Messages

166

General Discussion / Re: PilotAware at Wellesbourne

« on: September 21, 2016, 09:27:37 pm »

I can fully understand an airfield wanting to get a PAW to give them a view of their traffic. I think it would be great my local field.

It does raise an interesting question around how someone on the ground should react if they can see two converging ADSB targets, both on station, but neither able to see one another visually and neither with PAW. Where is the line drawn between advising aircraft of traffic, strongly advising an aircraft that  a particular manœuvre is required to avoid a potential collision, and quasi-controlling by issuing advisory 'instructions' to ensure separation or avoidance of noise sensitive areas.

Some discipline willl be required by a/g operators to avoid attracting attention from the CAA.

167

General Discussion / Re: PilotAware at Wellesbourne

« on: September 21, 2016, 07:32:45 pm »

I have said before that I'm not keen on Airfields transmitting while there is no way of filtering out the audio from stationary targets. There is enough clutter on the audio channel as it is, and it will grow as more people fit PAW and ADSB. The most likely place for a mid-air is in the vicinity of an airfield, so the less spurious alerting the better, as far as I'm concerned.

168

Technical Support / Re: lost wifi paw no longer found

« on: September 19, 2016, 08:15:44 am »

On the iOS version text size is adjusted by touching the 'Mapping' symbol bottom right of the screen. At the foot of the pop up there in a gadget to allow you to control text size. This works on the traffic labels as well as background text, and is available in both planning and mapping modes.

169

Technical Support / Re: Mode C and S detection - SkyDemon oddity...or not

« on: September 15, 2016, 08:07:56 am »

I hope all these people are going to set them to 'Rx' only, the last thing we need are spurious traffic warnings springing up.

I wonder what software they will be using to display traffic, as it seems a bit clunky to use a full blown nav package in flight mode.

170

Technical Support / Re: Mode C and S detection - SkyDemon oddity...or not

« on: September 13, 2016, 05:58:39 pm »

A manual method of syncing the baro chip to the QFE on the ground would be better.

This wouldn't help as the problem is the dynamic pressure within the cabin when the aircraft is at cruise speed.

Accepting that every individual aircraft could be slightly different, but every aircraft I've flown I flip to alt-static just to see the effect on altitude and airspeed, so I know what to expect if I have to do it for real. I don't think I've ever seen anything greater than 1 or 2 mb, say 50' in altitude, i.e well inside the tolerance for an altimeter anyway.

171

Technical Support / Re: Mode C and S detection - SkyDemon oddity...or not

« on: September 13, 2016, 06:15:09 am »

I would advise against using GPS altitude to modify barometric.

The further away from ISA temperatures, and the higher you go, the further they will be apart. A manual method of syncing the baro chip to the QFE on the ground would be better.

172

Technical Support / Re: Audio alert chattiness

« on: September 12, 2016, 10:30:05 am »

I was going to post what follows a few days ago, but have held back to date firstly to see what others may be experiencing, and secondly to avoid appearing too negative about what I think is a great achievement (and getting better all the time!).

I went into Sleap last week, as short flight at 2000' altitude. I have the filters set quite tight, +/- 2000' and Mode S/C range set to short. There were two other aircraft in the vicinity - a club 152 doing circuits, and a Shawbury heli mooching about somewhere (I never saw it), both directionless and I assume Mode S as I was getting callsigns displayed.

As I approached, the alerts became continuous; as the heli manoeuvred, and the 152 went up and down, it was continuous stream of warnings changing to danger, back to warnings with separation heights being revised constantly. It was a complete and utter distraction, useless for alerting me if another target were to suddenly appear, and I pulled the wire.

I realise this is one of those almost irresolvable problems - you don't want people flying around with their heads in the cockpit, the occasional glance for navigation and traffic purposes should be enough unless alerted by a new target, or one potentially in conflict. To achieve that requires quite sophisticated logic, which just can't be supported with the data available on Mode C and S. Too many alerts and the whole system becomes either dangerous (head in cockpit all the time looking to see if a new danger has appeared) or a meaningless distraction.

TAS and TCAS work well for IFR in CAS as traffic is controlled, and unexpected alerts are therefore rare. Trying to produce something with a similar relevance in bandit country is quite a challenge. In the meantime, I'll be reducing my filter to 1000' and may well switch off audio warnings, depending on the parameters of my flight, until everyone carries either FLARM, ADS-B or PilotAware!

173

Technical Support / Re: Discrepancies between audio warnings and SkyDemon displayed separations.

« on: September 07, 2016, 07:25:24 pm »

Tim distributed a new iOS beta of SkyDemon for testing this morning. As it happens, I had a few flights planned today so I ran the new beta alongside the current public release on two separate iPads.

Looks like the problem is solved in the new beta - height separations reported in SD appeared consistent with the PAW audio alerts, so it won't be long before it makes its way into a new release.

Well done chaps!

174

Technical Support / Re: Traffic page auto-refresh

« on: August 29, 2016, 07:01:08 pm »

I'll need to check my settings. The unit is in the aircraft and I'm not likely to fly until Wednesday evening  , so I'll check then.

Thanks.

175

Technical Support / Traffic page auto-refresh

« on: August 29, 2016, 05:15:13 am »

Anyone else find the Traffic page unusable when it's more than a screenful?

I generally use PAW with an iPad and inbuilt Safari browser in landscape orientation. It doesn't take long to build up a list of traffic that is longer than the screen will accommodate, but it's impossible to review the lower part of the list when the (<1 second?) refresh constantly resets the screen to top of page. It also takes repeated rapid presses of the respective button to navigate to another screen.

Can you make the screen static, with options to manually/auto refresh (with buttons at top!)

176

Technical Support / Re: Discrepancies between audio warnings and SkyDemon displayed separations.

« on: August 28, 2016, 08:22:33 pm »

Great stuff.

177

Technical Support / Re: Discrepancies between audio warnings and SkyDemon displayed separations.

« on: August 28, 2016, 08:34:05 am »

I thought I observed this on the rings actually using the latest SD rings but was not sure
I asked Tim who thought it may have been due to rounding errors converting metres to feet

So are you saying that the problem lies entirely at the SD end? If so I will post a message on the SD forum.

178

Technical Support / Re: Discrepancies between audio warnings and SkyDemon displayed separations.

« on: August 27, 2016, 07:22:09 am »

Hi Lee,

I'm seeing it on the 'now highlighted in yellow' label that sits on the periphery of the SD ring.

179

Technical Support / Discrepancies between audio warnings and SkyDemon displayed separations.

« on: August 27, 2016, 06:53:41 am »

Using the latest versions of both PAW and SD, I'm observing huge differences in reported height separations for bearingless targets between PAW audio warnings and what is depicted on SkyDemon.

Typically, as a made up example, Sally Traffic will say 'warning, traffic 1100ft below' whereas SkyDemon will show it as -4.6. Empirically, from correlating warnings with known traffic on the ground when in the circuit, it would seem that that the audio warning is correct, but somehow it's getting corrupted on its way to the SkyDemon display.

Anyone else seen this?

180

Technical Support / Re: 20160820 Update can't be found RESOLVED

« on: August 21, 2016, 11:00:59 pm »

Sorted! Disconnecting the wifi dongle did the trick.

Thanks.