Stratus / Foreflight ADSB

First Post:

Does anyone have experience with using Stratus ADSB receiver combined with Foreflight for traffic / weather information as alternative to FLARM? http://www.foreflight.com/stratus

On Sunday, December 15, 2013 5:44:21 PM UTC-8, 6X wrote:
First Post:



Does anyone have experience with using Stratus ADSB receiver combined with Foreflight for traffic / weather information as alternative to FLARM? http://www.foreflight.com/stratus


I haven't flown with it but I have looked into it a bit.

Since you can't legally equip a glider with ADS-B Out under the current regs, you can't ping for ADS-B traffic or ground station repeated TIS-B traffic. From the Stratus webpage: "Without this “out” equipment, however, pertinent traffic is rarely visible since ADS-B towers remain silent until contacted by an aircraft equipped with ADS-B “out” capability." From my PowerFlarm experience you will occasionally get position reports from large 1090-ES-equipped commercial airliners that are pinging each other. Note that adding ADS-B Out is likely to be far more expensive - assuming that the regs eventually allow it in gliders - partly because it requires and IFR-Certified GPS (not what gliders carry).

You will get zero Flarm traffic and zero collision advisories.

You will get basically no PCAS capability for transponder-equipped GA traffic, except possibly under some rare TIS-B scenarios where an airliner with ADS-B Out lights up a TIS-B ground repeater near you AND the GA traffic has a transponder that is being painted by ground radar that is integrated into the TIS-B data stream. (Darryl Ramm can recite chapter and verse of how these scenarios work).

It's ~2/3 the price of a Flarm (assuming you already have an iPad you want to use - otherwise its the same price) and will require you to carry and look at an iPad in addition to your primary Nav display (iPad is not great in direct sunlight and you can't integrate the data with any known glider flight instruments). With no collision advisory, in order to discern traffic you will have to stare at it to determine threats. Heads down is particularly a bad way to go when the heads down device is picking up almost none of the traffic you care about.

It is against the US contest rules to it carry in competition because of the in-cockpit weather capabilities. Flying a contest might be the time when you want collision-avoidance technology the most.

9B

On 12/15/2013 9:53 PM, wrote:
You will get zero Flarm traffic and zero collision advisories.

What 9B said... This is no substitute for Flarm or PCAS.

Foreflight/Stratus are likely the most dependable and mature DFB/ADSB
products on the market.

That said, there is an incestuous relationship between the two that is
anti-competition and therefore certainly isn't in the best interest of
us, their customers. Unless there has been some very recent change or
some hacks that I don't know about, Foreflight only works with a Stratus
receiver, and the Stratus Receiver only works with Foreflight.

Buy either, and you are locked in!

Probably not relevant to you guys in the States, nor to glider pilots anywhere, but the most popular Foreflight equivalent in the UK for GA pilots is Skydemon. Skydemon can now show Powerflarm traffic. It runs on may different platforms. If this encourages GA pilots to get Powerflarm it will be doing a favour to the gliding community.

On Monday, 16 December 2013 14:16:04 UTC, Vaughn wrote:
On 12/15/2013 9:53 PM, wrote:

You will get zero Flarm traffic and zero collision advisories.



What 9B said... This is no substitute for Flarm or PCAS.



Foreflight/Stratus are likely the most dependable and mature DFB/ADSB

products on the market.



That said, there is an incestuous relationship between the two that is

anti-competition and therefore certainly isn't in the best interest of

us, their customers. Unless there has been some very recent change or

some hacks that I don't know about, Foreflight only works with a Stratus

receiver, and the Stratus Receiver only works with Foreflight.



Buy either, and you are locked in!

On Sunday, December 15, 2013 5:44:21 PM UTC-8, 6X wrote:
First Post:



Does anyone have experience with using Stratus ADSB receiver combined with Foreflight for traffic / weather information as alternative to FLARM? http://www.foreflight.com/stratus

"iPad is not great in direct sunlight and you can't integrate the data with any known glider flight instruments"

iPad can be used with iGlide, Winpilot iOS, or a few others, and integrated with a Butterfly vario and probably many others, if a WiFi bridge is used. True that it isn't particularly readable in direct sunlight though. The iPhone is better, at least as good as the traditional PDAs, but not as bright as the Oudie2/Avier/Vertica. However the screen has over 5 times the resolution, which makes up for some of the brightness.

On Monday, December 16, 2013 5:19:35 AM UTC-8, jfitch wrote:
On Sunday, December 15, 2013 5:44:21 PM UTC-8, 6X wrote:

iPad can be used with iGlide, Winpilot iOS, or a few others, and integrated with a Butterfly vario and probably many others, if a WiFi bridge is used.

Yes - I misplaced use of the word "data" I meant that it was my understanding that the Stratus traffic data stream couldn't be integrated into any known glider nav system. By this I meant the more typical ClearNav, LX9000, Oudie glide computers that can accept Flarm NMEA output, though I think this is also true of iPad-based Nav apps as well. You may be able to run both Foreflight and iGlide or WinPilot on the same iPad but I don't believe that you can integrate the Stratus ADSB traffic data into the glide program for integration with the Nav display. Therefore you'd be left with having to switch between apps to go between normal Nav mode and traffic monitoring mode.. Probably not ideal. It's unclear to me whether Stratus has an open API that would allow a programmer to take this on.

9B