Just two days left to try to stop an expensive and worthless FAA mandate on ADS-B

Andrew Gideon wrote:
On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:23:12 -0500, Bob Noel wrote:

In article ,
Andrew Gideon wrote:

A GA owner can choose to invest in ADS-B-IN. If the owner does so, the
pilot sees all traffic because of the mandated OUT functionality in all
those other aircraft. If there were no mandated OUT functionality,
this benefit would not be available to the GA pilot.

exactly what is the cost of that benefit? Shouldn't the GA pilot
(alledgedly) benefiting from ADS-B Out not fund the equippage of those
aircraft with ADS-B Out?

Did you write "out" where you'd meant to write "in"? Otherwise, I'm
afraid that I'm not understanding your question.

GA pilots aren't funding equipment in other aircraft. They are, however,
funding the creation of a network in the air whereby all aircraft
(excluding military? Nasty, that!) are announcing their positions. It's
not all that different from transponders, in the sense that putting a
transponder in an aircraft benefits all aircraft, and not just the
aircraft footing the bill.

Separate from this, the GA owner can choose whether or not to spend the
extra dollars to gain direct benefit from this network.

The problem with all this is the (currently) insane cost of the equipment.

If the cost of the required equipment were in the ballpark of a new
transponder and the optional equipment in the ballpark of a decent
handheld GPS, I doubt you would see much objection.

While the equipment costs will eventually probably fall to those levels,
the current outlook is about an order of magnitude greater than that,
which makes the cost a very significant fraction of the value of the
existing GA fleet.


--
Jim Pennino

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