MartySantic
Well Known Member
A few locally, and a few in Texas have experienced targets that disappear and sometimes reappear randomly. Anyone else experiencing the same? Anyone know if uAvionix is working on this issue?
This is a known issue. It was discussed at length on the GNS480Yahoo group, and not that I fully understand the guts of the Echo, but the up shot as I believe is that the Echo does not filter or prioritize targets based on range or altitude. It just fires all it gets down the 232 pipe. When that pipe gets overloaded, it drops and re-acquires targets at random...........
I believe Uavionix argument for this implementation is to let the EFIS mfg do the prioritization and filtering - I cant explain how that works if stuff is getting dropped at the input cause that makes no sense to me - maybe someone better can explain it. In anycase, I talked to Jeff at GRT about it and they know about it and do some processing to handle the situation, but more work apparently needs to be done.
Again, if someone else can explain it better/knows more, like you guys, I'm all ears.....
.............to add a little time hysteresis (keeps displaying the traffic for a while after it has moved out of the puck in case it moves back in).
Bo
There is also another known issue with some of the other UAvionics receivers in metro areas where you may have line of sight to multiple adsb towers. The quick fix was to use the Flightaware ADSB filter in series in the antenna input.
When I was testing the new Dynon unit, this greatly improved the reliability of the 472, until Dynon had uAvionic add the filters into the final production unit.
While I have no specific knowledge, it may help with the other uAvionics units too. Its about $15, so it doesn't cost a whole lot to experiment a bit.
Bob,
The only item I could find via a search is a bandpass filter. How would a simple bandpass filter help. Does nothing to prioritize traffic. Is there some other product? Do you have a link?
I initially mentioned some of the issues to them, but, I didn't get the feeling that they felt any urgency on them. And, when it came to issues with things like coasting (things that an EFIS maker could implement), they seem satisfied that if an EFIS maker can correct the issues, they can ignore them. I ended up being less than impressed and was left with the feeling that they aren't truly interested in doing anything too big to fix them, especially if you are not using one of the 2 or 3 most common EFIS systems. So I gave up. At one point they did offer me the new harness, but as I saw how it would work, it would have still left my system pretty limited...and we were already getting fired up to start the 2nd version of our box. Initially our box was built as a GDL90 to Serial-ARINC TCAS converter, but once WSI weather went away and I hooked up ADS-B traffic and weather format, we started the software changes to be GDL90 in and Out with filtering and all the other features. Once we started down that road, I was satisfied that whatever we came up with was going to work better than what they did. And the further we got into it, the more that was validated when we found things like collision alerts missing.
I'm honestly not sure if they have the hardware horsepower to do everything. It's certainly possible, but I haven't ripped one apart. I know the wifi module uses regular arduino ESP8266 type stuff in it. That right there tells you that this stuff wasn't purpose-built avionics. (Neither is our project, but we're just a couple of geeks, not an avionics company)
I figure *if* they address it, it would likely be with a different product, such as their new transponder. But, I'm not willing to take the leap to even test that at this point. The next time I put out cash it's going to be for something that is more main stream and works in certified planes.
As a fence-sitter on the Skybeacon who knows just enough to grasp how much I don't know, thank you!
I await the "Q2 2018" Uavionix releases to see what is happening officially.
We've been made aware of the issue and are trying to isolate the cause. We are conducting flight testing and will accept logs of data from customers.
Our engineers will review the log file so we can determine why the traffic is disappearing.
When we understand exactly what the issue is we will post the solution.
We greatly appreciate your support and we will stand behind our products.
Thank you,
Kurt
uAvionix Support
I sent Ryan from uAvionix a description of what happened to me and he responded as follows:
Thank you for your feedback, I do understand your frustration. We have recently been able to reproduce similar issues in our own flight testing. We are working on a solution to resolve the traffic appearing and disappearing.
I hope to have an update for you this week.
Intesting that others with Navworx have reported better filtering. I did the AMOC update on my -600B and get clean bills of health from the ADS-B reports. But I also get disappearing airplanes all the time.
I believe that much of this is just when I drop below or go outside rebroadcast range, so I'm losing direct broadcast from aircraft with 1090MHz transmitters. But it also happens where there should be good radar and rebroadcast coverage. For example, in or near PDX class C, 3000 or above, sometimes ATC will call out an airliner (like, close enough I can see which airline), and I never see it on my screen. Why wouldn't I see all of those guys from the rebroadcast?
If your configuratoin tells the ground station that you receive 1090, they won't rebroadcast any 1090 traffic for you. It is assumed you get it air to air. They only rebroadcast traffic on the frequencies that you are not capable of receiving (your unit tells them this based upon your configuration). They broadcast non-adsb traffic (transponder equipped) to everyone.
I believe that much of this is just when I drop below or go outside rebroadcast range, so I'm losing rebroadcast from aircraft with 1090MHz transmitters
Wonder why they don't simply make those 2 variable user configurable. I would like to see further than 20 miles when I'm out in the middle of nowhere with no traffic. It should be easy for them to allow you to set user defined limits, and then set a "max intruders" setting that is settable from 10 to 32 or something like that.