The Weather uplink over UAT is a great addition to in-flight information, not to diminish importance of preflight planning of course
Here is a capture we took late last year, uplinked via the UAT Transmitter at SkyDemon HQ
A bad weather day - which is great to show the weather, but only Commercial traffic around
For us, this is fantastic to be able to have in flight information of weather, in addition to existing capabilities
- ADS-B (in)
- Flarm (in)
- PilotAware
- Flarm/OGN (OGN-R)
- Mode-S
- Mode-C
- Audio Spoken Messages
So I wonder when the discussion will move from trial to implementation ?
The fact is that NEXRAD weather over UAT978 is already a proven technology, and has been used extensively in the US for many years. What is new here, is setting up broadcast for the UK, but I am unclear what is to be learnt from a trial which is not known already from pre-existing data ?
The big unknowns here are not 'will the technology work', I think we all know it works. The real question is '
who will pay', and '
how much'
In the US, this is provided free of charge as part of the incentivization by the FAA to have users adopt ADS-B on UAT978, in order to not clog up the ADS-B on 1090 spectrum.
So I guess the question for Tim Dawson and Christian Ramsay (who are currently generously funding the trial at their own expense) :-
What is the vision and timescale for rollout and implementation ?
Who will pay for the infrastructure ?
- CAA, NATS, uAvionix, SkyDemon, Users (Pilots) ?
How are the ongoing costs to be managed and by whom ?
- Repeat Subscription, Usage Subscription, one-off cost, and if so how much ?
I realise this is early days, but some thought must have gone into this in advance, regarding
- the costs of the initial outlay - licensing of (978Mhz) spectrum from Ofcom
- transmission equipment, ongoing recurring cost of management and maintenance.
So if there is a figure for this known amount, then I guess a breakdown can be calculated on a potential cost to the Pilot user base and/or commercial enterprise and/or Government.
Finally, if their were to be an end user license cost, how would the management access rights be controlled?
would the data be encrypted to stop unauthorized usage of the data ?
If so how would these access rights be incorporated into 3rd party receivers and navigation tools, as the data is currently broadcast free-to-air ?
Thx
Lee