Musings and observations from the uAvionix team.
Lots of news lately with high altitude spy balloons, unidentified “objects”, and air-to-air “kills” (does it count as a kill if it isn’t crewed?) What is being revealed is something that is not well known to the public – there’s more up there than you think. The truth is, it isn’t very expensive or hard [...]
For decades commercial aviation has relied on highly regulated technology to enhance safety. Airlines and Business Aviation largely rely on certified avionics and Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) have long relied on certified IT systems layered on certified surveillance systems to safely separate traffic. These technologies are in continuous development, albeit subject to the most [...]
Airfield snow removal teams leap to action when others seek shelter, facing a no-fail mission to prepare the runway surface for pilots dealing with the chaos of deteriorating weather. This chaos amplifies runway safety hazards, and too often leads to near-catastrophic encounters. Two recent examples demonstrate the extreme runway safety hazard encountered in the [...]
Earlier this year uAvionix’s RT-2087/ZPX-B Micro IFF Transponder (ZPX-B) became the world’s smallest and lightest AIMS-certified Mode 5 transponder, creating new equipage opportunities for vertical-lift aircraft, where weight savings translate to longer flight duration or heavier payload. Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) especially benefit because size and weight traditionally have been deal-breakers for Mode [...]
There is more to your GPS than its accuracy statistic We know all about GPS, right? They tell us to turn left or right, give us an ETA to home or work, share our location with friends on our mobile devices, and allow us to precisely track our rides, runs, flights, hikes, floats, drives…. [...]
Back in 2018 – we published a white paper titled “Inert and Alert: Intelligent ADS-B for UAS NAS Integration: Concept of Operations.” In it, we described a concept for a way to leverage the undeniable safety benefits of ADS-B for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) without “overwhelming the spectrum” as is oft-repeated when the topic [...]
The Cloud in the Clouds On a chilly morning in April 2021 on a country road in North Dakota – a group of engineers, pilots, and observers from the Northern Plains UAS Test Site (NP UAS TS) gathered outside of the uAvionix Ground Control Station (GCS) van and watched a matte gray Vertical Take-Off and [...]
To many, radio frequency (RF) concepts are black-box magic. We live in a world where “wireless” technologies are taken for granted – mobile phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth – we can even pay for stuff by waving our credit card over a magic symbol at the check-out counter. It just works, and we don’t even think about [...]
Why Diversity Matters A typical transponder and ADS-B system for General Aviation (GA) uses a single, bottom-mounted antenna, which provides the best line of sight to ADS-B receivers and secondary surveillance radar (SSR) systems on the ground. However, there is a growing use of space-based ADS-B receivers around the world, which poses a problem [...]
The words “groundbreaking transponder technology” haven’t been uttered without hyperbole since the transition from tubes to digital. We’re prepared to make that claim today with the FAA TSO authorization for the uAvionix tailBeaconX and are bursting at the seams to share why exactly we feel that way. tailBeaconX is the first certified embodiment of uAvionix’s [...]