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Portable ADS-B WX: Free Data with Limits

In the formative days of ADS-B, the FAA had a carrot-and-stick plan. Youd have to invest in equipment to comply with the FAAs new traffic system. But youd get free datalink weather in the cockpit as part of the bargain. Unfortunately, that "bargain" requires a $10,000 Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) to transmit and receive your traffic data (called TIS-B) and receive the free weather (FIS-B). Cheaper solutions meet the ADS-B mandate, but without weather. Thats all stick and no carrot. The free weather data is still out there, however, and it was only a matter of time before someone built a receiver to paint that data on a portable display. To be clear: None of these comply with the ADS-B mandate for traffic data. They just provide weather data similar to XMs satellite-delivered weather.

Jeff VanWest
Verified

In the formative days of ADS-B, the FAA had a carrot-and-stick plan. Youd have to invest in equipment to comply with the FAAs new traffic system. But youd get free datalink weather in the cockpit as part of the bargain.

Unfortunately, that “bargain” requires a $10,000 Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) to transmit and receive your traffic data (called TIS-B) and receive the free weather (FIS-B). Cheaper solutions meet the ADS-B mandate, but without

weather. Thats all stick and no carrot.

The free weather data is still out there, however, and it was only a matter of time before someone built a receiver to paint that data on a portable display. To be clear: None of these comply with the ADS-B mandate for traffic data. They just provide weather data similar to XMs satellite-delivered weather.

The SkyRadar Solution

All three systems we reviewed use the SkyRadar receiver built by Ravena LLC (who was kind enough to lend us the unit for this review). Its about the size and shape of a small external hard drive with cables to a small remote GPS and power from the aircraft cigarette lighter. There are also two antennas: a tall one for the FIS-B weather signal and a short one for WiFi. The box isn’t peanuts to buy at $1049.95. It also needs a spot in the aircraft where the GPS and ADS-B antennas can see the sky, however, the GPS is on an extendable USB cable, and a six-foot remote antenna for ADS-B can be had for an additional $60.

Thats right, WiFi. The SkyRadar system acts like a wireless network router and uses WiFi in the cockpit to connect to it. You can put your iPhone/iPad into aircraft mode but still turn the WiFi back on to connect, and SkyRadar sells its own app to do just that. The slick part of this is that SkyRadar also sends its GPS signal so the iPhone has a GPS even in airplane mode.

The SkyRadar app is simple, but effective. It offers a basic moving map with color-

Jeff VanWest