This year I celebrated my 50th year as a pilot. Granted, the first few years I was a student pilot as I started flying when I was 13, thanks to a Boy Scout Explorer program and the mentor of a lifetime, Richard Sherrill, whom I was too young to properly thank. Over these 50 years I have experienced tube radios from Narco and King, Early transponders, DME’s, ADF’s and audio panels. I suffered through trying to hear through the ceiling speaker long before headphones and intercoms became popular. I’m now on airplane number 7, a 1977 Piper Seneca 2 that I’ve owned for the last ten years. All of this time I’ve voraciously read everything I could find about aviation. On the read list every month are publications about avionics, safety, IFR and VFR operations, ownership, upgrading licenses and training, etc. I’m now trying to understand the rationale on ADS-B. I’m fully aware that the FAA offered ADS-B IN as a reward to GA for spending money on ADS-B OUT. I have no problem with NexGen or ADS-B OUT. I’m all for progress and moving the ball forward as long as I can afford it, which is getting more difficult each year, but that’s another story. So what’s my rub with ADS-B IN? About ten years ago when datalink weather started to come out, we had two choices. Honeywell/Bendix/King had terrestrial (ground) based datalink and Garmin offered low earth orbit (LEO) request-based weather via the GDL-49. By the time I got around to purchasing the hardware it became apparent that Garmin’s approach had flamed out. The market voted thumbs down. I installed a Honeywell display that I currently miss but was outstanding in every regard, the KMD-250. A+ device coupled to a Honeywell datalink receiver. In flight, or more specifically cruise flight, the datalink receiver was outstanding. You could get nexrad and taf/metar weather all the way to your destination, nationwide. It was fantastic except for one thing: You had to be 5,000 feet (roughly) or above or you couldn’t receive it. At your departure point you couldn’t receive because you were on the ground. And if your destination was experiencing marginal weather, you lost your datalink just when you need it most – when you’re maneuvering to land. Garmin then started marketing the GDL-69 (which I have today) based upon the XM satellite downlink datalink. Honeywell lost the race and switched to satellite but it was too late. Garmin’s version 2 (the GDL-69) won the race and Honeywell has never recovered.
Now we fast forward to Nexgen. Our government is offering a product that was rejected by the market place over five years ago. They’re giving us free weather and free traffic, as long as we’re over 5,000 feet. At departure and destination when we need weather and traffic we can’t get it.
Here’s my question to all of you: What am I missing here? A GDL-88 ADS-B IN UAT and receiver is about $5,000 installed. XM datalink weather is about $30 per month. With a break even point over ten years out why would I want to switch to a “free” service that’s inferior to what I have? Maybe I’m missing something here but I don’t think our government got this one right. Just my thoughts on the subject.
If you have thoughts please reply.
Best,
N344TB
Scott Sherer
