iFly GPS Forum

Flying Monkey, I certainly understand your wish for absolutely bulletproof alerts for obstacles and traffic. I fly my small amphibian a lot lower than you probably ever do and love to wander around without a flight plan, Many of the others on this forum probably have trouble understanding that I almost never file a flight plan, am generally bored by A-to-B flying, rarely get higher than 1,500 feet AGL, and land in the middle of rivers and lakes just for the fun of it. Tower alerts are kid stuff compared to what I've asked of the AP guys! I worry constantly about wires crossing water at 100 feet--or 50, or 10.  The AP guys have taken my concerns and wishes very seriously, and I'm sure they are equally serious about yours.

But blowing your top in a Facebook forum intended for sharing the fun aspects of iFly flying is only going to have two results: (A) everyone immediately turns defensive because you've attacked not only their favorite product but also the programmers, themselves; and (2) you look-- well, intemperate is a polite way to say it.

Now, about traffic alerts: I've been very disappointed with ADS-B generally and the UAT frequency specifically. Even the FAA's ADS-B do-it-yourself test site won't display my UAT-equipped airplane unless I go up to 2,000 feet--and that's with an ADS-B tower right on my home airport. That's not an iFly problem.  It's the stupid FAA's doing. ADS-B works better with the 1090 gHz equipment, but still it's a system not yet ready for prime time.  Once the satellite tracking is complete, we'll probably have something more like what the FAA hoped for.

Anyway, iFly can display only what the system sends it, and right now that depends mostly on relays from other aircraft that happen to be in range and with the right equipment.

Okay, about your disappearing tower: I don't have any good ideas about what might have gone wrong for you. I've had better luck, myself, but still am not sure I understand the alerting logic. I think that's probably about 90% my fault for not reading the docs intently enough. The other 10% or so is probably due to the difficulty in describing a complex system that is constantly under development faster than anyone can write about it.

It seems to me that we're all in this together--the programmers and us users--all working together to improve the product. Getting angry when something goes blooie seems counter-productive.

I think that he's right to post here, to see if anyone else is seeing these issues, and to give the rest of us a heads-up.

He does seem to be getting frustrated at the current lack of response, and that's just human.  BUT I would also point out that the AP folks are (presumably) not spending their time drinking Mai Tais on a beach somewhere.  They are working other issues and improvements.  Like others here I have no doubt that they'll address this, as it does seems to be a critically important issue. 

So yeah, patience.

Sigh...

Don, I appreciate your response, it was friendly.  Thanks!

But I did not "blow my top" on the FB group.  I pointed out what I thought was a safety issue that other pilots should be aware of, and voiced my frustration at getting no response from AP.  Right or wrong, yeah I get frustrated when I point out something I consider a safety of flight problem and the company involved just doesn't respond.  It appears that AP didn't get the support request I sent them, even though their web form said "email successfully submitted" so I assumed (rightly, I think) that was the case.

Frankly the response I got from that post was embarrassing for the community.  NOBODY other than Brolin tried to offer any suggestions or help.  The sum total of the comments were questions if I was a new pilot, and direct or veiled insinuations that I was a terrible and unsafe pilot, apparently because I expected alerting features to work.  Somebody even said the picture I posted looked like it from from a flight sim and not real.  Mmmkay.  "it's only for situational awareness" and "you're dumb to rely on obstacle/traffic alerts" are paraphrases of some of the comments.  It then progressed into expectations that I'd be in the papers as a smoking hole in the ground -- real nice, guys.  So I deleted the post. 

I do NOT expect 100% reliablility, and I know how to look out the window.  I've been doing it all across the USA for well over ten years now, and more than half of that time didn't involve obstacle databases or traffic alerts.  In training I did my cross country flight and checkride without a GPS in the airplane.  I'm not gadget-dependent. 

But the alerts on this 740b unit are *nowhere* near as accurate as the 13 year old 496 I replaced.  Does that seem like an "upgrade"?  If we're not supposed to at least reference these features, why do we spend money on them?  Why does the FAA mandate ADS-B?  Why do they want to use it in preference to the terminal radar systems for NEXRAD?  Are these features not part of the safety picture at all?  If not, why hang out on FB groups or forums dedicated to these systems??

The answer I'm getting from Brolin at AP is that this is working as designed.  Even though I have the "planned airports" option selected in the "disable alerts when approaching..." setting, the unit will *still* disable alerts if you are at 1000ft AGL over airports, even over private grass fields like I was in the video I posted.  It assumes you are landing  This does not seem like behavior most pilots would expect, but it's AP's product and they can set it up however they like.  But it's a no-go for me and my type of flying.  I spend 60% of my time in the local area at 1000ft AGL or so flying to small, challenging grass strips.  A system that turns off alerts in those circumstances might as well not be in my airplane.

And we have not even begun to address the air-to-air traffic situation.  I flew a four hour trip at 5500-6500ft with another airplane, and did not see him on ADS-B the entire trip, in spite of the ADS-B reporting "receiving" as a status.  He saw me the whole way on his Garmin gear. 

One of the forum members suggested I put my airplane's hex code in my Startux and disable ghost traffic filtering.  I did that, and the pictures I posted in this thread show the results.  I flew for 1.5hr with two other airplanes at distances of 0.1nm to 2nm.  I never once saw them as traffic targets (though I saw other targets).  My friend with a 720 in his airplane also saw no targets.  The other airplane, with Garmin gear (different airplane than the one mentioned in the previous paragraph) saw us the entire time.  Other traffic alerting failures have been documented in the first post or two of this thread.  How many are related to the same alerting behavior as obstacles I don't know.  When targets don't even show up on the screen I'm guessing this is a different issue.

I was texting my friend with the 720 mentioned above about these issues, just asking him if he had seen similar issues.  His response:  "iFly alerts suck."  I'm not putting this in there to trash on AP or their products, I'm including it to show I'm not the only one having issues.  I was VERY excited to get the iFly 740b in my airplane -- great price, a big touch screen, lots of features, affordable subscription and updates, a small and responsive company.  I wanted to love this unit. But the sour taste left in my mouth by the combination of technical issues, and a community of ankle-biters who want to attack pilots instead of problems, is driving me back to Garmin.  My confidence is just not high in this unit.  If alerts don't work as expected, what else doesn't?  GPS position?  Airspace placement? I'm guessing a GDL-50 and Aera 660 or 760 are in my near future.