Flying with ADS-B, A Wife's Tale

I have been flying my RV-7A for the past 4 years and my wife has accompanied me on a half dozen cross country flights. She is a fearful flier and is a bit stressed (doesn’t show it) when we fly and has about 50 hours in the plane. Going to new places is what helps her overcome her fears.

I have had a few close calls with airplanes over the past few years. Didn’t have to make any evasive maneuvers but would have liked to have known they were coming close well in advance. Some of these encounters occurred under radar or tower coverage.

About 6 months ago I decided to upgrade my Dynon D180 system to SkyView/Mode S ES Transponder/ADS-B Receiver so that I could have ADS-B traffic/Weather and an improved moving map. I did this so that I could see the traffic in advance.

This past weekend my wife and I went on our first long cross country from Tucson, AZ to Corona, CA. To fly safe in the western deserts and mountains I always try to fly with a road beneath me if I can. This means flying between airports and on airways most of the time. We were using flight following and handed off to a half dozen centers. I expected (as in the past) that the centers would be calling out traffic to keep us out of harm’s way. Well this was not the case. About 50% of the time they never called out the traffic.

When I decided to upgrade the system I explained to my wife why and what the ADS-B system provided. This cross country flight was her first exposure to our investment. She became an expert at looking at the SkyView screen and seeing the ADS-B traffic depicted and understanding the distance from and if it was above and below our airplane. She then would be looking in the right direction and was better at spotting the traffic them me. I actually believe it made her feel safer and kept her mind active and made her part of the flight crew rather than a passenger. There were a few times where the center never called traffic and we had to descend or change course to keep a safe distance from a head on aircraft.

The whole point of building my RV was to enjoy flying, travel to new places and have great adventures with my wife. Adding a Mode S/ES transponder and an ADS-B receiver is expensive, but for me and my wife it was money well spent.

Paul, very good points. My experience also has been that TIS definitely makes seeing other traffic easier and more effective. True, it's not going to "see" all the traffic that's out there, but it definitely adds a layer of safety that wasn't there before. It's not a substitute for "see and be seen", but definitely an enhancement to it.

Also, I find TIS to be very useful in traffic patterns, both at controlled and uncontrolled airfields, to increase situational awareness and to help adjust spacing with other traffic in the pattern. It gives me the big picture of what's going on in the traffic pattern so that I can sequence accordingly.

For me, all those "new" targets I never knew about... bug me.
But, for my co-pilot---- she enjoys the search. Usually says, "hey, why can't we see that plane?"
I tend to daydream on very long legs, in wide open western deserts.... so the second set of eyes that never doze are a bonus. I suppose blue tooth music is partly to blame... oh well.

Similarly, Diane's introduction to private aviation was in a rental that was equipped with a 430/330S combo that gave TIS traffic. She really liked the moving map and traffic. Since the fastest plane we could rent did not have that pair in the panel, she got to see that (well outfitted) steam panel too.
After deciding to build, we were in the 430/330S bird one day and she said "I am buying these for you". I just smiled.

Great some times

Shortly after my first flight I learned that none of my GPS’ are capable of feeding location data to my Garmin GTX 330ES transponder, so I don’t have ADS-out. Therefore I get traffic sporadically. I am finding it very irritating. If my screen shows no traffic, it may be there is no traffic, and it may be that no one else in the sky has lit up the ground stations (if I understand this system correctly).

I am currently trying to figure out how to get ADS-B out without buying a $4,000 Garmin GPS.

Any suggestions?

Tumper said:

I am currently trying to figure out how to get ADS-B out without buying a $4,000 Garmin GPS.

Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

I'm going to wait a bit. Like everything else, new tech just keeps comming and I'm betting someone is feverishly working, right now, to come up with the next big low cost advancement to help us meet the 2020 requirement!

Tumper said:

Shortly after my first flight I learned that none of my GPS? are capable of feeding location data to my Garmin GTX 330ES transponder, so I don?t have ADS-out.
I am currently trying to figure out how to get ADS-B out without buying a $4,000 Garmin GPS.

Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Sell the 330 and install a Trig TT31, it will accept any GPS data and will light up the ground stations today. You will still need a certified GPS source when 2020 arrives though.

We have had different flavor of TIS since we built the RV and now have ADSB-B IN/OUT and very happy with it. My wife often comments that our old Coyote was great as there was no traffic around (read we were oblivious to all traffic around us)

The only issue now is that I need to constantly remind my wife that after seeing traffic in the screen, let?s try to locate it visually instead of keep looking at the screen and say ?2 O?clock and coming at us?