FAA's ADS-B Audit Report

steingar said:
I doubt my airplane is worth much more than $20 to $25K these days, and less after this whole ADS-B business kicks in. Spending 7.5K on something that's only worth $20K and isn't likely to be worth much more after the box goes in is foolish at best. Might just stop flying for travel and just kick around the cornfields.
Click to expand...

Do you not fly your plane? Did you buy it as a financial instrument, a monetary investment? If so, sell now. Otherwise it has value beyond a dollar figure. Consider it a one time operational expense and the best thing to do to deal with the cost is to amortize it into the most hours you can.

It's just another $7500 to kick into a lifetime hobby. Is it worth it to you? Who knows? Only you.

I just quit counting, it costs what it costs to get the view I like and the experiences of life that I enjoy. That's what money is for, and somehow I always seem to have enough.:dunno:
 
Last edited:
N801BH said:
I do that with TCAS all the time.... It is a great mental and visual excercise..
Click to expand...

As long as it doesn't create a distraction that causes you to miss the REAL threat that didn't show up on your fishfinder!
 
LDJones said:
And I'm sure we'll see that. Thankfully, I've dodged death for 35 years without a fishfinder, other than on my boat.
Click to expand...

How many missed you because they had you on their fish finder? That is all you are required to provide for, your output. Whether you want to take advantage of the other information is purely optional, but you will have to provide your location out for others to see.

ADS-B laws have nothing to do with serving you, ADS-B laws are about protecting others from you.
 
Last edited:
So, we'll FF to 2024, the ADS-B as been fully subscribed, and the FAA blesses it as the be-all, end-all of traffic avoidance. I hop in my 1950 flivver(sans any ADS-B equipage, and have removed my txp when it died in 2020) and I take off from an airport just outside the boundary of the class B(mode C-ish) required area. I climb to 4500' and take a leisurely trip around the class B outside of what used to be the mode-C veil, but we won't know what it will be in the future. Either way, I'm in unrestricted airspace, transmitting nothing, perfectly legal at my VFR cruising altitude of 4500 or 5500 as the case may be.

How is separation going to be done? No radar I presume, but just the fish finder. Does the in-cockpit fish finder echo locate? I don't think so, which is the D in Dependent and the B in Broadcast. Since I ain't broadcasting my location, registration number, etc how does this ADS-B in save a plane full of vacationers heading for me an 250kts?
 
Henning said:
How many missed you because they had you on their fish finder? That is all you are required to provide for, your output. Whether you you want to take advantage of the other information is purely optional, but you will have to provide your location out for others to see.

ADS-B laws have nothing to do with serving you, ADS-B laws are about protecting others from you.
Click to expand...

And I predict 20 years after implementation the rate of mid-airs will remain essentially unchanged. Personally, I'm not against the technology, but I think it's being oversold. The inflight weather is the biggest benefit it offers, not traffic awareness. That could prove to be more of a distraction than a benefit.
 
docmirror said:
So, we'll FF to 2024, the ADS-B as been fully subscribed, and the FAA blesses it as the be-all, end-all of traffic avoidance. I hop in my 1950 flivver(sans any ADS-B equipage, and have removed my txp when it died in 2020) and I take off from an airport just outside the boundary of the class B(mode C-ish) required area. I climb to 4500' and take a leisurely trip around the class B outside of what used to be the mode-C veil, but we won't know what it will be in the future. Either way, I'm in unrestricted airspace, transmitting nothing, perfectly legal at my VFR cruising altitude of 4500 or 5500 as the case may be.

How is separation going to be done? No radar I presume, but just the fish finder. Does the in-cockpit fish finder echo locate? I don't think so, which is the D in Dependent and the B in Broadcast. Since I ain't broadcasting my location, registration number, etc how does this ADS-B in save a plane full of vacationers heading for me an 250kts?
Click to expand...

Which is why it requires all people to be cooperative rather than combative, holy **** this is what is wrong with our entire society, you think the dollars in your pocket are the most important things in existence.

If we don't cooperate, all the tax money that has been spent will be wasted, not by government but by us. If you don't take advantage of SVT, the biggest benefit the Space Shuttle program gave us is wasted.
 
Last edited:
Henning said:
Which is why it requires all people to be cooperative rather than combative, holy **** this is what is wrong with our entire society, you think the dollars in your pocket are the most important things in existence.

If we don't cooperate, all the tax money that has been spent will be wasted, not by government but by us. If you don't take advantage of SVT, the biggest benefit the Space Shuttle program gave us is wasted.
Click to expand...

Cooperate -- or we will make you cooperate. Spoken by every dictator in history. Oh - and cooperation comes at a price not just in the liberty, but in real pocket money too. A double dip into socialism! Nicely done...

Now, my questions which you failed to answer were not rhetorical. We get plenty of rhetoric on this subject, but answers are sorely lacking. If anyone thinks that this rare or an outlier, trust me - lots and lots and lots of GA pilots will not play along, and since the airspace around the current mode-C area is now off limits, I predict this situation will play out every day, in every metro area where ADS-B is mandated.

<edit: SVT presumes synth vision. Can be had for the cost of an iPad(or clone) and ForeFlight subscription. Provides amazing tool for pilot SA along with AHRS and get full motion, better tech than that on the Shuttle. Total all in - $1500 plus about $40/month. Gimme that with ADS-B and I might be much more cooperative.>
 
Last edited:
Henning said:
If we don't cooperate, all the tax money that has been spent will be wasted, not by government but by us. If you don't take advantage of SVT, the biggest benefit the Space Shuttle program gave us is wasted.
Click to expand...

There were and are technologies that will provide traffic warnings to aircraft that do not require cooperation of any other aircraft and would not require any regulatory mandates. Traditional on board radar is one such technology - though updated techniques allow great improvements over what used to be possible. If air carriers had no ATC to rely on and the FAA did not exist, people would have worked out technologies and strategies on their own that would reduce their risks of collisions relative to the cost they had to pay.

Is there some aspect of collision avoidance that actually requires dictates from a central authority? I'm not aware of any.
 
Jim Logajan said:
There were and are technologies that will provide traffic warnings to aircraft that do not require cooperation of any other aircraft and would not require any regulatory mandates. Traditional on board radar is one such technology - though updated techniques allow great improvements over what used to be possible. If air carriers had no ATC to rely on and the FAA did not exist, people would have worked out technologies and strategies on their own that would reduce their risks of collisions relative to the cost they had to pay.

Is there some aspect of collision avoidance that actually requires dictates from a central authority? I'm not aware of any.
Click to expand...

Simple, standardization. As much as ADS-B is a PITA, it's a standardized system that everyone will be required to use. There won't be 2, 3, or even 10 different systems that don't talk to each other. Having competing systems is always more expensive and generally a royal PITA.

Look at wireless charging standards. I know of at least 3 major ones out there right now, and not a single one is compatible with any other. The result? Nobody buys it or cares enough to use it on devices that have it installed because you still have to buy equipment that may end up being useless in a year or two.

Or you can look back at the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD stupidity. Not having a single standard slows adoption and screws anyone who happens to pick the wrong side.

Not saying the FAA couldn't have chosen better, less expensive, more proven paths instead of ADS-B, but there is a case to be made for a central authority dictating what should be done.

That's my opinion.
 
Interesting point I was not aware of:
A4A President Nick Calio's written testimony pointed out that the current ADS-B spec "is not harmonized with European and other international ATC systems," and will primarily benefit the FAA, not airspace users. He noted that this problem was discussed at the Oct. 28th meeting, but said that while this discussion was "a good first step, we cannot support the current 2020 mandate for ADS-B/Out until these issues are resolved."

When I became aware of this problem of an overly-precise specification last month, I assumed that this must have been a recent change on FAA's part. That was despite getting regular feedback from some very knowledgeable readers routinely criticizing the way the FAA is going about implementing ADS-B. One of them finally pointed out to me that this problem was discussed in some detail back in early 2008, when FAA issued its Notice of Proposed Rule Making on ADS-B performance requirements (Docket No. FAA-2007-29305). I found the 38-page comments submitted at that time by the Air Transport Association (A4A's previous name) making the case that equipping airliners with equipment compliant with those ultra-precise ADS-B/Out specs would involve "enormous costs" to airlines with little benefits. It laid out an alternative, two-phase approach that would begin with specifications consistent with those planned for Europe, Canada and Australia and running demonstration projects to validate various operating concepts that might produce better-than-radar separation standards. It would also involve simulations and demonstrations of advanced ADS-B/In operational applications. Only in a later phase 2 would higher-precision standards be considered, if necessary to achieve higher performance, but those would only be implemented in harmony with international inter-operability.
Click to expand...

http://reason.org/news/printer/air-traffic-control-newsletter-118
 
I hope they get this through so GA can finally be dead and gone. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top