Avidyne TAS600 ADS-B IN

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CFIDave
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Avidyne TAS600 ADS-B IN

Post by CFIDave »

For at least the past 7 years Avidyne has been promising new software that would permit owners of their TAS600-series active traffic units to add ADS-B IN traffic functionality. The box would automatically correlate ADS-B targets with transponder targets to display on the MFD.

So every year at Oshkosh I would go to the Avidyne booth and ask when the software would be ready for my DA40, then DA42, and now DA62 equipped with a TAS600-series unit. And every year they'd say "soon." ;)

Since I still can't have a Garmin GTX345R with ADS-B IN installed in my DA62 with NXi (software delayed yet again until at least 2Q19), and the Avidyne TAS605 already installed in my DA62 is readily accessible in the plane's nose avionics bay, I thought I'd check with Avidyne again.

Lo and behold, Avidyne's new TAS600-series software enabling ADS-B IN traffic is finally here! But I learned 2 other things from Avidyne:
- Despite my plane being delivered new just last year, Diamond installed an older TAS605 model, not the 605 "A" model that Avidyne has been shipping for the last few years (while awaiting the new software). So my unit would have to go into Avidyne for a hardware update that includes adding multiple new data ports.
- And to display ADS-B IN traffic requires additional wiring (e.g., an RS-232 connection) from a GIA63W WAAS GPS position source to the Avidyne unit. Unfortunately this would likely require the G1000 to be software modified to put out the GPS position source info on that serial interface, which (as we all know by now) can't be changed in a certified aircraft without being performed by the aircraft manufacturer.

So the bottom line if you were ever thinking about upgrading a TAS600-series active traffic unit in your DA40/DA42/DA62 is fuggetaboutit. A GTX345R transponder for ADS-B IN is superior anyway, since it directly receives both UAT and 1090ES traffic, it will correlate transponder targets received from your TAS600-series unit with ADS-B TIS-B and ADS-R target info received by the 345, and the 345 also receives ADS-B IN weather.

Guess I'll just have to keep waiting for a GTX345R...
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jb642DA
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Re: Avidyne TAS600 ADS-B IN

Post by jb642DA »

Thanks for the update Dave!!
Looking!
1980 414A - N2691Y (sold)
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Pascal
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Re: Avidyne TAS600 ADS-B IN

Post by Pascal »

All of that is depressing. These pricey integrated systems lose value and become obsolete the moment they are installed and then the manufacturers abandon the owners.

It's even more frustrating when you think of the incredible capabilities of non certified solutions such as Foreflight with Stratux or Sentry for ADSB-In, synthetic vision and AHRS, a solution which is inexpensive and benefits from constants improvements without the feeling of being raped by the manufacturer.
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pietromarx
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Re: Avidyne TAS600 ADS-B IN

Post by pietromarx »

I hesitate to mention that the actual amount of software (lines of code, bytes of data, etc.) needed to enable this is extremely small. This situation is purely due to "corporate" decisions at Garmin and Diamond.
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