Finding The Time
I do not know about you, but I wake up every morning, glad to be alive and free, and then look at what has to be dealt with. This WEB Site has always been on the bottom of the list.
Things slowed down after the REBATE ended, I moved, I experienced a rather large Kidney Stone that created other health issues, and grounded me for 2 months.
While I was laid up I had plenty of time to do more research on the wonderful world of ADS-B and building a WEB Site.
Many problems have shown up while trying to mate different types and variations of existing equipment to the customers' ADS-B of choice.
Right now I am just talking about ADS-B "OUT". "IN to be covered later.
While I don't deal with the big G equipment, I am interested in how their own internal equipment mates up with their different ADS-B solutions. I have found it depends on which serial number you have already installed and what software version is installed.
Don't get me wrong there are these kind of problems with most of the ADS-B equipment in the market including the makes I sell. That's what makes it interesting sometimes.
May I suggest you look at the slide show under the "CopperState" button on my front page and consider some of the issues you might encounter while trying to install ADS-B.
There is some real evidence for going with a self contained Transponder, WAAS GPS, ADS-B, along with a new digital Encoder. It is a clean install, gets rid of that 30 year old Transponder and encoder, and is usually a Mode S Transponder.
Garmin, L3 and Appareo/Stratus make these units. King units are Trig built in other clothing and do not have internal WAAS. There might be others.
TRIG and Freeflight make 2 box systems that usually don't cause any problems, just extra wiring and cost.
The most problems come when installers at the customers behest try and mix different manufactures.
I am going to use one of my customers and his request as an example. The customer purchased all of the equipment himself thinking he was going to save money, based on the assurance from the manufactures that this combo would work. I became the bad guy when I told him that I couldn't just install that combo LEGALLY.
He had reasonable reasons for wanting to go this way. My customer wanted to use TRIG TT22 Freeflight FDL-978-RX/G and have that drive a GRT EFIS. In theory and wiring that all works. The FAA has their position that all pairing ( PAIRING; the connection of the WAAS as a position signal to ADS-B transmitter ), of WAAS GPS and ADS-B transmitters must be approved through an STC or TCDS. The problem is that there isn't a existing pairing of the GPS signal from the FDL-978-RG/G and the TT22.
Without that system approval, even though it will work, a one time STC would need to be acquired from the FAA. Not impossible, but time consuming and the requirement of adding a DAR into the mix. Big AMUs. Then when you get the STC you don't own it, it becomes available to anyone to use for free. Why would I or my customer want to do that.
Neither of the manufactures wants to address this because it would mean submitting their revised existing STC to the FAA for review. I wouldn't do that either after what the FAA did to NavWorx. Also each of these manufactures have their own pairing combinations that they want you to purchase. Neither of these combos would completely accomplish what the customer wanted, eventually supplying information to display on the GRT EFIS while having a small transponder in the panel.
This is just an example of what can happen if all your ducks are not in the water before you make a commitment.
JIM