Questions about ADS-B weather July 5

William Pete Hodges

William Pete Hodges

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Yesterday, July 5th, a storm moved eastward across the Ohio Valley and the East coast. It crossed Michigan starting after midnight and as it blew eastward a flght window opened up about 2PM for me to fly south to Toledo and then east to Culpeper VA as the day wore on. I was flying in behind the weather and it was moving away from me as I moved east.

I have an ADS-B GPS but the weather information was not updating as I moved east. It showed the same storm in the same place as I flew east, and out of prudency I skirted around it, but it really wasn't there. I stopped in Toledo to get avgas, and about 4PM I checked Aviation Graphical Weather, the forecast worked fine but hourly observations wouldn't load.

I think these two instances are related and I think there was a failure of the system yesterday. Would anyone on this site know anything about this? I know it was the end of a holiday weekend and stuff happens. My flight was not adversly affected except I might have been able to complete the flight without adding a dogleg for a storm that had already passed.

Anyway I am curious about this. Thank you in advance for your input.
 
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I don't have an answer for you but I am in central Ohio and have seen this type of issue pop up around here a few times in the past couple months.
 
Pull the report on your adsb out and make sure it’s operational. If you aren’t actively sending data, the system doesn’t know to send you data back (if there’s nobody else around)
 
I may have an issue at times with the ads feed to my iPad. I usually just deselect then reselect the connection, or weather display, that usually gets it right again.
 
Salty said:
Pull the report on your adsb out and make sure it’s operational. If you aren’t actively sending data, the system doesn’t know to send you data back (if there’s nobody else around)
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That would be true for traffic but it looks like he’s referring to FIS-B weather data, which isn’t dependent on one transmitting ADS-B - just having a receiver.

My hunch is he was over sparse enough areas at low enough altitude to not be able to receive FIS-B consistently.
 
I use ForeFlight and a portable ADS-B receiver. When in doubt, I look at the time last metar received and also status of ads-b in on FF. Since I do not know what equipment you are using, I would suggest something similar...looking at a time of wx info on a metar for example.
 
Doug Reid said:
I use ForeFlight and a portable ADS-B receiver. When in doubt, I look at the time last metar received and also status of ads-b in on FF. Since I do not know what equipment you are using, I would suggest something similar...looking at a time of wx info on a metar for example.
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This is certainly something to check. My recollection is foggy, but the last time my Stratux memory card became corrupted, there was an inability to process new data, so that the weather didn’t change as appropriate. Also, I don’t think my traffic was working either. After I re-flashed the card to the latest software, all became well again.

Another thing is sometimes my Stratux does not auto select the Stratux wifi network, so just make sure that your wifi is connected to Stratux, if that is what you have. When that happens, the radar pattern never changes as it retains the image last received from your cellular network on the ground.
 
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I have a Garmin GTX345 transponder and a Garmin AERA760 GPS Mounted on the panel. Those are the only devices providing ADS-B out and in information and FIS-B weather. I also have a GPS496 mounted on the yoke, but I don''t have XM weather as I didn't think I needed it too, but I might reconsider. I do my preflight weather research with a computer or an android tablet. I use https://www.aviationweather.gov/gfa Aviation Graphical Weather within 18 hours of my flight and other tools up to one or two weeks out.

All these tools worked perfectly for my trip to Michigan on Friday 7/1. The AERA760 accurately showed a weather storm SW of KPIT that I avoided, and I could see it out my window. But on 7/5 the FIS-B weather did not update in flight and the Aviation Graphical Weather would not upload when I looked at it on the ground at 4pm. These are two separate system trying to look at the same information. It looks like the system went down to me.
 
I've found that my NGT-9000 display is pretty current for NEXRAD, as is my XM WX data. Transmission of WX data to my tablet from the NGT-9000 using the GDL-90 protocol seems slow and sloppy, with too-frequent artifacts. It usually straightens out over time. Seems to be a software issue with the EFBs. Some work better than others.
 
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