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METAR and TAF outage??

Carl Froehlich

Carl Froehlich

Well Known Member
I, as have others, have experienced METAR and TAF ADS-B feeds to be mostly gone. A long trip yesterday and these were out most of the way. At one point they came back in just to again drop out. It seems to be common across EFIS brands.

ADS-B weather radar and traffic information was unaffected.

Anyone know what is going on?

Carl
 
I had this happen last weekend, and I see on the Dynon forum that others have experienced this throughout the week, in various parts of the country, on multiple brands of equipment.

Not a peep from FAA about anything.
 
FIS issue

I’m still not seeing METAR’s on the GTN and G3X along with Pireps and Sigmets on the FIS-B. TFR, Turbulence and Icing coming in and getting a good ADSB report. Been this week for the last 2 weeks. Maybe a local issue. Just came up about a week ago.
 
Noticed the same issue this weekend. Regardless of the display device or the ADSB in source being used. I tried, Stratus and Garmin ADSB in sources and displaying on my Garmin 760 portable as well as iPad with Foreflight.
 
Well, I found a location on the FAA website to report an issue with ADS-B and did so. It says I can expect a response within two weeks. LOL!
 
I ran a PAPR for a flight on 3/26 and everything was 100% good. I ran a PAPR on a flight on 4/1 and got tons of red...high failure rate. Haven't flown since because of snow/ice, but I figured that the April 1 problem was just an April Fool's day joke, knowing what a humorous organization the FAA is.
 
MacCool said:
I ran a PAPR for a flight on 3/26 and everything was 100% good. I ran a PAPR on a flight on 4/1 and got tons of red...high failure rate. Haven't flown since because of snow/ice, but I figured that the April 1 problem was just an April Fool's day joke, knowing what a humorous organization the FAA is.
Click to expand...

That's why I don't run those PAPRs. I got a good one when everything was installed, the FAA will tell me if it isn't. :)

Anyway, ADS-B traffic was working just fine, just no METARs, TAFs, or winds (I don't know if PIREPs or other items were missing).
 
Our experience

Last Sunday, we made a flight from Florida to Arkansas, wanting to fly to Dallas area. We knew the forecasts were for afternoon storms in TX so headed NW. We were really disappointed to find ADSB radar and metars were a hit and miss all day. We were using Foreflight to look ahead and our efis display for closer weather. Both fed with same adsb. At one point we changed our plan and started for TX only to find an hour later when radar worked for awhile that it was a no go. So the system had a real problem last Sunday. We had headwinds so were in the air for about 7 hours and saw some weather but alot of time with no updates during the day. Check out our track on the link below. We spent the night at the NW point of that track.
 
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Garmin XM

I ordered Garmin XM in the new panel but have been undecided if I am going to pay for a subscription. I get it better to have figured this out before but if sell the 10 maybe get it back. How is XM's reliability when it comes to outage issues? I have to admit I've become spoiled getting winds aloft and preferred runway data. Not getting METAR is a little inconvenient.
 
Just got back yesterday from one week trip that covered Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Alabama. Had same issue the whole trip. We finally got some metar information on return trip close to Texas, but updates were spotty at best. I also think the only traffic I was getting was air to air ADS-B. I don't think I was seeing the "whole picture" from ATC rebroadcast. I thought we were having a hardware issue, but had same problem on Foreflight with external ADS-B receiver.

Thanks for this post! Now I can rest easier knowing I don't have a hardware problem to troubleshoot.
 
I missed weather information on the way home from Sun N Fun last Sunday. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful, although I would have appreciated some winds aloft info. I thought it was my onboard equipment, even though it had been performing fine before, and all the way down to LAL. I haven’t flown again since due to monsoon rain in the Ohio valley. I’ll check it again when I can.
 
G3X ADS-B WX INOP From S&F

I also had no ADS-B in flight Metars and TAFs on my G3X system on Tuesday 4/4/23 all the way from Spruce Creek to the Ohio River en route to Southern Michigan.

Funny thing is, I thought it was a problem with my system. I tried rebooting the G3X, the GDL-50 ADS-B receiver, the Transponder and even went into the G3X Setup menu while in flight to see if everything was on-line and working properly.

The Data Link info showed it was receiving from the ground transmitters and everything I looked at onboard appeared to be working.

After refueling and launching from Ashland KY I had Metars in less than 1 minute.

Maybe XM was jamming ground based ADS-B transmissions. :rolleyes:
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Scott Hersha said:
I missed weather information on the way home from Sun N Fun last Sunday. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful, although I would have appreciated some winds aloft info. I thought it was my onboard equipment, even though it had been performing fine before, and all the way down to LAL. I haven’t flown again since due to monsoon rain in the Ohio valley. I’ll check it again when I can.
Click to expand...

Same. Resorted to listing to AWOSes on the radio when in range.
 
I agree, but I'd sure like to hear from the FAA. It's been almost a week now, and this problem seems to be widespread and on-going, and not a word from them about it.
 
TPA to JAX

This morning received all FIS-B’s including METARS, Turbulence, TFR, PIREPS, etc. Good to have them back. Always helps with enroute flight planning.
 
This morning I received this email response from the FAA after I reported my experience:
"Thank you for reporting this issue. We discovered that one of the data feeds from which the system receives FISB products for uplink was degraded. We requested the service provider to fail over to the other data feed and confirmed that all FISB products were restored (as of 4/6, at about 13:30 UTC)."​
 
RV8JD said:
This morning I received this email response from the FAA after I reported my experience:
"Thank you for reporting this issue. We discovered that one of the data feeds from which the system receives FISB products for uplink was degraded. We requested the service provider to fail over to the other data feed and confirmed that all FISB products were restored (as of 4/6, at about 13:30 UTC)."​
Click to expand...

I also received this email this morning in response to my report of the outage.
 
Nice that they found it after several days of problems. Doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the system, if it can't identify issues like this automatically and notify the operator/fail to redundant systems all on its own.

Certainly not fail-operational. Disappointing.
 
Wx

I too had no metar or taf data on a long flight last Monday. Had several pleasant conversations with FSS obtaining weather updates. I figured it was probably my older Status 2 causing the problem so I’m happy to hear that it was a system issue. Like so much of our high tech stuff, it’s awesome…..when it works.
 
777Dave said:
I too had no metar or taf data on a long flight last Monday. Had several pleasant conversations with FSS obtaining weather updates. .
Click to expand...

Yes, the old-school methods of talking to FSS and listening to AWOS do work. In fact, I prefer AWOS, as I don't have to convert the local wind to magnetic.
 
Just a heads up that TAF was still unavailable as of yesterday. Luckily I was on flight following and they gave me a heads up on it. Upon checking, it was clear that TAF was not available on weather page.
 
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