ADS-B towers - iFly Owners Q&A - iFly EFB

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HomeHomeDiscussionsDiscussionsiFly Owners Q&AiFly Owners Q&AADS-B towersADS-B towers
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3/15/2017 8:13 PM
 
ErgonomicMike wrote:

If I'm stupid to want to see where towers are, I should be free to be stupid and have them flash.

That's fine. But, if I'm stupid and don't want to see flashing towers that provide me no useful information, I should be able to make them not flash. For me, flashing towers are "crying wolf" and condition me against paying attention to things that flash.

 
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3/15/2017 9:10 PM
 

Agreed. I don't have a problem making flashing towers a user selectable option. (Should probably default to flash on first use so that users know that option is available. Then, for those who don't like it flashing, they can disable forever.)

 
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3/15/2017 9:17 PM
 

I haven't flown that much with ADS-B, and not at all with any kind of weather. That said, ErgonomicMike's explanation seems reasonable, but has caused me to suggest something else.

It would seem there should be a list of all the current ADS-B towers, in light of the importance ErgonomicMike, and likely others, put on the towers, could iFly create a layer (so they could be turned on/off) in order to display them on our map, even when we aren't receiving an ADS-B signal? This would allow us to use the availability of ADS-B towers as part of our pre-flight planning. In addition, I can't imagine that whether or not an ADS-B tower is working won't soon be (if it isn't already) part of the NOTAM system. Therefore I would further suggest that iFly have a unique color to alert us to towers that are NOTAMed out of service, or predicted to be out of service.

Something like:

Solid Blue ADS-B tower is the known location of a tower.

Flashing Blue ADS-B tower is a tower that iFly is gathering data from.

Yellow ADS-B tower is predicted to be out of service sometime in the future, touching the tower would give the text of the NOTAM.

Flashing Yellow ADS-B tower is predicted to be out of service sometime in the future, and iFly is gathering data from the tower.

Red ADS-B tower is NOTAMed out of service at this time.

Flashing Red ADS-B tower is NOTAMed out of service at this time, but iFly is none the less gathering data from it.

 
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3/16/2017 12:03 PM
 
Perhaps showing towers could be part of the METAR display. If METAR is selected as a map option, ADS-B towers show up. If it's not, they don't.
 
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3/16/2017 12:11 PM
 
I think you might want to see the towers any time you are looking for ADS-B information from the ground stations. That could be weather related or traffic related. I would simply add a user selectable option to turn the flashing on or off since it seems to be distracting for some users.
 
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