Quote:
Originally posted by Undertoad
Interesting. Will they require it of all general aviation at some point? Is it cheap?
|
Nothing in aviation is cheap...you have to pay the lawyer tax. Anything that is used in aviation runs the risk of a product liability suit filed by survivors of someone who is injured or killed in an airplane. An ordinary screw or bolt costs many times what it would otherwise if it's to be used in an airplane.
That said, there's no engineering reason why ADB-B in particiular any more expensive than any other item of avionics. Because it needs state vector information (position, speed, heading) an ADS-B transceiver is likely to be added as an accessory into a navigation suite that already contains a GPS receiver and a moving map display....so assuming you have the core of a modern nav system design available, adding ADS-B capabilty should not be a big deal: add a transceiver and MODEM to send and receive the data packets, and program the computer[s] to display the targets, and do the tracking and conflict alert functions.
It's the dickens to make *any* avionics a general requirement, considering some aircraft don't even have an electrical system. What's more likely is that operational restrictions will be placed on aircraft not so equipped, once the system gains final approval and there are Technical Standards Orders (TSOs) governing systems designed, performance and certaification.
For example, today an aircraft without a radio must call an airport with a control tower ahead of time by telephone for permission to land. When they show up they''ll be given landing instructions with a light gun (which they do still keep around in the tower in case an aircraft has a radio failure). As a practical matter, it's simpler to just bring a handheld self-contained avation radio along in the cockpit
under most circumstances.. To save the money it takes to get a certification, many GA pilots use GPS systems that are hand-held as well. To get the certifications needed to legally add a bit of electronics to an airplane cockpit with legal assurance that it won't interefere with anything else on board is quite costly.