ADSB 472

[akarmy]

Here's more data on a 472 flight. I flew about an hour last night in the Seattle area. For the benefit of Dynon collecting data. I left Crest, went south of Thun, circled around the Enumclaw area and returned Crest. Flight was between 1500 - 2500 ft. The entire time it stayed on TIS. a couple of times I flipped over to the ADSB screen and was showing between 2 - 3 towers in range, no problems reported, but never would come online. I did have TIS traffic targets displayed, but no weather.

 

[Dynon]

N214ST - were you seeing the characteristic "purpleish" overlay on the map that depicts areas where weather wasn't being received?

 

[mrdaud]

Dynon Support - Had placed my earlier comment in 1st person, but it was actually the owner of the plane manufacturer company that was flying my plane. Talked to him this morning and he did not remember seeing any purple overlay, however, he will go up later today and check again. There is enough weather around FL he should be able to see something. Will report back.

 

[dwightsmall]

N214ST mentioned not getting weather to show after installing the -472. I got good weather overlay depiction with the -470 and just as good with the -472.

 

[alexe]

I'm getting real frustrated with the poor performance of the -472. Could Dynon please provide some current status on resolving the traffic drop-out issue (other than "we are looking at it")?

 

[GaryK]

Dynon,
I'm a big supported of your equipment but the 472 is a problem. How can I go about getting 470 back until you guys work out the issues. Like others I am loosing ADSB coverage and radar, screen goes pink or pink broken lines. I never had this issue with the 470.

Really would like to get a 470 installed.

Gary Kremers

 

[mitch757]

I'm experiencing the same as GaryK. Would really like to get this thing fixed of my -470 back..

 

[dwightsmall]

Not to be contrarian but I'm getting good results with the -472 now that I've relocated the antenna to 2' forward of the tailwheel. At the same time I changed to the 978 rod antenna. I've flown 4 flights in the Tucson/Phoenix corridor where I've had issues previously with the -470 and the -472 but now the result is good. I still get occasional momentary reversions to "TIS OK" but I believe that I'm not losing any traffic displays. It's still way too early to declare victory but I'll continue testing it and will post my findings.

 

[Dynon]

Radio issues are tricky, but we're getting closer to a solution here. We'll definitely have a software update, but we may need to do a hardware change too. That's still to be determined but is likely to be the case. We think we're weeks away but aren't close enough to predict a date yet. We don't have an interim solution (-470s) available. Thanks for your patience while we get to the bottom of this.

 

[airguy]

Radio issues are tricky, but we're getting closer to a solution here. We'll definitely have a software update, but we may need to do a hardware change too. That's still to be determined but is likely to be the case. We think we're weeks away but aren't close enough to predict a date yet. We don't have an interim solution (-470s) available. Thanks for your patience while we get to the bottom of this.

I understand that the possible hardware solution is still in play - but will it be possible to ship the upgraded 472 to current 472 users and we can ship the old one back, so we don't have to fly without ADSB at all during the interim?

And while we're at it - THANK YOU for listening to your users, believing that the complaints were legitimate enough to investigate, admitting that there really is an issue, and moving this quickly to implement a solution! I know of no other avionics company that does this, this quickly, this transparently.

 

[Schorsch]

I asked for my 470 back too a while ago - why not give them back??
I know you're trying, but wouldn't the really defective 472 product warrant a much more urgent response? In effect you're indicating a product recall. Might legal customer complaint letters help to escalate the issue?

 

[Raymo]

I know you're trying, but wouldn't the really defective 472 product warrant a much more urgent response? In effect you're indicating a product recall. Might legal customer complaint letters help to escalate the issue?

Define "urgent." (rhetorical) It means different things to different people and to a company that supports lots of products and thousands of users.

With any software or hardware issue, it cannot be fixed if it cannot be reproduced with controlled configurations and methods. This takes time to gather information from users that experience the issue.

In this case, Dynon must work with a 3rd party uAvionics to get to a root cause and fix, which might add to the time frame.

 

[turbopilot]

Define "urgent." (rhetorical) It means different things to different people and to a company that supports lots of products and thousands of users.

With any software or hardware issue, it cannot be fixed if it cannot be reproduced with controlled configurations and methods. This takes time to gather information from users that experience the issue.

In this case, Dynon must work with a 3rd party uAvionics to get to a root cause and fix, which might add to the time frame.

True. I am a big supporter of Dynon. A real spunky company given the strength of big "G".

But, one must ask who the hell is doing the beta testing for this product (and some of the software updates)?

The 472 is so easy to swap for the 470 there should have been some open beta testing where owners could give input on the forum about their experience and swap back to 470 when they had problems.

 

[cbennet12]

True. I am a big supporter of Dynon. A real spunky company given the strength of big "G".

But, one must ask who the hell is doing the beta testing for this product (and some of the software updates)?

The 472 is so easy to swap for the 470 there should have been some open beta testing where owners could give input on the forum about their experience and swap back to 470 when they had problems.[/quote]

Working in QA in the software industry I would tend to wonder if Dynon is rushing some products to market with in adequate testing.

They tend to be stuck between a rock and a hard place since all they have heard for a LONG time is "where's a dual band ADS-B module?"

But I'm sure they feel as we do that nothing should be rushed to market w/o proper testing.

And of course none of us could fly before we had on board weather. [ch128521]

 

[Dynon]

Different airframe and antenna combination seem to perform differently, and so we didn't see some of the performance problems that we're seeing in the wider fleet in our smaller beta pool, unfortunately. Doing a wider public beta is hard for us because to do something like that we end up needing to spool up production to closer to production levels. That gets tough -
while we're big enough to buy parts in volume when we take things into full production, doing things in low-medium quantities is a lot harder than doing them in engineering/R&D quantities. We're not perfect, and changing our approach in the future is something we'll look hard at.

There are few reasons that we haven't offered -470s back so far. We initially thought that we'd have a software fix, but now that's looking less likely. Also, in either case, the logistics get tricky, especially if we'll be doing another swap shortly thereafter. We're at the point now where we expect some testing in the next week or so to reveal our plan forward. If that doesn't yield a -472 that fixes the issues we're seeing, we'll likely spool something up along the lines of unwinding the upgrades for those that don't want to wait. Note that we don't have any new -470s available - they're fully out of production at this point.

 

[mrdaud]

Guys... I work in an industry where we test the crap out of product and we still see systemic issues down the road because we can't predict and/or test every scenario. It has only been a few months since we started seeing documented problems. Although I myself want a fix sooner rather than later, I think Dynon is doing a good job troubleshooting the problem in a timely manner. Electronic issues, especially radio frequency transmission and reception, can be very complex to troubleshoot. Chill a bit . As Craig mentioned, how in the world did we ever fly before ADS-B ????? Use your eyes and flight following a bit more until Dynon gets this fixed

 

[turbopilot]

Guys... I work in an industry where we test the crap out of product and we still see systemic issues down the road because we can't predict and/or test every scenario.  It has only been a few months since we started seeing documented problems.  Although I myself want a fix sooner rather than later, I think Dynon is doing a good job troubleshooting the problem in a timely manner.  Electronic issues, especially radio frequency transmission and reception, can be very complex to troubleshoot.  Chill a bit .  As Craig mentioned, how in the world did we ever fly before ADS-B ????? Use your eyes and flight following a bit more until Dynon gets this fixed

My point is that much of this equipment is operating in experimental aircraft by folks who love to tinker and experiment. Whether a software update or a new piece of hardware I am guessing there are a bunch of guys who would be glad to test provided they could easily roll back in the event of problems.

I would have been happy to test the 472 as long as Dynon did not take my 470 back until things looked good to go.

 

[William_Ince]

Guys... I work in an industry where we test the crap out of product and we still see systemic issues down the road because we can't predict and/or test every scenario.  It has only been a few months since we started seeing documented problems.  Although I myself want a fix sooner rather than later, I think Dynon is doing a good job troubleshooting the problem in a timely manner.  Electronic issues, especially radio frequency transmission and reception, can be very complex to troubleshoot.  Chill a bit .  As Craig mentioned, how in the world did we ever fly before ADS-B ????? Use your eyes and flight following a bit more until Dynon gets this fixed

Concur totally.

 

[GalinHdz]

Guys... I work in an industry where we test the crap out of product and we still see systemic issues down the road because we can't predict and/or test every scenario.  It has only been a few months since we started seeing documented problems.  Although I myself want a fix sooner rather than later, I think Dynon is doing a good job troubleshooting the problem in a timely manner.  Electronic issues, especially radio frequency transmission and reception, can be very complex to troubleshoot.  Chill a bit .  As Craig mentioned, how in the world did we ever fly before ADS-B ????? Use your eyes and flight following a bit more until Dynon gets this fixed

I completely agree!

 

[dwightsmall]

Guys... I work in an industry where we test the crap out of product and we still see systemic issues down the road because we can't predict and/or test every scenario. It has only been a few months since we started seeing documented problems. Although I myself want a fix sooner rather than later, I think Dynon is doing a good job troubleshooting the problem in a timely manner. Electronic issues, especially radio frequency transmission and reception, can be very complex to troubleshoot. Chill a bit Smiley. As Craig mentioned, how in the world did we ever fly before ADS-B Tongue????? Use your eyes and flight following a bit more until Dynon gets this fixed


I agree 100%. Dynon is and has been very responsive to the issues with the -472. They will get it sorted out soon so let's give them a little time and space.