LAA Rally

[BobD]

Hi Bob,
FYI, you were first received at a distance of 19.46km by the Ground Station - the Receive Antenna, was a little obscured as well.

Hi Lee,
That's pretty impressive performance from PAW, seeing as my unit wasn't even plumbed into the aircraft, just sat on the seat beside me in a C-182, and connected to my SkyDemon!
Bob

[exfirepro]

Hi Bob,

As Lee says - no fancy antennas. We were using the standard 1090MHz antenna and the standard P3i end-fed dipole on an extension cable (i.e. the ones from the kit) literally 'gaffer taped' to the bottom edge of the marquee roof. Although neither are 'external' antennas, both stayed put and fully operational through all the weekend's rain and storms with (obviously) great results!

Great to meet you and the rest of the guys.

Regards

Peter

[JimN]

Hi, long time lurker but 1st post as I'm confused by the PAW stats from the rally.

We flew in DJAY on Saturday, it has PAW but no transponder, yet the stats registered us as having ADS-B and not PAW.

Simple typo or what's going on?

Great to see that many aircraft logged though.

[Admin]

Hi, long time lurker but 1st post as I'm confused by the PAW stats from the rally.
We flew in DJAY on Saturday, it has PAW but no transponder, yet the stats registered us as having ADS-B and not PAW.
Simple typo or what's going on?
Great to see that many aircraft logged though.

Aha!
Thanks for getting in contact, I wrote a quick and dirty program to get this data from the logging.
I assumed all PilotAware traffic was using the default GroupID=PAWGRP
could it be possible you changed your GroupID ?
this would explain the assumption you were ADS-B.

I do in fact retain data about the source of the collected data, ie
Mode-C, Mode-S, ADS-B, P3I
so could probably write a better post processor, but please let me know if you have changed your default
GroupID, that would explain the difference

BTW do you really mean 'no transponder' or simply not ADS-B ?

[JimN]

Thanks for the fast reply,

Yes currently we have no transponder.

PAW was set up by my co-owner so will check if he changed the GroupID and let you know.

[Admin]

Thanks for the fast reply,
Yes currently we have no transponder.
PAW was set up by my co-owner so will check if he changed the GroupID and let you know.

OK, just looked at the logs, and this tells me that you are only transmitting P3I (as you said)
$PAWRT,CD86C3,0,0,0,0,1,0,*38
the '1' indicates P3I reception

when I get the signatures, I see
$PFLAA,0,-7408,10580,295,1,CD86C3!DJAY,120,,41,,8*13

if the group was PAWGRP, I would expect
$PFLAA,0,-7408,10580,295,1,CD86C3!#DJAY#,120,,41,,8*13
as I mentioned I was assuming anyone not part of PAWGRP was ADS-B

anyway, further information, you were picked up at this distance
ADS-B CD86C3 :  19.12km DJAY

(ignore the ADS-B field, because of course you are not ADS-B)

[Paul_Sengupta]

How far away was I at first contact?

8 PAW   404631 : #G-DOGG#

[JimN]

Any chance of listing the reception distances for everybody so as to see the spread of effectiveness of installation. 19km sounds good to me but is that good, bad or indifferent?

needs a bit of work on the post processor log output, but at some point yes

[Paul_Sengupta]

In trials, I was able to visually spot aeroplanes at about 2nm, so maybe 3 or 3.5km.

[Admin]

How far away was I at first contact?

8 PAW   404631 : #G-DOGG#

13.5km

[Keithvinning]

In trials, I was able to visually spot aeroplanes at about 2nm, so maybe 3 or 3.5km.

13.5km

Hi Paul

Yes I agree with you that you can only visually see aircraft at max 3.5Km even if you know where they are.

However 13.5Km is rather on the low side where do you have the pAW antenna located? you should be able to do better than that with a clearer in line view.

Cheers

Keith

[Paul_Sengupta]

On top of the dashboard.

Think I'd probably get a longer range if we were at the same altitude.

[exfirepro]

Hi Paul,

Liked your setup in the Bulldog. Tidy and practical. I guess your antenna on the coaming might have been shielded to an extent by the engine on your initial approach to Sywell as ours was at ground level, hence the 'lower' initial contact range than some. 13.5Km is however as you say much further than I for one can see (and I have just had my eyes tested!!).

Best Regards

Peter

[Keithvinning]

I guess your antenna on the coaming might have been shielded to an extent by the engine on your initial approach to Sywell as ours was at ground level, hence the 'lower' initial contact range than some. 13.5Km is however as you say much further than I for one can see (and I have just had my eyes tested!!).

Yes when Lee and I did some testing with 2 PAW in the Sportscruiser one on the dashboard comparing it with the other plumbed in with the PAW antenna underneath, we noticed a point where we would lose the ground station , on the one on the dashboard as we got closer which was intriguing!. However after some thought we lowered the nose considerably (dived in fact) and as this removed the engine from line of sight it came back in. Sweet and proved the point.

Cheers

Keith
 

[GarethHorne]

I didn't fly into Sywell but took my PilotAware along and had it running as a receive only ground station in my bag whilst airside. Picked up a few arrivals on phone as well as the PilotAware/Skydemon Ground station but not as many as I hoped. Saw Paul land in G-DOGG but didn't get any indication on my phone and can find no record in the downloaded log (I can't find any PAWGRP tags in the logs when they're opened in a text editor in fact)

Here's my logs from Sunday
https://www.dropbox.com/s/clniigmc9m4anem/2016-09-04_09-46.trk?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vvb9he146e7jm1b/2016-09-04_13-49.trk?dl=0

Is there anything I can do to check it is working as it should be?

thanks

Gareth