A330 ADR warnings/failures in approach

[physicus]

Hi all,

can anyone with the appropriate background elaborate on the message contents of these messages I saw this morning during an A330-343 approach (the timestamps suggest they occurred about 4 minutes before touchdown).


#CFB.1/WRN/WN1602082254 341036506MAINTENANCE STATUS ADR 3
#CFB.1/WRN/WN1602082254 341035506MAINTENANCE STATUS ADR 1

Does that mean ADRs 1 and 3 have some kind of problem so that a maintenance status was triggered? The third message received was a failure:

#CFB.1/FLR/FR1602082254 27513406ADR1 X2,ADR3X,ADR2X,,,,,SFCC1 (21CV)/SFCC2 (22CV),HARD

What does that mean? ADR1 reporting ADRs 2 and 3 faulty, and slats/flaps computers 1 and 2 are affected?

[physicus]

Nobody? Do any of you professionals have any maintenance contacts that could shed some light on decoding these messages?

[goeasy]

Everyone will be suspicious of why you want to decode these messages.... they are private between aircraft and engineers who do understand them.

When i first read your post, i immediately thought of media looking for headlines!

[physicus]

You will notice that there is no identifiable information posted - for that reason precisely. I'm not media, I simply have a professional interest in decoding (other types) of ACARS data to obtain upper atmosphere instantaneous meausurements (wind, temp). I do this via BDS 6,0 messages sent via ADS-B ES messages, and where possible with ACARS.

These (not weather related messages obviously) I simply came across while filtering for ADS messages and looking for new formats. The majority of faults and warnings seem to affect the lavatories and clogged galley sinks. So this was a bit of an interesting looking change, and I was hoping someone with the necessary technical background would be able to help decipher this. PM is fine if they prefer.

I'm also still looking for a technical contact that could help shed light on some ADS messages that have cryptic content - normally I can tell easily which numbers are Mach/IAS/altitude, but with others that's not evident at all.

[A33Zab]

#CFB.1/FLR/FR1602082254 27513406ADR1 X2,ADR3X,ADR2X,,,,,SFCC1 (21CV)/SFCC2 (22CV),HARD

.1 = Msg Sequence number
/FLR = Real Time Failure
/FR = Recorded Fault Msg
160208 = Date yymmdd
2254 = Time
275134 = ATA SUBATA
06 = Flight Phase
ADR 1 = Source
X = affected by another CLASS 2 fault
2 = Fault Classification (CLASS 2)
,ADR3X,ADR2X,,,, = max 6 Identifiers (see X)
,SFCC1 (21CV)/SFCC2 (22CV) = suspected component (FIN) or Fault Message; between listed components / = OR, + = AND
,HARD = Hard or Intermittent

Possible Cause:

With your other data (4min before TD) and flight phase 06 (>800ft) the ADR1 detected a mismatch between SSEC switches in SFCC1 and SFCC2 upon flap transition.
Confirmed by ADR3/2 and Maintenance Status is set.
ADIRUs will use the highest reported value (e.g. for AOA correction), since this is a CLASS 2 failure and MAINTENANCE STATUS is set there is a timeframe of 800FH to troubleshoot and rectify.

Conclusion:

NO HEADLINES at all.

[physicus]

Many thanks for this thorough explanation! That's exactly what I was after.

The details you provided show you are very knowledgeable, perhaps you would be able to comment on some of the following messages and where I might find IAS/Mach/Heading information?

The reason I'm interested in this is because when combining these three parameters with the concurrently received ADS-B info, I can calculate the weather components for the slice of atmosphere where the airplanes are travelling near my site of interest. This could provide some very valuable improvements to the forecast and nowcast models which our observations are dependent upon.

The first type I see a lot of are DFB messages sent in triplets. I read that DFB means they originate from the digital flight data acquisition unit. They're all H1 labelled messages (again I'm not including the ACARS header info for privacy) so they're likely custom formatted for the airline in question. There's some position information in there, (S2327 E11648 in the third message) and, I hope, there's a IAS/Mach/Heading entry hiding as well. I've X'ed the routing info that was in the message.

#DFB/AEPR.
PRF/41A01
55054100216112948001917XXXXXXXX1701002455000
3599507482467-181085760-438000011000001101124
138715431622138708390875062002114001990008513131
13861543162313840840087406290206700191000851
Block End

#DFB3276
09309800803300478-1791286046506700329
09209900703300478-1791292046706720331
025802590000-00103450738156180062173
026302630000000103530713089090063308
0006120000000006010000000000000000700000
0006
Block End


#DFB020000000006230000000000000000100000
4505178200091791-001900060019S2327E11648
-017-01500030002000100010008-009-007
-015-013-0040002
00962-00280004105664007540072604400

Following is another type I see many of (X'ed the aircraft registration). This is a ADS position report (if the ADS tag and message type aren't lying) addressed to Melbourne Centre that however appears to be scrambled, I've seen quite a few of those messages. Looks like a hex encoded bitstream. before I sink my cryptographic teeth into this, any clue how that's encoded?

/MELCAYA.ADS.XX-XXX07EEEF7A91DE0996D6F01D0E2FE8F7004010060A3E760DEE35429851C 9980282ED1412A6E4899800F822

[sysrun]

After some months of reading public informations on the internet i managed to write a decoder for certain ACARS messages. I'm able to decode all the FANS/CPDLC stuff now

Would be awesome if you could provide me some logs


Heres the result for your ADS line:

Code:

[
    {
        id: 7,
        description: 'Periodic Report',
        data: {
            ADS Contract Request Number: 238,
            lat: -xx.xxxxx,
            lon: xxx.xxxxx,
            alt: 39276,
            sec_since_hour: 1468,
            fom: {
                TCAS Health: 1,
                level: 6,
                nav_redundancy: '> 1 unit operating',
                accuracy: '< 0.25 nautical mile',
                reason: 'Consistent with RNAV with GPS'
            }
        }
    },
    {
        id: 14,
        description: 'Earth Reference Group',
        data: {
            track: 134.736328125,
            groundspeed: 494,
            vertical_rate: 256
        }
    },
    {
        id: 16,
        description: 'Meteorological Group',
        data: {
            windSpeed: 6,
            windDirection: 56.953125,
            temperature: -49
        }
    },
    {
        id: 13,
        description: 'Predicted Route Group',
        data: {
            nextWp: {
                lat: -xx.019817352294922,
                lon: xxx.77488327026367,
                alt: 39296
            },
            ETA_sec: 642,
            NextWp+1: {
                lat: -xx.60837173461914,
                lon: xxx.33658599853516,
                alt: 39296
            }
        }
    }
]

[physicus]

Interesting... Can you pm me for some further discussion?

[sysrun]

I'd like to - but i'm not allowed to write pm's

[physicus]

Well that's a bit silly. I can't send you one either. Is that because you're new? Perhaps the mods need to allow that for your account?

[physicus]

Here's another one to try - what can you read in this?

/MELCAYA.ADS.HS-TQE07EEE09A902F89C454A30F0DF2222289F309C407CBF46D0282E409C40 00E7B68FE0000104DAAFE5E50A2

[sysrun]

i removed the coordinates

Code:

[
    {
        id: 7,
        description: 'Periodic Report',
        data: {
            ADS Contract Request Number: 238,
            lat: -xx.xxxxx,
            lon: xxx.xxxxx,
            alt: 40004,
            sec_since_hour: 1320.75,
            fom: {
                TCAS Health: 0,
                level: 7,
                nav_redundancy: '> 1 unit operating',
                accuracy: 'Consistent with augmented GPS accuracies.'
            }
        }
    },
    {
        id: 13,
        description: 'Predicted Route Group',
        data: {
            nextWp: {
                lat: -xx.xxxxx,
                lon: xxx.xxxxx,
                alt: 40000
            },
            ETA_sec: 1995,
            NextWp+1: {
                lat: -xx.xxxxx,
                lon: xx.xxxxx,
                alt: 40000
            }
        }
    },
    {
        id: 14,
        description: 'Earth Reference Group',
        data: {
            track: 347.080078125,
            groundspeed: 508,
            vertical_rate: 0
        }
    },
    {
        id: 16,
        description: 'Meteorological Group',
        data: {
            windSpeed: 77.5,
            windDirection: 241.171875,
            temperature: -52
        }
    }
]

ps. you can use my username in this forum, add a ".io" at the end - you'll find my blog there (and maybe a chance to contact me)