Can ADS-B provide position information for Search and Rescue?

On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 9:08:38 PM UTC-8, kinsell wrote:
On 02/18/2017 10:44 AM, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 10:30:57 PM UTC-5, Paul Villinski wrote:
Wondering if ADS-B equipped aircraft have any advantage should they
need search and rescue, given that they broadcast their ID and coordinates.

1) ADS-B ground stations logging data would need to receive ADS-B down
to near ground level to get close to the crash site. A glider can travel
a long distance from the altitudes mentioned as ground-station receive
floor in this thread.

I think people don't appreciate how extensive the FlightAware network
really is. I've tracked traffic down to landing, and then taxiing back
to their hangar from 30 miles away. Would be interesting if Sarah went
to flightaware.com, put in her N number, and saw what data the system
has on her flights.

The system even has some capability of tracking Mode S targets with
triangulation, although with reduced accuracy and coverage.


I'm not sure what point you are making. Flightaware tracking for flights without an IFR flight plan is next to useless.

Airport surface movement tracking at an airport that has ADS-B ground station coverage does not relate to say mountainous areas where lots of glider fly that might have large areas of poor ADS-B coverage. Like around parts of the CA/NV great Basin. ]

The original question of how useful is this really comes down to where you are flying and what accident/landout/SAR scenarios you are trying to mitigate. I really don't see the point of worrying too much about ADS-B for this.. With InReach tracking available at relatively low cost, and supporting text messaging (handy for non-emergency landouts). Sure the FAA can pull up records of ADS-B flight tracks, if you happen to be in ground station coverage, How long that takes to get in SAR situation who knows, and if you think the glider just landed out, well good luck... just go get an InReach (and maybe consider a 406MHz PLB as backup). If you really really cared about this I'd go ask local SAR and FAA folks how they would use that data (for a VFR aircraft with no flight plan/no flight following) and how fast that data is available to SAR organizations.

On Monday, February 20, 2017 at 1:33:22 AM UTC-5, Darryl Ramm wrote:
On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 9:08:38 PM UTC-8, kinsell wrote:
On 02/18/2017 10:44 AM, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 10:30:57 PM UTC-5, Paul Villinski wrote:
Wondering if ADS-B equipped aircraft have any advantage should they
need search and rescue, given that they broadcast their ID and coordinates.

1) ADS-B ground stations logging data would need to receive ADS-B down
to near ground level to get close to the crash site. A glider can travel
a long distance from the altitudes mentioned as ground-station receive
floor in this thread.

I think people don't appreciate how extensive the FlightAware network
really is. I've tracked traffic down to landing, and then taxiing back
to their hangar from 30 miles away. Would be interesting if Sarah went
to flightaware.com, put in her N number, and saw what data the system
has on her flights.

The system even has some capability of tracking Mode S targets with
triangulation, although with reduced accuracy and coverage.


I'm not sure what point you are making. Flightaware tracking for flights without an IFR flight plan is next to useless.

Airport surface movement tracking at an airport that has ADS-B ground station coverage does not relate to say mountainous areas where lots of glider fly that might have large areas of poor ADS-B coverage. Like around parts of the CA/NV great Basin. ]

The original question of how useful is this really comes down to where you are flying and what accident/landout/SAR scenarios you are trying to mitigate. I really don't see the point of worrying too much about ADS-B for this. With InReach tracking available at relatively low cost, and supporting text messaging (handy for non-emergency landouts). Sure the FAA can pull up records of ADS-B flight tracks, if you happen to be in ground station coverage, How long that takes to get in SAR situation who knows, and if you think the glider just landed out, well good luck... just go get an InReach (and maybe consider a 406MHz PLB as backup). If you really really cared about this I'd go ask local SAR and FAA folks how they would use that data (for a VFR aircraft with no flight plan/no flight following) and how fast that data is available to SAR organizations.

Darryl, having done analysis on that data for business purposes I have to disagree. In fact, the network of receivers is very dense. There are a lot of enthusiasts with Stratux receivers uploading tracking data all the time. FAA is not able to track me reliably but the same is not true with individuals across USA with their Stratux devices connected to Flightaware.

You disagree with what exactly? Show us where you find ADS-B coverage via Flightaware of glider flights, especially in some of the poor FAA ADS-B coverage areas of say the great basin.

My main point is with alternate products available, thinking about ADS-B from a SAR perspective is a lot less important/just not that interesting.

Everything else is really dependent on what scenario you are trying to cover and where you fly. Without that thinking it's a near useless question to ask. Can ADS-B help? Sure it might. And sure it might not. The question needs to be where/how/when could it help and to answer that start looking at the coverage (and access to that data) where you fly.

Just for the record, I did look up my N number on FlightAware. Turns out I flew a straight out flight KLAF - KAZO, 233 KM at 257 KPH ! Not bad! Must be a record!

Just kidding - someone have misregistered their N-number.

I've found FlightAware pretty unreliable for VFR flights, even close to a metro class B.



On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 11:08:38 PM UTC-6, kinsell wrote:
On 02/18/2017 10:44 AM, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 10:30:57 PM UTC-5, Paul Villinski wrote:
Wondering if ADS-B equipped aircraft have any advantage should they
need search and rescue, given that they broadcast their ID and coordinates.

1) ADS-B ground stations logging data would need to receive ADS-B down
to near ground level to get close to the crash site. A glider can travel
a long distance from the altitudes mentioned as ground-station receive
floor in this thread.

I think people don't appreciate how extensive the FlightAware network
really is. I've tracked traffic down to landing, and then taxiing back
to their hangar from 30 miles away. Would be interesting if Sarah went
to flightaware.com, put in her N number, and saw what data the system
has on her flights.

The system even has some capability of tracking Mode S targets with
triangulation, although with reduced accuracy and coverage.



2) FLARM can assist in SAR (and has done a number of times). This requires
other gliders flying in FLARM-range of the crash, otherwise the search
area will not be narrowed to a helpful size. And the FLARM log files need
to be promptly recovered from gliders in the area and forwarded to FLARM
for analysis.

I just looked up my Phoenix N42EJ, which has flown about 400 hours with ADSB in
the last 3 years, including a flight from Florida. Flightaware had one flight
track for me, and that one was in Dec 2014.

Sarah wrote on 2/20/2017 2:37 PM:
Just for the record, I did look up my N number on FlightAware. Turns out I flew a straight out flight KLAF - KAZO, 233 KM at 257 KPH ! Not bad! Must be a record!

Just kidding - someone have misregistered their N-number.

I've found FlightAware pretty unreliable for VFR flights, even close to a metro class B.



On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 11:08:38 PM UTC-6, kinsell wrote:
On 02/18/2017 10:44 AM, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 10:30:57 PM UTC-5, Paul Villinski wrote:
Wondering if ADS-B equipped aircraft have any advantage should they
need search and rescue, given that they broadcast their ID and coordinates.

1) ADS-B ground stations logging data would need to receive ADS-B down
to near ground level to get close to the crash site. A glider can travel
a long distance from the altitudes mentioned as ground-station receive
floor in this thread.

I think people don't appreciate how extensive the FlightAware network
really is. I've tracked traffic down to landing, and then taxiing back
to their hangar from 30 miles away. Would be interesting if Sarah went
to flightaware.com, put in her N number, and saw what data the system
has on her flights.

The system even has some capability of tracking Mode S targets with
triangulation, although with reduced accuracy and coverage.



2) FLARM can assist in SAR (and has done a number of times). This requires
other gliders flying in FLARM-range of the crash, otherwise the search
area will not be narrowed to a helpful size. And the FLARM log files need
to be promptly recovered from gliders in the area and forwarded to FLARM
for analysis.

I see flights on 16 different days going back to July of last year for
your ship (I have an Enterprise account).

Then if I log out of my account, I see what you saw, just one old
flight. It says registered users see 4 months of history. Don't know
why it would show you one old flight if you're not registered. Must be
a bug.




On 02/20/2017 04:56 PM, Eric Greenwell wrote:
I just looked up my Phoenix N42EJ, which has flown about 400 hours with
ADSB in the last 3 years, including a flight from Florida. Flightaware
had one flight track for me, and that one was in Dec 2014.

Sarah wrote on 2/20/2017 2:37 PM:
Just for the record, I did look up my N number on FlightAware. Turns
out I flew a straight out flight KLAF - KAZO, 233 KM at 257 KPH ! Not
bad! Must be a record!

Just kidding - someone have misregistered their N-number.

I've found FlightAware pretty unreliable for VFR flights, even close
to a metro class B.



On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 11:08:38 PM UTC-6, kinsell wrote:
On 02/18/2017 10:44 AM, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 10:30:57 PM UTC-5, Paul Villinski
wrote:
Wondering if ADS-B equipped aircraft have any advantage should they
need search and rescue, given that they broadcast their ID and
coordinates.

1) ADS-B ground stations logging data would need to receive ADS-B down
to near ground level to get close to the crash site. A glider can
travel
a long distance from the altitudes mentioned as ground-station receive
floor in this thread.

I think people don't appreciate how extensive the FlightAware network
really is. I've tracked traffic down to landing, and then taxiing back
to their hangar from 30 miles away. Would be interesting if Sarah went
to flightaware.com, put in her N number, and saw what data the system
has on her flights.

The system even has some capability of tracking Mode S targets with
triangulation, although with reduced accuracy and coverage.



2) FLARM can assist in SAR (and has done a number of times). This
requires
other gliders flying in FLARM-range of the crash, otherwise the search
area will not be narrowed to a helpful size. And the FLARM log files
need
to be promptly recovered from gliders in the area and forwarded to
FLARM
for analysis.

FAA is finding large numbers of misconfigured ADS-B Out installations.
Have you run the compliance test to check for problems?

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/.../pilot/pe_adsb


On 02/20/2017 03:37 PM, Sarah wrote:
Just for the record, I did look up my N number on FlightAware. Turns out I flew a straight out flight KLAF - KAZO, 233 KM at 257 KPH ! Not bad! Must be a record!

Just kidding - someone have misregistered their N-number.

I've found FlightAware pretty unreliable for VFR flights, even close to a metro class B.



On Sunday, February 19, 2017 at 11:08:38 PM UTC-6, kinsell wrote:
On 02/18/2017 10:44 AM, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 10:30:57 PM UTC-5, Paul Villinski wrote:
Wondering if ADS-B equipped aircraft have any advantage should they
need search and rescue, given that they broadcast their ID and coordinates.

1) ADS-B ground stations logging data would need to receive ADS-B down
to near ground level to get close to the crash site. A glider can travel
a long distance from the altitudes mentioned as ground-station receive
floor in this thread.

I think people don't appreciate how extensive the FlightAware network
really is. I've tracked traffic down to landing, and then taxiing back
to their hangar from 30 miles away. Would be interesting if Sarah went
to flightaware.com, put in her N number, and saw what data the system
has on her flights.

The system even has some capability of tracking Mode S targets with
triangulation, although with reduced accuracy and coverage.



2) FLARM can assist in SAR (and has done a number of times). This requires
other gliders flying in FLARM-range of the crash, otherwise the search
area will not be narrowed to a helpful size. And the FLARM log files need
to be promptly recovered from gliders in the area and forwarded to FLARM
for analysis.

How does satellite based ADS-B monitoring like Aireon's space-based global surveillance system fit into the picture?

On Monday, February 20, 2017 at 10:16:42 PM UTC-8, Surge wrote:
How does satellite based ADS-B monitoring like Aireon's space-based global surveillance system fit into the picture?

If that (A) ever actually happens and (B) ever monitor flights over the continental USA and (C) ever want to sell that data (to the FAA or commercially) then it might be interesting. But nothing is perfect, and down low amongst terrain/mountains you may get some obscuration (just lik with Spot or InReach... but hopefully better given the transmit power). An ADS-B Out antenna mounted under a Carbon Fiber glider might not work so well. Their target platform is an airliner with Diversity/top mounted 1090ES out antenna. Their business model now is selling high-value transoceanic data services to ATC providers.

Anybody mentioned a Garmin InReach is damn good value for money... :-)