June 1, 2018
No, this is not a blog entry on what ADS-B is, how it works, deadlines, etc. All of that information is readily available via a few short Google searches (or the link I provided, which takes you to Wikipedia and more than you’ll ever want to know about ADS-B!). What this is, then, is a short description of my experience of having an ADS-B in/out installed in my Cavalon.
Why ADS-B and why now? As for ‘why now,’ well, there is a deadline (Jan 1, 2020) which, at some point, I knew I would have to pay attention to. Why ADS-B? Since I have done, and will likely do, a lot of flying outside of the immediate area of my home airport, having an ADS-B — telling other aircraft where you are, and seeing where they are — is definitely a nice safety factor. On cross-country flights, getting weather and NOTAM information is helpful, too. The decision to get one wasn’t hard. The decision about which one to get was considerably more difficult. And the installation issues… well, that’s not easy either. Just about every aircraft is different, so the decisions those owners make will vary from mine… this is not a review nor a recommendation!
I had been researching various ADS-B vendors and when I made my trip to Sun-N-Fun, I was able to chat them up at their booths. Again, this isn’t a comparison or a review, so I am not saying my choice is the best (and the vote is still out on whether it was even the best for me), but it’s what I did and what I thought was the best at the time. The vendor I chose is uAvionix, and the unit I selected is the ‘echoUAT’. The device provides both ‘in’ and ‘out’ functions, so I can retire my slightly used Stratux (which provides only ADS-B ‘in’ function).
While my Stratux has performed well, and I got it at an excellent price point, it was kind of a hassle to set up. I’m in a community hangar so lots of people have access to my plane. I didn’t feel good about leaving the Stratux installed in the plane. Also, the Stratux was not wired into plane power so I had to have a separate battery pack for it, take it home and ensure it was charged up, then remember to take it back to the airport. All of that is a lot of hassle plus I have to set it into a holder in the cockpit, plug it in, and then make sure it works. Often the power connection would not work so I had to jiggle the wire and I worried about a disconnection while in flight. Overall it wasn’t the most worry-free way of going about getting that functionality. One of the main things I was looking forward to with an installed ADS-B in/out is that all those issues would go away.
The ‘echoUAT’ is a very small box, about the size of a deck of playing cards. I also got an antenna (it looks identical to my transponder antenna) and a GPS source (they call it the SkyFYX-Ext). One nice feature of the ‘echoUAT’ is that it doesn’t require any wiring between the transponder and itself. It can acquire the information it needs from the transponder ‘over the air.’ So, there is one wire connecting the SkyFYX-Ext to the echoUAT, and the rest of it is just wiring it into the airplane power. Oh and the antenna needs to be installed too, of course, with a cable between the echoUAT and the antenna. So the installation process, over all, is pretty simple.
Because my Cavalon is an all-composite aircraft and there is very little metal used to hold things together, wiring into airplane power is a little more complex but only a little. You can’t just ground something to the frame and have it work, like in a lot of aircraft. I had to have discrete positive and negative wires to get power and ground. Luckily in the wiring bundle behind the circuit breaker panel there is at least one spare positive/negative lead. Having secured a source for power I only needed to decide where to put the antenna and echoUAT box.
Below the passenger seat, there is a small “hold”, an empty area that is mostly unused. That is a good spot for both the antenna and the electronics. Here is the echoUAT box, bolted in place.
I also needed to create a “ground-plane” for the antenna. In metal aircraft, that isn’t usually necessary as the metal structure/frame becomes the antenna’s “ground-plane.” In the case of the Cavalon, you have to make one. I ordered an 8″ copper disc that I use for the “ground-plane”. A 1/2″ hole is drilled in the center, another hole is drilled through the composite, holes are aligned, then the antenna fits nicely through both and secured. (Using copper was probably overkill, as just about any metal would work…. but it’s kinda pretty!) Here is a picture of that assembly:
The echoUAT box is very close, so I ran a RG400 cable that is only 1-foot long between the box and the antenna. Then the harness of the echoUAT and the wiring from the GPS source are connected, and it all runs through a separate circuit breaker and switch. That’s pretty much it, in general, but as always there are a hundred tiny details.
For example, the SkyFYX-Ext is a small, white puck-shaped object which is designed to be mounted outside on the surface of the aircraft. But it sits very nicely on the top of the panel and gets a great view of the sky. It works quite well in that location — and no more holes need to be drilled! — but the white color reflects on the windscreen and gives the impression of a UFO. So, I have to attach some black felt pieces to it to make it dark. And there are many other tiny details like this that need to be attended to.
Here’s a shot of everything nice and neat.
Finally, I was able to make a test flight on Friday, June 1, 2018. There isn’t really anything to do but ensure it’s on, the transponder is on, it’s configured properly, and you get confirmation from your EFB (electronic flight book).
Here’s my monitor screen, confirming my configuration:
Last, when in-flight, I bring up the ADS-B situation screen on my EFB and I see this:
That tells me that the EFB is communicating with the echoUAT and is receiving data on other aircraft… i.e., ADS-B “in”. Success! But getting verification that my ADS-B “out” is working is a bit more difficult.
To find out if the FAA thinks my ADS-B “out” is a success, I submit information about my flight to the “Public ADS-B Performance Report Request” web page. Within 30 minutes, I get an email from the system with a report, and the report says I’m within tolerance. So, from the FAA: success!
At this point, I’m mostly done. (If you know aircraft — especially experimental aircraft — you know you can only rarely say you’re completely done!) I do have to do some firmware upgrades on the echoUAT, and put a grommet here and a bit of shrink wrap there, but mostly done! I can certainly get in my plane now, turn on the master switch, go fly and know that I will be seen by other aircraft with ADS-B, and I will see those other aircraft with ADS-B out. Yeah, Big Brother will be watching and know everything I do, right or wrong but, at the same time, I will be flying more safely.
I know I’ll be asked if I can recommend this particular solution. From a pricing and ease of installation POV it certainly gets very high marks. However I’m reserving my final opinion until I have more hours under my belt with it. It has a few glitches but the firmware upgrades may resolve those. And the company has been quite good to work with… emails are returned fairly quickly and, in a bind, a phone call to tech support has always gotten through, so high marks there. Regardless of who you select, I do think to have it is better than not.
Here’s hoping your install goes as easily as mine did!
— Update, 6/7/2018 —
After some tweaks, I flew again and requested another report, but this time I got an error. I updated the firmware, flew again, requested another report, but now I’ve got two errors! Yikes! Conferring with uAvionix, they’ve given me instructions on how to improve the echoUAT sensitivity — which they imply are the reasons for the errors — so I will try that next week and report back.
— Update, 6/27/2018 —
The threshold sensitivity tweaks did not seem to help. But a few days ago, I was reading my transponder manual, and then later I was looking at photos of the panel I had taken while in flight. It suddenly occurred to me: when I was taking my transition training in January, the instructor told me that the transponder was in Mode C. So, all the time since then I’ve been flying it, thinking it was in Mode C. I happened to notice in a photo that the transponder seemed to be in Mode S.
Now, being in Mode S isn’t a bad thing… the ADS-B system will work if the transponder is in Mode C or Mode S. But the problem is, the transponder was not configured with the right information for Mode S. So it was broadcasting “garbage” rather than the proper information. This had to be the problem. I now suspected that the reason so many errors were being generated is that the data being passed on by the ADS-B system was incorrect.
A quick trip to the hangar, switched the transponder to Mode C, then I flew for about 40 minutes and requested a report. SUCCESS! The report came back with only a few small errors, but none of them were significant, so, my ADS-B system has now PASSED! Yea!
I felt pretty stupid for not double-checking that element, but I just had it in my head that it was already in Mode C. When I made the change, I could see in the transponder screen some pretty definite differences that indicate it’s now in Mode C, so I knew that was likely the issue. I passed on this to the uAvionix people who were very glad I solved the problem, and that they now had some additional data to look out for, in case someone else was as dunderheaded as I was.
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