Trust and Faith in the Feds?- Off-shoot from EAA/FAA Agreement

[Jim Rosenow]

The feds damn near killed me the other day (venting in progress....clear!!)

Taking off from our home field in the R182. Monitored 122.8 and made all the proper calls...nobody else on the freq. Called CAK for flight following just above 2000 feet, and the first thing they said was 'We're glad to hear you, we were worried' (paraphrased, not quoted).

Our response was basically, 'Huh?'. They explained that while we were climbing thru 2000 feet, our target merged with another a/c at the same altitude that was not talking to them (not required to, by the way). We never saw the other a/c. How am I putting this near-miss on the feds?

We purchased both a Garmin 796 and an Android tablet to put on our yokes that display the traffic thru our GDL39 (process known as passive ADSB). According to the Garmin folks we talked to after the incident, the feds have limited the ADSB service that would have allowed us to see the traffic, so only those a/c that have active ADSB-out can see it. Instead of seeing what CAK saw on their own scopes and avoiding the conflict, we were fat, dumb, happy, and almost died. I've been told unoffically the FAA did this to urge early compliance with the 2020 adsb-out mandate. What they have actually done is drastically reduce the safety of everyone who flies.

To be specific..I am not bashing FAA employees in general. The guys at CAK are friends..a couple even flip pancakes with us at our local fly-in. I'm bashing an asinine sytem that could easily have made me dead...I take exception to that. So...I'm not big on FAA trust and faith right now. Oh...how's this for irony...we were flying over to talk to the dealer about why we weren't seeing traffic. :-)

End of rant...thanks for listening!

Jim

[MEdwards]

There was a similar rant, with similar histrionics, submitted to petitions.whitehouse.gov a year or so ago. I could not find it today, I guess it has fallen off the bottom of the list.

I fail to see how the FAA almost killed you by providing a really neat new capability that you are not currently in a position to take advantage of. If the FAA had never developed ADS-B, that same plane would have been in that same place at that same time and, yes, you might have died. It is not the existence or even the design of the ADS-B system that could easily have made you dead.

The only way they might have drastically reduced your safety is by lulling you into such a sense of security that you quit looking out the window. And that would not have happened if you'd read the user's guide for the Garmin GDL39 unit. Read Section 4.4 again, including the paragraph next to the big red explanation point. The similar warnings in my ADS-B receiver's manual are more explicit and explanatory. Every ADS-B receiver vendor I talked to at Oshkosh repeated incessantly the warning: Without ADS-B Out onboard you only get part, perhaps none, of the the traffic in your vicinity. I consider that very well known information. If you missed it, or didn't understand it, well, you missed it.

That said, certainly there are problems. I think the FAA did us a giant disservice by making ADS-B so bloody complicated. Starting with the stupid name, it's difficult to understand the details, the acronyms, and even the warnings, if they aren't boiled down into simple sentences. And simple sentences never convey the whole story. It takes a lot of research to figure out how it works and how you can use it.

Also, the B in ADS-B stands for Broadcast, right? So why don't they broadcast traffic instead of only sending it to aircraft who ask for it? I wish they did (but I don't think they're trying to kill me because they didn't). I've heard it's bandwidth issues, but if that's true, what are they going to do when "everybody" asks for it after 2020?

Garmin hasn't helped a bit by making the interfaces between GPS units and ADS-B transmitters complicated and seemingly always incompatible. I would like to install ADS-B Out, but currently a certified installation is way too expensive, and the non-certified units are clumsy and probably will never be certified. I think ADS-B Out will become more straightforward and affordable as the 2020 deadline approaches, but I don't have a lot of confidence in that prediction. I also predict the 2020 deadline will be delayed.

Anyway, I like ADS-B. I get free weather and very limited traffic that I fully understand I can't really rely on. Yet.

Mike E

[TedK]

"I'm sorry, only the first class passengers rate a life preserver. You Steerage passengers will have to paddle to stay afloat."

The FAA used to have two missions, the promotion of aviation and aviation safety. Now their mission is safety. I don't see how this cockamamie decision makes aviation any safer.

[Jim Rosenow]

Mike,

First off, I'm not happy with your conclusion we were not looking out the window. Between us my wife and I have over 70 years of flying experience, and that's the absolute priority for both of us, especially from takeoff until we're 'radar contact'. We were apparently not in a position to observe the other aircraft.

As I understand it, the actual terminology for what's turned off is ADS-R (re-broadcast). It is CAPABLE of mirroring what the controller sees to all the aircraft in the area that have an ADSB-in unit (passive or active). I think we can agree that if the FAA had left it turned on, there would have been ample warning to avoid any conflict (after all, CAK watched the whole thing).

To be fair here's your quote from section 4.4 of the manual. "THE GDL39 is an aid for visually acquiring nearby traffic. It should never be assumed that the GDL39 is providing complete information about the traffic in the area".

Section 4.4 continues..quoting now from the one in my hand, "Traffic can be received directly from an aircraft with an ADS-B receiver or from an FAA ground station. The FAA ground station will broadcast traffic that is tracked via radar and is called TIS-B traffic." Sounds like they're saying we should see what CAK saw, but the FAA turned it off so we didn't. Did the FAA almost kill us?...probably not, but they certainly had the capability to prevent what happened, and chose not to exercise it. Isn't part of their purview safety? Just sayin...

I don't mind being 'called' for not knowing we were not getting full traffic coverage. We're in good company. The people who installed the 796 (Garmin dealer) didn't know it. When the dealer called Garmin, their first response was "update the software" (?). On a subsequent call we went thru 2 people at Garmin before we talked to one who was conversant enough with it to explain why we weren't getting the traffic we 'should'. I agree with you it's WAY too complicated.

I also agree with you on the weather capability....it's great! Nice of the FAA to leave it turned on! ;-)

[WLIU]

Before the debate gets too heated, you may both be giving way to much credit to the equipment that the approach controllers have in front of them. The display does not show resolution to what your GPS will. They see positions accurate to only 100's of feet and the airplane graphics cover 100's of feet of real estate on their screens. So while the controllers concern is nice, the traffic that they were concerned about likey passed a significant distance behind you and/or at an altitude that was actually non-conflicting. And for better or worse, factory airplanes do not make it easy to keep an eye at 6 o'clock and altitude encoders accuracy can be off 100'.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am of the opinion that the FAA simply can not manage a program to provide real services to the consumers of the services. They tell us what they will do and we either like it or do not buy the gear. I have yet to see gear that meets my needs so I am not buying any.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS

[Jim Rosenow]

Heated?....naaaahhhh!!!!

I agree with everything you've said, Wes! Been to approach and tower facilities, and seen their working stuff. That said, ball park info on traffic seems better than none.

Ted's post expresses exactly my view of the situation.

I also agree with much of what Mike said...even the histrionics part :-)

What ads-r / tis-b have the ability to provide is the same information we get from ATC during flight following, but includes that critical couple thousand feet after take-off (not at ALL locations of course, but we're just outside CLE class B).

When we bought the 796/GDL39 we were trying to put off the decision on full ADSB, but still wanted to use the safety net it provides...or has the potential to. We think that the regs, equipment, and probably implementation date will change before 2020, and aren't ready to fully commit to it. Plus the 796 is a full-of-info toy! Yes, we should have done more research. We also looked at the Zaon (since deceased), which would have provided traffic independently, and decided against it.

So...we're three grand into equipment, and for another $3500-$4K plus install, we could upgrade the transponder to adsb-out and get the traffic we should, in my opinion, already be getting.

Or...a friend has a working TCAS unit he pulled out of a Citation for a TCASII. The install would be a pain, but it's totally independent, and we will have the only switch that can turn it off. We'll see how that all goes.

Jim

[jethro99]

Seems this is more of a pilots failure to do his job of seeing and avoiding traffic than it is the FAA's failure. All too many rely upon "radar contact" to allow them to relax (or abandon) their responsibilities to see and avoid other aircraft. Hell, with TCAS, ADS-B, Radar, Flight Following, etc., etc., there may be no reason at all to even look outside the cockpit. Let the systems do the job so that I don't have to be concerned with others.

[Jim Rosenow]

Seems this is more of a pilots failure to do his job of seeing and avoiding traffic than it is the FAA's failure.

I can only come up with three possible conclusions that would support your first sentence...

1) You failed reading comprehension in school*
2) You have magical powers and were in the back seat of our airplane
3) You're deliberately jerkin' my chain

In any event, being an agreeable guy, I support your premise. Pilots eyes first place is outside the cockpit

Jim

* Quoted from my post..."First off, I'm not happy with your conclusion we were not looking out the window. Between us my wife and I have over 70 years of flying experience, and that's the absolute priority for both of us, especially from takeoff until we're 'radar contact'. We were apparently not in a position to observe the other aircraft."

[cub builder]

While see and avoid is the pilot's first responsibility, you can't always see the traffic. Jim's point is well taken that as an incentive to buy into the FAA's "nextgen" system, the FAA is withholding traffic information that could assist the pilot in locating and avoiding other traffic. The point is well taken, but overstated when you say the Feds nearly killed you.

Unfortunately, it will take a few collisions with dead bodies and their "marketing scheme" blamed before anything will be done about it. And often times it has to include a plane load of people as you killing yourself isn't really all that important to the feds. It only becomes important when it's on the national news that they were withholding flight information that could have helped avoid killing a plane load of people. If you want to fix the problem, you'll have to have get one of the national news agencies interested enough to do something like a "60 Minutes" segment about the "FAA withholding flight safety data". Until it's national news, they don't care. Just be careful as something like that could backfire into a mandate that we all buy ADS-B out sooner and have it apply to more airspace than currently planned.

-CubBuilder

[WLIU]

"what's turned off is ADS-R (re-broadcast)"

So for anyone going to Oshkosh this summer, here is a question for you to vocalize at the "Meet The Administrator" session. "Why is the FAA intentionally holding back the ADS-R broadcast when the facilities are able to broadcast the data, the equipment in our airplanes can display that data, and broadcasting the data would improve aviation safety?" Please ask LOUDLY.

And remember, the FAA is not happy until you are not happy.

Best of luck,

Wes
N78PS