ADS-B Install Experience

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Rich
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by Rich »

I just received a flyer from Pacific Coast Avionics for an Appareo transponder (ADS-B out only) for an installed price of $4475. This is a workable solution for lots of legacy aircraft that don't have WAAS. I know of a flying club at KPAE that recently installed the in/out version in 3 legacy aircraft - a C-172 and 2 C-150's. They got a break on the price because the purchased several, so group buys are available from some dealers.

Even in the hinterlands I now occupy I get real value from the emergence of ADS-B. I get perfectly usable weather and great traffic annunciation. With more and more ADS-B A/C showing up in the area I get increasing traffic visibility out of the range of radar coverage (like in the pattern here at S39). In lieu of paying for XM and TAS600 installation, the $5000 transponder plus the $900 for the Stratus I've had for many years, and no XM subscription to pay, I'm perfectly fine with the value proposition. (I do pay $200/year to Foreflight, but for that I get full US chart coverage and synthetic vision/backup A/I.)
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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rwtucker
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by rwtucker »

I am a strong supporter of ADS-B. My support for the concept goes back to the 1990's when the engineering firm of a friend and fellow pilot proposed a very similar system to the FAA in the 1990's. For the detailed engineering plans provided by my friend and a fellow MIT graduate, the FAA did not even see fit to provide the courtesy of review and response. Finally, he contacted his senator and received a grudging review and a “NIH” rejection. His aircraft-to-aircraft and aircraft-to-ATC network node traffic alert system would have disintermediated the FAA somewhat whereas ADS-B puts the FAA in control. (If I am not mistaken, ADS-B provides the FAA the capability of controlling or shutting down aircraft-to-aircraft transmission, perhaps someone with greater knowledge can comment on this).

Bottom line, we have ADS-B and increased awareness of traffic is almost always a good thing, However, I wonder if the rules for adoption might have been smarter.

When we have had this discussion before on DAN, it seemed to me that the benefits are somewhat contingent on one's location and flying behavior with the greatest benefits accruing to the high density complex airspace. For some areas, the benefits may be so limited that it would be difficult to justify the costs. If you fly outside of A, B, or C airspace or if you fly an aircraft not originally certified with an electrical system, etc. you may even question whether there are any benefits. For the most part, I fly in an area where the benefits will be limited. I would estimate that 1/4 to 1/3 of a sizable number of pilots in my area have no requirement and no plans to add ADS-B to their aircraft. When I finally figure out which among the clunky ways I will add ADS-B to my DA40, I will be sharing the Class G airspace with these people.
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Rich
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by Rich »

The FAA can't "shut off" ADS-B A/C to A/C communication. It's strictly autonomous (that's the "A"). It could shut down the tower infrastructure of the towers, which does not affect this communication in any way. Why they would do this I have no clue, but it would cut off receipt of non-ADS-B traffic and, of course, weather.

Today I operate at an airport that has neither radar coverage nor ADS-B tower reception below (roughly) pattern altitude. Yet I can see ADS-B A/C in the pattern and on the surface (which annunciate in "GND" mode). And they can see me.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by rwtucker »

Rich wrote:The FAA can't "shut off" ADS-B A/C to A/C communication.
I can't see why they would want to cut it off either unless there were a significant security issue. I do know that HS was involved in this process.

This is above my pay grade but a creative exploration of two things I see in the literature suggest that a blanket claim that ADS-B cannot be shut off might be in front of the technical evidence:

In 2012 a hacker group claimed that it could spoof ADS-B messages because they were neither encrypted nor authenticated.

The lack of authentication within the standard makes it mandatory to validate any received data by use of the primary radar. (Does AC/AC validate?)


None of this is determinative of anything but it does raise questions of various kinds, especially the potential for the system to be hijacked and what safeguards may be in place or in development.
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Rich
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by Rich »

I thought I'd quantify the challenge in swapping in a different transponder (for ADS-B or otherwise) for those of us who have a DA40 with the 530/430/KAP140 stack. Note the picture of what mine looks like after the installation of a KT74 in the spot formerly occupied by the GTX327. As stated and shown in a previous post, the KT74 has to be canted (or allowed to protrude out of the front of the panel) in order to clear the canopy arm. The scale is perpendicular to the instrument pane and shows the limited distance to the arm. The dimension to the closest point is just over 9-1/4 ". As the canopy swings further downward (not really shown here) it looks like this distance doesn't get any closer, thankfully.

There has been some tweaking of the instrument panel shape (and maybe location) by Diamond from time to time. So doing some checking on your airplane prior to changing out is probably warranted. This is a 2002 (ser. 40.208). From what I can find of dimensions of the various solutions out there for mode S or ADS-B, none would fit without some physical installation heroics. The GTX 327 is unusually compact in depth so it fit easily.
KT74 installed in DA40
KT74 installed in DA40
Last edited by Rich on Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Rich
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by Rich »

Rich wrote:I just received a flyer from Pacific Coast Avionics for an Appareo transponder (ADS-B out only) for an installed price of $4475. This is a workable solution for lots of legacy aircraft that don't have WAAS. I know of a flying club at KPAE that recently installed the in/out version in 3 legacy aircraft - a C-172 and 2 C-150's. They got a break on the price because they purchased several, so group buys are available from some dealers.
I followed up to see what this flying club actually paid to install the Appareo ESG in/out. It was $4711 per plane, all in. He got $1000 in rebates (2 planes@$500), which reduced the price on those 2 to $4211 apiece. He tells me that had they just gone with ADS-B out only, the price per plane would have been $475 cheaper, but he'd still get the rebates, so to simply comply with the mandate would have been $4236 minus the rebates for two of them, so these two would have been $3736. The caveat on the rebate program, however, is the rebate is taxable income.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by Pascal »

Even 4000$ is a lot of money for people owning C150s and such.

As a canadian, I will have to equip with ADS-B out for the few times a year I visit the U.S. (Lake Placid, NY is a wonderful place and really close to my home airport). I wish there was a cheaper solution out there. Maybe there will soon.
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by Gary »

I have a 2003 DA40 with the steam gauges replaced by Garmin G500. I've been considering various solutions for the ADS-B to include the GDL 84 or attempting to swap out my GTX 327 transponder for a Garmin 345 or another ADS-B capable transponder. All of the transponder options I have seen are an inch or two longer so I see what Rich means by physical installation heroics. What exactly had to be done in this case? Does the shop need to design and fabricate new brackets?
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Rich
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by Rich »

Gary wrote:I have a 2003 DA40 with the steam gauges replaced by Garmin G500. I've been considering various solutions for the ADS-B to include the GDL 84 or attempting to swap out my GTX 327 transponder for a Garmin 345 or another ADS-B capable transponder. All of the transponder options I have seen are an inch or two longer so I see what Rich means by physical installation heroics. What exactly had to be done in this case? Does the shop need to design and fabricate new brackets?
They redid the mounting brackets so the transponder would fit canted to the right so the connector would clear. As far as I can tell, it entailed moving (or perhaps replacing) the right-side bracket of the transponder back about 3/4", and adjusting (bending) the angles of the brackets to suit. One of the guys here posted a clean install of a GTX 335. I haven't yet been able to find credible engineering drawings of the 335 (just the 345), so it looks like a 335 might fit OK. I don't think the 345 will. The 335, by the way, seems to be available at a price more competitive than it was (under 3K).

In my case I have 530W/430W so the GPS part was just wiring. But there is a potential downside to having this kind of interdependent setup. If the 530W happens to be out for some kind of repair, then I don't have ADS-B out for that period of time. I did have to pull it once for a failure with glideslope (both ILS and LPV). The plane was otherwise fully functional (other than not having coupled nav). The good news is Garmin turned it around quickly (like about a week).

A followup: It looks like the 335 can take inputs from two GNS units, for those of us who have 530W/430W setups. So removal of one of the units can be dealt with, you get to select which unit to pull GPS data from.

But wait, there's more. While I still can't find engineering drawings for the 335, there is an interesting discrepancy between a couple of the drawings for the 345. It has to do with the BNC connector locations. In one drawing it looks like the one on the left side (facing toward the front of the plane) would be a candidate for interfering with the swing arm. But the other shows it way off on the left end of the mounting tray, where it's definitely out of the way. So which is correct? The remaining candidate problem is the location of the leftmost end of the main data connector. It'd be useful to see a behind-the-panel picture of a 335 (and/or 345) installation in one of the "old" DA40's with the problematic transponder location.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Re: ADS-B Install Experience

Post by ricksigler »

Just a quick update for those of you that might be interested. I sent my letter to all my congressional representatives and the White House on approximately June 1. As of today, I have had zero response. I'm thinking that they are probably too busy getting nothing done to bother with my concerns. Oh well, I had to try.

Hopefully the new GDL82 is going to do the trick for me at an affordable price.

Rick
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