-Format-SD-card-to-FAT32-in-Mac-OS- (following instructions format it as FAT, but when I check the drive details it says FAT32).   Same thing, absolutely nothing on the HDMI.

Reformat the card using SD Formatter v5 again as advice that this might work a second time (full overwrite each time).  Card says its FAT32.  Download software from lode.pilotaware again, expand the ZIP, copy it all to the SD card,  unmount it,  put it in the PAW,  same thing.  Blank TV screen and only a single red light on the PAW, no activity lights at all.

Install SD card back in Mac and check its contents,  and then I notice that the os and overlays folders are both empty,  but in the ZIP file they have files in them.   Strange,

Manually copy the contents of the os folder back over to the SD card,  check the SD card has the files in it, it does.  Unmount the SD card,  remount it,  check the os folder and its empty.

Tried several times, deleting and recreating the folders, and each time same thing happens,  the os and overlays folders are OK on the SD card,  but all the subfolders disappear when I remove the SD card from the card reader (dismounting it properly to ensure all data written to the card).

Found another 16Gb micro SD card,  copied the files and directories to it,  this time when I unmount and remount the card the os folder retains the Raspbian sub-folder and the overlays folder retains all its subfiles,  but the Raspbian sub-folder of os empties itself each time.  Since this has the root.tar.gz in it, again sounds fatal.

So either these are both corrupt SD cards (unlikely?),  or SD card and sub folders just don't play well on a Mac.   I suspect these folders being empty is pretty much going to kill it booting up.

Any ideas?   

Going out and buying another 8Gb card is an option,  but I'm thinking I might just jack it in and buy a Rosetta upgrade given all the other problems I have had with reduced range on my PAW classic.  Despite changing the antennae, the bridge board,  putting a new power supply in, changing to a new antenna extension lead and trying with and without an antenna extension lead, I still only can see PAW traffic up to a few miles away.
Would rather not as when it was working the classic was absolutely perfect, but maybe this latest issue is the final message to splash the cash.

Classic upgrade kits appear to be out of stock though.

Thanks in advance

Geoffrey

44

Technical Support / Re: Limited range for PAW traffic - hardware issue?

« on: May 27, 2019, 02:02:11 pm »

I have a short SMA MF antennae extension lead so will try putting the PAW dipole under the windscreen and see what that does for me.

I’ve mounted the PAW antennae under the lower front windscreen with my eBay extension lead.

Unfortunately no-one else with PAW active when I went flying on Saturday so wasn’t able to test the effectiveness of this setup.  Did see a couple of ground stations so I know its working.

Will try again with more aircraft !

Geoffrey

45

Technical Support / Re: Limited range for PAW traffic - hardware issue?

« on: May 25, 2019, 02:21:55 pm »

Geoffrey,

That sounds very like simple screening to me - this is very common to the rear with flexwings ...

I have done considerable experimentation with antenna types and positions to try to minimise these effects, with varying results. Fitting ‘horn-dipole type’ antennas up the sides of the trike windscreen is pretty effective. I have also tried standard PAW/Rosetta end fed (sleeve) dipoles in the same positions on 0.5m, 0.75m or even 1metre SMA extension cables. (I made up my own cables, but you can buy them from www.wifi-Antennas.co.uk - just be careful to specify SMA Male to SMA Female - NOT RP (Reverse Polarity) SMA - which are for WiFi Routers.)

Peter

Thanks Peter,

I agree, it sounds potentially like shielding, and with a flexwing you have limited places to put things.   Brian has his PAW antenna on the pod nose, in place of the radio antennae that used to be mounted there.  I don't like that option as its something to catch the bar on when de-rigging the wing off the trike (unlike your luxury hangar in East Fortune we are all semi-rigged at Sandy).

I have a short SMA MF antennae extension lead so will try putting the PAW dipole under the windscreen and see what that does for me.   Agree with your comment about prioritising oncoming traffic and the RF shielding that occurs with engine/people if you're  flying behind,  I'd just like it if I can get more than a mile or so of range.   With the antennae inside the nose pod behind the glass screen electronics I felt it wasn't ideal but was trying to eliminate other cause of my problem by going for a vanilla installation. 

Looking on wifi-antennas they only appear to have a 1m standard cables https://www.wifi-antennas.co.uk/1-metre-extension-cable-standard-range-sma-male-to-sma-female.html not low-loss ones.  eBay only had 16 foot long ones and Amazon 10-15cm.  I'll try with the one I've got and see what happens.

Geoffrey