• Become a Subscribing Member today!

    The Biplane Forum is a large global active community of biplane builders, owners and pilots. From Pitts to Skybolts, to older barnstormers, all types are welcome.

    The Biplane Forum is a private community. Subscriptions are only $49.99/year or $6.99/month to gain access to this great community and unmatched source of information not found anywhere else on the web.

    Why become a Subscribing Member?

    • In addition to our active community, our content boasts exhaustive technical information which is often sought after for projects and maintenance. This information has accumulated over the 12+ years the forum has been in existence.
    • We are also a great resource for non biplane users, since many GA aircraft are built the same way (fabric and tube construction).
    • Annual membership also comes with two BiplaneForum.com decals.

    Become a Subscribing Member and access the Biplane Forum in full!

    Subscribe Now

Just another ADS-B thread (Pitts S-2B)

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

PittsBird ZB

Registered Users
*
Joined
Sep 29, 2009
Messages
320
Reaction score
164
Since plenty of people like myself waited until near the deadline to do an install, I thought I'd simply share my setup as it is working great (I installed late Sept). I'm not trying to advocate or sell anything particular. I went with the Appareo Stratus ESGI and now use a mini i-pad on a leg board with WingX (free for CFIs!) for nav, traffic, weather, etc.

What surprised me so far is that I ran an FAA ADS-B performance report on a flight in which I did a full acro session with lots of vertical lines and inverted flight - and I got a good report with 0% failures. Most of us have heard of the initial failure letters going out as a result of acro, and then that maybe they figured out a way to deal with the acro and not send the letters...not sure, but the results so far have been good.

So here's some pics of the setup. I had a great shop (shout out to ProAV at KPHD) do the install along with me assisting. I did all new gold cable. Based on the minimum and maximum lengths of wire required, the following locations seemed to be the logical choice, and the fact that the GPS antenna had to be at least 18" away from the comm antenna:

View media item 7342
View media item 7345(New Comm Antenna. Old one was on the turtledeck)

View media item 7344(Comm antenna mount)

View media item 7347(my son designed and 3D printed the adapter. He's 16, I think he will be a good engineer even though he's talking about being a bone doc)

View media item 7348
View media item 7349
View media item 7346(made a new box and angled the faces for easier reading. Also added the Stratus USB charging plugs)

View media item 7343(Stratus receiver location - the cords that came with the unit were just long enough and it does not interfere with my arm/elbow at all)

After initial install, we were having an issue with the comm check knocking out the GPS signal when running through the required frequencies holding the comm transmit in...it would knock it out after about 5 seconds, the test says to transmit for 15 seconds. Anyhow after several attempts to fix including some shielding adds, we decided it had to be ground interference at the testing location, and sure enough, it did not fail when tested airborne and hasn't failed since.....

Hope someone finds this helpful. Jason.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top