Ruminations on ADS-B

The ramblings of our community of aviators.

Moderators: Rick, Lance Murray

Post Reply
User avatar
Rich
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 4592
Joined: Mon Aug 30, 2010 12:40 pm
First Name: Rich
Aircraft Type: DA40
Aircraft Registration: N40XE
Airports: S39 Prineville OR
Has thanked: 145 times
Been thanked: 1180 times

Ruminations on ADS-B

Post by Rich »

I did ADS-B out installation 3 years ago now, at a cost of about $5K. But I had ADS-B in for several years before that. I've forgotten how long, but FWIW my Stratus2 is serial number 21.

Generally speaking, prices for ADS-B out equipment and installation really haven't come down much and some folks are even opting to ante up for getting integrated ADS-B in at a premium. There are many waiting for the $500 solution. The new SkyBeacon promises to allow some fraction of the fleet to get ADS-B out at quite a bit lower cost than I, though it won't work for all and does introduce a couple of oddities of operation.

For me, this is all to the good. Every plane that adds ADS-B out makes my stuff some incremental amount more useful. If somehow some benefactor suddenly decided to fund free installation for all the remaining fleet not yet equipped, it wouldn't make me feel somehow cheated that I paid for mine. It all makes things better for all of us.

There will be some folks that won't equip with ADS-B out in my flying lifetime. This is allowed by regulation, of course. And some won't bother because of the "they can't make me" attitude or they pay no attention to regs that have long been in effect, anyway.

But there may be some number of folks who do not equip with ADS-B out but do equip with ADS-B in, which can be done for modest incremental cost, especially for tablet-based solutions. (Heck, you don't even need an electrical system to do this.) For those that do so and adopt a dual-band in, even that potentially helps me. Because though I may not pick them up on the fish-finder, they'll be able to pick me up. And they still get weather, as there are no strings attached there, which is good for them and for the perception of GA by the non-flying public.
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
Post Reply