I wouldn’t touch Pilot Aware with a barge pole! I watched a presentation on it once from who can only be described a dodgy used car salesman - they even brought the wretched things in a suitcase! It’s cheap and nasty, plus as BEagle points out, it uses all sorts of ‘amateur-built’ kit for its use from the now defunct Maplins - I’ve seen Raspberry Pis, cheap Chinese GPS dongles, cheap Chinese WifFi dongles and all sorts of antennae and battery lash-ups in light and microlight aircraft. Some of the ground stations aren’t much better, with amateurs (with good intentions) building their own and piping out all sorts of info (weather, aircraft position estimates and rebroadcast FLARM) - none of it is to any certified standard. Of course, to those that use it, it is cheap and better than anything they might have, so they are seduced by it. Having seen some of the installs in GA aircraft I fear for them meeting their lookout responsibilities.
As BEagle says - ADS-B is the international standard for such things as agreed by ICAO - not some dodgy car dealers and CB radio enthusiasts! Oddly enough, the military would never be allowed to fit Pilot Aware due to it’s amateur nature and lack of any proper certification. So that means that the GA pilots will only detect the estimated Mode S locations from our aircraft or if we are pushing out ADS-B. So it’s better than nothing I guess. Sadly, if Pilot Aware is the only thing the light aircraft is carrying to transmit it’s location, then the military aircraft will see nothing apart from what they see with their eyeballs.
CPL Clott
PS. This is one on the coaming - about the size of a large walkie-talkie and either a battery pack or fag lighter power supply via wires. It displays to a separate tablet device.
