V12.0 Traffic Problem

[stevengrasley]

I upgraded to V12.0 about a week ago. A pop up biz trip had me flying for the first time with the new software in a solid IMC day before I had flown it at all. (Yeah...I know...I know...) BTW, lots of weather, pretty cold but above freezing, smooth ride pretty much.

Anyway, around the 2 hour mark I got a traffic alert and it turned out it was alerting myself. I saw this problem way back when I first built my RV-7A during my initial 40 hours when I was not running my transponder because it had not yet been checked for operation. But in this case I was on IFR flight plan and had no questions from ATC so everything seemed to be working just fine. So I just ignored the traffic alert for the rest of the flight. Landed after 3.6 hours for fuel.

Took off again in much less difficult weather for another 1 hour leg and still had the traffic alert. What I found odd was that the yellow traffic alert ball would sail past on the PFD sort of like it was circling me...it would go in one direction and then I could see it in the other direction too. No discernible pattern.

After about 15 minutes the yellow alert ball on the map display went away, the lower right hand corner of the map indicated TIS OK for quite a while then it switched to ADSB OK. The rest of the flight went normal and all traffic displayed quite nicely as I approached into KCLT.

Not sure if there is a problem or not.

BTW...early in the hard IMC flight I got a brief MESSAGE. All I heard was the pretty voice "MESSAGE" and then i pressed the button and I think I saw ADSB OFFLINE which seemed odd. The message remained for maybe a minute. During that minute and during the rest of the flight I could see ADSB radar that was getting regular updates, other traffic and every target with N-number output was displayed. All seemed pretty normal.

So...is there a problem? What the heck might it be?

 

[Dynon]

There have been a few people that have reported ADS-B "ghosting" of their own aircraft recently, and we're investigating the issue. Can you send an email to support at dynonavionics dot com , putting "case 187223" in the subject line, and we'll send you instructions on how to do some diagnostics here?

As for the ADSB Offline message, you should nominally only see that if the module completely goes away. So that could possibly indicate an issue with the module, or, maybe, a software bug that makes it appear offline momentarily. If you happen to have that happen again, we'd love to get a diagnostic log from you. You'd need to get that log within an hour of the event though. Full instructions on how to get that to us are here. Similarly, if you do send us a diagnostics log, please put "case 187223" in the message area of the upload tool.

 

[stevengrasley]

Thanks Dynon. I will send some data in with the case number information as instructed. I will be departing on the return trip for that described above in about 2 hours. I'll be looking a bit more carefully during that flight to see what I can learn. Too bad I won't have the chance to get with you guys directly before I have to leave.

Thanks for your guidance. I absolutely love my system.

 

[DHeal]

FYI - I also had a "traffic" ghost flying in close proximity to my RV-12 on a recent flight. I am using V12.0. I have seen such ghosts occasionaly displayed on previous Versions, but this recent ghost is unique in that it moves around my target at the same "00' " indicated level. I can deal with this, but it still initially gets the heart racing!!

Lovin' my SV!

 

[n97kd]

Just for the record, I have seen the same ghosting issue with my SkyView system. I'm flying a Glasair III with a dual SV system. I have seen the ghost target before and after update 12.
I wonder if there is slight time delay between my transponder, ATC, and the ADSB receiver creating what my receiver thinks is traffic yet it is my airplane..???

It does get ones attention at first.

Great system though. love it.

 

[akarmy]

So I was testing my setup this weekend per the Support instructions and found that I had not put the "N" in front of my N number in the system setup. Once I updated that my ghosts seemed to disappear (for now at least).

 

[dynonsupport]

To report back, we've investigated this and do not see any changes in 12.0 that relate to this. There were no code changes to the ADS-B traffic code, nor the ADS-B OUT code.

We did notice that in two datalogs we received from two customers that they were in the same basic place in the world (a corner of FL) and within days of one another. The planes somehow were not picked up by the ADS-B ground station, but were by radar, which caused them to be uplinked as unknown ID's, which we can't filter out.

Given this, it appears it might have been an anomaly in the ADS-B system, and just happened to be right after 12.0 shipped. Given the way the ADS-B system works, it could have been as simple as a phone line down for a few days that caused a minor issue.

Please keep reporting any times you see this. If you can, report where and when, but even better is a datalog. This will help us track it down and talk to the FAA or fix our error if there is one.

 

[stevengrasley]

Interesting. I have had this problem in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and over the entire state of Florida from one end to the other in both directions. And at two different times over a week apart. So it was not just in a corner of FL. Something is definitely different. The chap at near the beginning was in Santa Rosa, CA. The duration of time that this is staying on seems very unusual. I have not reviewed the FlightAware tracks but that might be interesting to compare with. Keep digging guys. I have never had this problem in my system over all the software changes from 4.0 through 11.1 until 12.0 so something had to change.

 

[stevengrasley]

BTW...I provided two Diagnostic Files on Monday afternoon for case number 187222 but reviewed my message trail and it looks like there was another case number requested for my data of 187307. Please take a look. That data was from KBNL-KCLT.

 

[Schorsch]

I also had it happen in FL, GA last week...

 

[dynonsupport]

FYI, the FAA confirmed that there was an issue in the FL/GA area that has been resolved. It had nothing to do with SkyView software versions.

If you continue to see ghost traffic issues, please continue to let us know. The more we know about where, and when, the quicker we can solve the issue.