Stratus and Foreflight

[MARZ]

My Stratus arrived at work today - I'm on the 30th floor of my building with the units remote antenna about 12 foot from the windows.  My office is SSW of KIAH (Bush) basically between Bush and Hobby - I view the general direction of Bush-

Plugged it in to charge - turned on the WIFI hooked my IPhone, IPad and bosses IPad (6 offices down) It registered immediately and by the time I browsed the instructions it was painting weather - giving me ceilings, flight rules etc etc etc  across the US.  

Very cool - I can't wait to get in the air to see how it does.  This looks to do all I will need for now.

[mooneyman]

Thinking about getting Stratus and cancelling XM weather. Will be anxious to hear your thoughts after you fly with it!

[bnicolette]

Well I tried the Stratus in our Learjet yesterday on the way to Philadelphia.  It would not work.  Meaning it would not send out a wireless signal that either of the iPads or my iPhone could pick up. It worked just fine outside the airplane but once inside, with everything turned on (battery's, inverters, avionics, etc) it would not link up to the devices. 

My experience with sitting on the ground (outside the airplane) was that it was taking forever to get the information and the radar picture was very bad, basically unuseable, and only covered an area right around where I was located.

[jetdriven]

Brett, ADS-B is only useful above 5-800', and in some areas, 1800'.   However, if you look at the radar on the ground on an iphone etc, its not too much of a delay. 

[tony]

Brett, do you have a heated windshield in your Lear Jet? If so, I don’t think the ADS-B signal will propagate through the coatings on the windscreen. You'll need an outside antenna then. When you were outside the aircraft you were probably only able to pick up a local transmitting station. There are four types of transmitters. Surface, Low medium and high altitude.   Each transmitter type transmits a different coverage map.  The surface transmitters will only give you 150NM coverage or just regional coverage.  If your stratus was working correctly in your cabin, as you ascended, you would have been able to receive the other stations and gotten more coverage.

[jetdriven]

I never got a chance to try it at altitude or climbing up.  For some reason inside the airplane even on the ground with power on the airplane, the iPads/iPhone would not connect to the wireless signal from Stratus.  The Stratus was receiving just fine through the window in the Lear 35a, as it is not heated with elements. There was some interference going on though with the wireless signal.  The iPads/iPhone saw that there was a wireless signal, but they kept saying that they were unable to connect.  They connect flawlessly until I powered up the airplane.  I will question them about this on Monday to see if they have any suggestions.

I sat outside the airplane yesterday and it did pick up some ADS-B reception (Philadelphia airport), but I was not impressed with the radar picture.  It was extremely "blotchy" "blocky" etc..  I have the unit with me at home now and am going to go play with it in the Mooney hopefully after church today and see what happens.  I want so bad for this to work good so I don't have to keep paying the XM weather subscription, but maybe we're just not there yet.  At least this is a giant stride forward and maybe some kinks just need to be worked out.

[bnicolette]

Sorry Bryon,  I forgot to do my "flow" checks before I posted that.  The above post was me.  

[Piloto]

Quote: Bnicolette

Well I tried the Stratus in our Learjet yesterday on the way to Philadelphia.

[Piloto]

Quote: Bnicolette

Well I tried the Stratus in our Learjet yesterday on the way to Philadelphia. It would not work. Meaning it would not send out a wireless signal that either of the iPads or my iPhone could pick up. It worked just fine outside the airplane but once inside, with everything turned on (battery's, inverters, avionics, etc) it would not link up to the devices.

My experience with sitting on the ground (outside the airplane) was that it was taking forever to get the information and the radar picture was very bad, basically unuseable, and only covered an area right around where I was located.

[aviatoreb]

Quote: jetdriven

Brett, ADS-B is only useful above 5-800', and in some areas, 1800'.   However, if you look at the radar on the ground on an iphone etc, its not too much of a delay. 

[FlyDave]

Brett,

The company I work for does a lot of WiFi designs and installations. There are many sources of interference in both the 2.4 (802.11 B/G) and 5 Ghz (802.11 A) frequencies. We find problems with mircowave ovens (leaky ones) and bluetooth devices (lower power but still on frequency) to name a couple. I would bet there are systems in the cockpit of the Lear that are propogating on the 2.4 Ghz band as well - these WiFi devices talk on 802.11 B/G. Let me know if you're going to get to Livermore airport (KLVK) I'll have one of our engineers come out with a spectrum analyzer and check it for you .

On another the other side of this coin, I have the SkyRadar receiver and, even with the external antenna, I loose signal from the ground stations when line of site from my antenna to the ground station is blocked by the wing or fuselage. I'm going to mount an antenna on the belly on my Mooney for the SkyRadar receiver (978 mHz DME antenna).

Let us know how the Stratus performs in your plane - I'm real curious about the differences between it and the SkyRadar unit.

[M016576]

Sound like we're stuck with our xm subscriptions for now

[MARZ]

Up tonight - leveled off at pattern altitude - exited the pattern to the south, settled everything out and turned my attention to the IPad - all connected to stratus - stratus was seeing two stations and had "recently updated" both local and contus radar.  I was at 1500 at that time.  Next time I'll have someone in the right seat to pay attention as to when it actually makes the hook to ads b stations.    Better yet I'll have someone else take off and give me time to play!! 

[jetdriven]

I can get it at 500'-800' over LVJ, thats just 8 miles south of HOU.  I think there is a tansmitter there. Skyradar will not tell you which station it has locked onto.

[tony]

Mike, sounds like you have had some success in your mooney.  I hope as you ascend the coverage gets better for you.  I think we would be all intested in your pireps

[gjkirsch]

Went up yesterday for a short flight.  After setting up the autopilot and cruise climb, I looked and had weather.  Not sure at what altitude it started but I was about 2000 feet.  Had three stations reporting.  Need a longer flight to play with it but so far, so good.  I did upgrade the software to 1.2.  Don't know if that made a difference or not.

[pilot716]

Quote: gjkirsch

Went up yesterday for a short flight.  After setting up the autopilot and cruise climb, I looked and had weather.  Not sure at what altitude it started but I was about 2000 feet.  Had three stations reporting.  Need a longer flight to play with it but so far, so good.  I did upgrade the software to 1.2.  Don't know if that made a difference or not.