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..