EricJ

I dropped my airplane off at Phoenix Sky Harbor on Sunday for some warranty work on the avionics. I was very careful to line up where I was supposed to, not wanting to land on one of the many other options. On final for 7R below.

That was my assessment, too. Whatever it was, I don't think it helped the function or performance of the device.

I rode the maglev in Shanghai about eight years ago from downtown to the airport. 431 km/h = 267.8mph. Definitely the fastest I've ever been on land.

I bet somebody flew a mission in that today.

Economy of scale might help there, I'd think.

Sunoco's 260GT+ looks interesting. The SS100 is street legal in CA. https://www.sunocoracefuels.com/fuels Torco's 108 unleaded has a RON of 112. http://torcoracefuel.net/pro-fuels.html

First, IANAL, any opinions expressed by me are based on personal observations only and should be considered laughable and incompetent by any sensible person. In addition to what's been mentioned, if Garmin prevails then uAvionix may be subject to damages for profits made on Garmin's patent. Depending on the situation, uAvionix could be liable for treble damages (triple actual damages) if the infringement is determined to have been willful (i.e., uAvionix knew they were violating somebody else's patent). Often damages are determined by the number of units sold, revenue generated, profit margin, etc. Whether uAvionix would be still able to sell or service the devices would be TBD, depending on whether a license came out of any agreement or whatever. It is reasonable to believe that if Garmin prevailed and wanted to prevent uAvionix from selling units, uAvionix would need a pretty good case for showing that they had developed a workaround or were somehow otherwise avoiding Garmin's patents. Basically, it's hard to predict, especially since it is TBD which way the case will go or whether they'll settle before a ruling is made. Personally I think anybody who likes the Skybeacon products and considers them a good solution and wants one for their airplane should consider just buying one. The outcome of this case shouldn't affect the TSO status or any FAA approvals; the case is only about whether uAvionix is profiting from Garmin's patents. Worst case you install one and it breaks later on and you can't get it fixed and have to replace it with something else. That's really no different than any other product in this space and we probably lose a lot more vendors to bankruptcy/closure than patent infringements.

Mine did that, but only at fairly high speeds, e.g., 160+kts or so. If I slowed down it quit. We did some repairs and reinforcements and I'm not sure it does it any more. Make sure that the stiffeners in the cowl that go around the cowl flaps are stiff all the way around. Somebody (at an MSC) cut one of mine in half to do a repair and didn't double it, and the floppiness may have contributed to the problem. We've since put a doubler on and I don't recall seeing it happen since.

Took a pic of the diaphragm that came out of mine:

Doing it on an ownship signal to facilitate ADS-B out capability in order to simplify installation (and other advantages) is novel. "Obvious" doesn't mean what you think it means with respect to patents, and the patent is clearly written specifically to teach this in this context. Patents are written just like this and upheld by judges all the time. I spent many years on the wireless patent committee of a very large corporation and this sort of thing is done routinely. The context and details are important. Again, I'm not defending Garmin, but understanding the reality of how patents are utilized and defended makes a difference. That said, a patent isn't really a patent until a judge says it's a patent (i.e., until it's been to court, according to the attys I used to work with). So nothing is certain.

When I was a line boy in southern Germany in the 70s our American flying club bought 115/145 from the US Army, for something like 0.25-0.35/gallon. It was the prettiest purple and I always loved the color. Spills were a total non-issue as the stuff would evaporate so fast you could watch it disappear in front of you. I was bummed when we moved back to the states and the stuff in the sample cups was that ugly green. The blue of the 100LL is still a far cry from that pleasant purple color.

I think another thing that WAAS provides is additional integrity checking that isn't available with GPS by itself. This indicates that WAAS is not required for ADS-B, but gives no detail (see the last question): https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/techops/navservices/gnss/faq/waas/

I hope somebody is archiving it. It's pretty easy to make a mirror of the whole thing.

While I generally agree with your opinion and heartily recommend the Avidyne units, if you're in an industry where patent protection is important and you own patents, you're kind of between a rock and a hard place when it comes to enforcement. Trademarks are similar. The gist is that if you own a patent or patents (or a trademark) and fail to enforce it when there are known infringers, you can be determined to have abandoned the patent (or trademark) and lose rights to it. So Garmin's path is determined once the patent is granted and they believe infringement is occurring (whether or not a judge would ultimately determine whether it was actually infringement is actually beside the point). If a license agreement could not be reached, they only have two options: risk abandoning the patent or sue for infringement. A technical company that abandons patents should not be obtaining patents, and in their business you have to have patents for defensive purposes if nothing else. So, you have to have patents, and therefore you have to enforce them. It's a crazy game and I lived in it for many years. The main business thing that kept me up at night was that somebody would pop out of a bush claiming infringement against something we'd developed on our own (a submarine patent or troll), and we'd be stuck paying for a defense whether the claim had merit or not. Or WORSE YET, we'd sort out that somebody was infringing one of our patents and we'd have to pay to go defend it or risk losing it (and potentially others with it) if they wouldn't agree to a license. They're expensive, especially for a small company, so you don't want to make that investment and just abandon it, especially if it reads on your strategic IP. Anyway, all of that was just to say that this stuff usually has little bearing on the moral/ethical decency of a company or their management, it's the nature of the game. Like many things, once you're actually in the game it's actually pretty dark.

^This. I loved the kool-scoop in the Arrow I used to fly, and it wasn't intrusive at all when airborne as it stowed out of my way and out of any of my sight lines. I sorted out that in my Mooney that wouldn't be the case, that I'd either be trying to look through it or be bumping into it during flight. With the B-Kool it's just not needed. For me it's a better solution, but dealing with heat here is a little different than in most parts of the country, so YMMV.