Weather Datalink Availability in Oz

[Jenna Talia]

I frequently access some US aviation mailing lists and notice quite an amount of conversations relating to weather datalink that is able to be uplinked into GA and other aircraft through PDAs, laptops and also MFDs, such as the Apollo (now Garmin) MX20.

The information involves uplinking a weather radar type image from satellites onto the screen depicting CB cells.

Even though there maybe a 5 to 10 minute delay in the transfer of the image to the device (which no doubt will improve in time with technology) , it appears to be rather popular as a much cheaper option to wx radar and is better than nothing.

I know that on some matters of aviation we are still in the dark ages in Oz, but something like this that assists in avoiding an extremely dangerous hazard should be available also to us.

Does anyone have any information regarding the reasons why it is not available in our country or if there are any plans to introduce it that I am not aware of.

[catseye]

Talk to Ted Williams at the BOM in Melbourne. If it can be done he will know of the method.

The eye

[Bevan666]

Does anyone have any information regarding the reasons why it is not available in our country or if there are any plans to introduce it that I am not aware of.

The simple answer is GA in australia is far too small to support the infrastructure costs for such weather uplink systems.

In the US there are two types of systems

1. Satelite downlink on a request/response basis (the garmin system)

2. VHF uplink from ground stations which is, I think, broadcast. (the king system)

It might be possible to use 1. here, but I am unsure of which satelite providers they use and whether it would be possible to use the same satelites. They probably use Irridium, so it should work here. The next problem would be getting australian content into the system for use. Not insurmountable, but the provider (garmin) would need to be conviced there is a market before they would do the work. We all know there is a market, but a very very small one (when compared with the US) so you can bet your bottom dollar it will never happen.

The other system, using VHF ground stations would not be feasable in australia - too much country and not enough traffic to make the infrastructure costs worthwile.

The only other option is use a home grown system. Get yourself a PDA and a CDMA phone. With that you can access weather radar and forecast information from the cockpit. I've done this and it seems to work fine, as lonk as you have network coverage. Its not all nice and integrated like the garmin and king products, but it works OK.

Bevan..

[Jenna Talia]

Bevan,

I have a CDMA phone. Could you please explain this method or PM me. Thank you also cateye for your reply.

Thanks

[brianclarke]

Hi Bevan,
I also would like to know how to get it on a CDMA phone
Thanks

[916senna]

With a PDA connected to a phone or something like a O2XDA2 which is a phone and PDA in one you can access the internet.

The radar sites are available on the BOM web site at http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR023.shtml#image
Likewise you can get the current weather.

You need access to GPRS and i'm afraid its very slow and very expensive but it does work.

Hope that helps

Jon

[Matt-YSBK]

I have done the same thing with my laptop and my Globalstar sat phone. It gives you basic info but without an overlay of where you aircraft is and higher resolution images its not a lot of use. Also you should be flying and not convincing bill gates to give you a web page in bad weather. (get your pax to do it)

I get much more use out of my laptop and sat phone for putting in flight plans and getting weather before flight. Also handy for uploading the flight plan direct to the GPS. (Which i have also done in flight once with the help of a pax)

[Capt Fathom]

No wonder 'see and avoid' doesn't work. Everyone is heads-down playing with gadgets.