Need Advice, Direction
So there I was out enjoying a lovely spring day in my respectable and capable 1973 fresh off the factory floor 50 years ago Piper Arrow II, N15665.
As responsible adults, my airline pilot friend and CFII Doug and I were out enjoying flying my Arrow. We were west of KHNN Huntington WVa. flying over the Ohio River. Possibly near Wheelersburg, not sure if it is Ohio or WVa, when the ADSB on ForeFlight lit up our phones and the iPad with a conflict resolution for traffic1/4 mile 12 o’clock same altitude and a bold arrow pointed down. Doug had just taken over flying. Doug was flying because I was getting the wx at KHNN, I am an aviation meteorologist so weather is kinda my thing.
Back to the fun, his phone, my phone and the iPad all flashed and had a bright red screen alerting us to the conflict. Doug has always impressed me with his ability to see aircraft, always long before I. He saw nothing and as flying pilot he was looking outside, I was head down reading the computer. We followed the conflict resolution and nosed over hard, like I said FlightAware shows a town of Wheelersburg very near the evasive action area.
Now to the point: The dive resulted in me hitting my head, hard, had I been alone I would have had to declare an emergency to get on the ground fast. I have a prior neck injury and this hit I know broke more bone off C5 and I am having neurological deficit consistent with a spinal stun. Doug is uninjured, I am the mutant at 6’6”, Doug is normal, so I hit my head just because I have a sideways take on a good time.
Do I need to report this to anyone? The ADSB shows 3300 feet our altimeter was reading 3500 feet the river in that area is about 600 feet so we were 2900 feet agl. Doug thinks we encountered a drone and that is a good guess, the area is very scenic. We had flown right over the river for a while and we were in a bend. I always fly with my LED Nav and strobes on and anti collision light, we may have had the LED landing light on as well. Someone may have wanted to get a video from above us as we flew the river and if I had known I would have been happy to fly under their drone. It would have made fore great video. I am concerned ForeFlight showed no target but insisted on an RA. Both of us having an airline back ground we do as we are told.
Now after breaking your neck and being shot along with being an EMT, I, am under direct medical supervision right now and have spoken with my doctor and we both agree going to the trauma center would be counter productive. Rest, pain control and anti inflammatory meds are in order for me, at this time, if things change we will reevaluate the situation.
So, Doug is fine, my Arrow is great(it is the center fold this month in the mag, still too ugly for the cover but I will get it in the next 2 years) but I am hurt, I kinda came to the party messed up. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble but we were busting along at 140 mph through the air. I don’t know if a drone would come through the plastic windshield. I don’t know what would happen if it hit the prop, would it damage the prop or engine? I think a hit to the wing or tail would be a non event other than expensive body work.
I will not ever get over my injury from being a cop, I may need surgery to remove the bone pieces but so far no one is willing to go in and do spinal surgery when I am still able to walk but the hard push over with just the standard 3 point restraints failed me. The encounter with the presumed drone did not destroy my life, it did make my day suck much more than was planned. Had we hit it the suck would have been much stronger.
Am I required to report that I was forced to take evasive action from ADSB info we think was from an unseen drone? I am very thankful I have ForeFlight to help with this, just 1/4 mile warning at 140mph is not much more than 5 seconds. We both did a full push to the stops while I was commanding DIVE DIVE DIVE. My 50 year old Arrow lives to fly another day.
Thanks for all the help.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
Comments
This is a great story! I’m glad you both, and the centerfold girl, are okay!
Two suggestions, probably both obvious.
Bob
@Seneca38173
Thank you
Do you think it is a glitch? The only reason I think it may be real is it was right over the river. I admit we saw nothing. What I offered was a great target over a great background to get video. Southern Ohio has had a spectacular spring. Vibrant color green, everywhere. I had a GoPro on my tail tie down, it looks down and forward and our CR was to dive but I see nothing on video.
I don’t know how drones work, does their light weight transponder only work 1/4 mile out? Doug said the airline for whom he works thinks those occasions are drones. That is the safe way to do it. I know at NetJets we do as the box tells us.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
You're absolutely right. If it was a drone that's exactly where they'd be. Especially if they read The Magazine, and have seen pictures of N15665!
I'm 99% confident it was a glitch. When ADSB isn't able to "explain," all the downlinks your transponder emits, the ground network will "spawn" an additional track, and these additional tracks will always appear to be less than 1/4 mile from your aircraft, causing an immediate (and terrifying) warning. The transponders carried by drones operate at 2.4 GHz, making them invisible to the ADSB system. And under Part 107 it is illegal to strap an ADSB transponder to your drone, whether you want to or not.
Bob
We thought they were visible to our toys. Are we visible to them?
I know nothing about drones. I have a $35 drone, yes thirty five dollars. It is powerful enough to fly in our indoor riding arena with the doors closed and a calm wind.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
No. You don’t show up on anything in the drone universe except their cameras. Their receivers don’t cover the 1090 or 978 bands. My recollection is FAA put the drones in a separate band because they were concerned drone data traffic would overwhelm the ADSB band. FAA has taken a beating in the last decade over overload induced network failures.
an obvious solution is to upgrade the functionality of products like the ForeFlight Sentry to include what’s in “drone tracker”. Two chips and an antenna. Then you’d get another button in foreflight “display drones,” and voila!
next time Bob Hart is on I hope he weighs in on this discussion. Maybe his friends in the avionics industry will have this capability in our transponders soon, for display on our Garmins and Avidynes.
bob
I would very much like that, I did not know we had no protection from a drone.
What would happen, in you opinion, taking a drone at speed into the windshield? I have hit pigeons without damage one was on approach the other on climb out.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
I am doubtful that it was a small drone. First, while drones under 55 pounds are required to have a transponder in the near future (by October, I believe), few have them now. Second, they are not designed to interface with ADSB, although the drone I have does have a built-in ADSB receiver which gives me a notice on nearby air traffic with altitude and direction of flight. Drones over 55 pounds come under a completely different set of rules and I am not familiar with transponder rules for those. Small drones are generally limited to 400 ft. AGL but they are certainly able to fly higher than that. The DJI drones and maybe others are programmed to not permit flight in restricted airspace without a clearance.
A ghost target does this exact thing. I was an early adopter of ADSB with a GDL-88 and it was not too uncommon to get an instant alert like that. And it was my own aircraft. There was a lot of dust up with Garmin and the FAA over the issue.
I can’t say I have had one recently. But I’m not a good litmus test as I have been AOG off and on for two years, maybe 30 hours total flown. But when I did get one, OMG I thought I was gonna die. Problem is that I’d get them so often, I soon became numb to them and did not react.
I really suspect that is what you might have had given it popped up instantly like that and when nuclear. But there is always a possibility it could have been a real aircraft.
I own and fly a 79 PA32RT-300T. Previous aircraft are a 79 Archer and 76 Arrow.
Hi Kent,
what kind of drone are you flying, and how well does its adsb-based threat detection work? Would you have time for evasive action (or maybe it’s automatic)?
DJI announced a feature called AirSense at a workshop I was at about four years, but I don’t know if they ended up shipping it.
Bob
I have the DJI Mavic Air 2. It has collision avoidance but I doubt that it responds to the ADSB alerts. The collision avoidance can automatically divert around a detected object or freeze in place. The ADSB alert appears on the screen and makes an alert tone. It displays reported altitude and direction of flight of the aircraft. I usually fly the drone in a valley so even if I get an ADSB alert (and I get a few of those since I fly under a Class E airport, about three miles from the runway, in Class G airspace), the plane is much higher than the drone flight.
Thanks. So it sounds like AirSense IS shipping, and the product is decently competent.
I gather there was a 4th Amendment challenge to the drone transponder rule brought by USAF Pilot Tyler Brennan. Under the current court ruling, the transponder rule will go into effect in September. I read the complaint and can't make heads or tails of the rationale, other than examples like "law enforcement will follow peoples' drones to their home, and needlessly harass the owner."
Does anyone understand the basis of Captain Brennan's complaint?
Bob TIngley
There is a DJI product made available to the FAA and law enforcement which can track drones and trace the drone to the controller being used (and its operator). I forgot the name of the system. Law enforcement cannot enforce the FAA rules but they can report FAA violations to the FAA. I have heard of some instances of abuse from Law Enforcement when a drone operator was flying over BLM protesters. Law enforcement contended that the drone was interferring with a police enforcement operation, but it was more likely, that police did not want anyone filming the event.
Resq;
Go to flight aware dot com or adsb exchange dot com. Pull up your tail number/flight on the day of the occurrence and allow the website to show other traffic. If it was a real, (not a phantom) target, it should show up in the vicinity of where the incident took place.
If it was another aircraft, not only should you be able to see its track, you should be able to determine the tail number. I don't know if drones are identifiable in the same manner, but either way, you'll have a lot more data.
Jim "Doc Griff" Griffin
PA28 - 161
Chicago area
I will take a look. On FlightAware when I look at my flight all I can see is my plane. I also have yet to figure out the moving altitude speed graph Juan Browne shows with FlightAware.
‘If you can see anything it took place over the Ohio River, my tail number is N15665 see below for medical. Still in pain.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
So I went and saw my veterinarian yesterday. My x-rays got beamed over ahead of me. I have 2 extra broken bones from this adventure. He is getting with his neurosurgeon friend to see what to do with me.I am still functional but he fears my stubbornness and strength may not get me through everything. They may talk fusion but I don’t want that I know.
C5 is missing lots of parts. There are little pieces broken off C3,4,6. I have no disc in my neck. Both of the doctors mused about how I manage to walk into the office. It was determined is is solely because the good die young, they said I will live forever.
The dive and ram my head through the ceiling moved the biggest bone out cutting muscle likely from bending my neck. They fear this could do damage if the tail rotates and gets stuck between my functional cervical vertebrae.
This injury is what saved my life and retired me from police work. The guy that got my car was shot and killed 6 months after I retired. So go ponder on that one. I have been injured and broken for a long time this is why I must fly with a responsible adult. But my doctor is concerned that he can feel the bone in my neck muscles and he sees inflammation on the surface.
My doctor has far too much fun when I come in.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
Resq5hvy;
Seems as though you're not the only one seeing/hearing "phantom" (and I don't mean the F-4 variety) traffic calls on the ADSB.
This past weekend, my wife and I flew from Chicago to the Minneapolis area. Twice during the flight (once outbound, and once returning), I had a similar scare where the ADSB suddenly yelled "TRAFFIC", and clock positions at the exact same attitude as us (7,500 ft). My head broke the sound barrier while scanning for the traffic. No aircraft were seen anywhere nearby. I checked the ADSB screen (NGT 9000). No aircraft were indicated within 6 miles. At our attitude, it's not impossible that a drone was up there, but highly unlikely.
I don't recall if the ADSB traffic alert occurred in the same area, but if so, it may indicate some type of local interference, possibly ground based.
Nonetheless, the alert certainly gets your attention in a hurry, and the pucker factor went full scale. When we deplaned, there was a bite out of the seat cushion where my butt was planted. Never found that piece of cushion.
Jim "Doc Griff" Griffin
PA28 - 161
Chicago area
I know your pain, I am getting an MRI right now, I broke 3 bones in my C Spine, looking at surgery to remove the non functioning parts.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
We went back and tried to duplicate the incident and failed. It was mostly cloudy the day we got the RA and clear the day we went back.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
God bless you Resq, hope your surgery goes well and you heal quickly.
By any chance, when you experienced the RA, did you see a target or any traffic on the tablet or ADSB?
Jim "Doc Griff" Griffin
PA28 - 161
Chicago area
I’m late to this discussion but the “phantom” callout for ADSB traffic is a known phenomena caused by the time delay between your own aircraft ADSB OUT signature and its rebroadcast from the ground station as part of the traffic system operation. I too have the NGT 9000 and have made the initial phantom dogfight with my “ownship.” After reading up on this, I have seen the phenomena several times in the Chicago area. The giveaway for me is that the target is EXTREMELY close when called, almost right on top of you and at your altitude. Unless the aircraft is moving like a jet fighter, it would normally be displayed much further out and called in plenty of time for you to see and avoid the real thing.
The instruction manual for the Lynx NGT 9000 carries a warning ALL pilots should remember. ADSB traffic is a supplemental system to see and avoid. Unless one is requesting a deviation or declaring an emergency, you SHOULD NOT summarily deviate from any ATC assignment based on ADSB traffic information! This caution applies to VFR operations as well. Think of it like Nexrad weather displays. Because of latency in the system, you cannot safely use it to pick your way through weather in real time. Several pilots have perished trying to do this. The weather depiction and traffic depiction both have their technical limitations and are advisory in nature.
Regards,
Mike
Great advice Mike.
I never received the manual (I'll download it), but after not finding any aircraft nearby last weekend, I suspected that it was a phantom alert. As you mentioned, I never saw an aircraft converging on my location. But it got my attention and immediately made me wonder if I had not been watching, or how long it had been since I checked the screen.
I also used to receive occasional phantom alerts with my PCAS system. The first time, I took evasive action, but the "target" stayed on my 6, so I flew a 360 to see what was following me. As you've probably guessed, nothing was there. Nonetheless, I took all the alerts seriously because you never knew if it was real or not.
Jim "Doc Griff" Griffin
PA28 - 161
Chicago area
FWIW, am not certain the phantom bogey phenomenon is unique to ADSB.
During flight following a couple years ago, had an event where ATC call-out an aircraft at same altitude, opposite direction, X miles (maybe a minute or two's worth of distance) and closing, and stated we should dive as ATC was not in contact with the other aircraft. Do not remember whether altitude was 9,500 or 11,500, but confident it was above civilian RPA range and a Bozo-No-No altitude for the other aircraft based on direction of flight. Never got a visual on the bogie, no return on ADSB, but we dove anyway. What also had me curious about the other aircraft was that it would have just flown out of the vicinity of a cloud bank which would have required an IFR plan. Only scenarios that make sense to me are that it was either LE / military with transponder turned Off, other aircraft had a flaky transponder, or stray data in ATC's system.
So as Mike mentions, this is another part of cockpit resource management where we need to build in some advance think-time in order to manage our way through. Flight following is my primary source for traffic awareness and feel naked without the coverage. Even with flight following, am a firm believer in ADSB-IN as it has called out some legitimate risks where ATC did not. But neither are absolutely perfect as there are rare occasions where I visually spot aircraft which pass close enough that either ATC or ADSB probably should have altered, but I was the one to make sure all was good.
We could not see anything, even turned back a little to look. Nothing on the iPad after it got done telling us we are about to die, not even, “kidding”.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
During our preflight brief we concluded that day was likely to be busy with sight seers. The trees had the bright green leaves of late spring and it was partly cloudy giving very good photo contrast. Add in the Ohio in near flood water levels and the confluences with other rivers and creeks added contrasting water colors to the photos.
At the time of the incident, both of us thought our ADSB in protected us from drones. We have since learned that not to be the case but at the time we believed our system could see drones. We had been following the Ohio for a ways staying over the middle of the river and knew we had been visible from the ground for at least a minute. We had the strobes, nav and landing lights on. We both had remarked how it would have been nice to have the guys who did the air to air photos along that day. The white plane, bright green hills and the brown water of the Ohio would have made a calendar quality photo. We feared someone else had the same idea.
When the iPad flashed and buzzed we both said drone, knowing we would have seen an aircraft and the iPad showed no other planes near in the minutes prior to the midair warning. We had been listening to Huntington Approach, though not in their airspace we were close, no one was around and we were about to contact them to do an RNAV approach and get me practice with my new toys. We just turned tail a flew back home.
I thought I had GoPro video of it but it turns out that at -4C GoPros freeze and the battery become angry. I have great cloud video but it froze as we descended.
1973 Arrow II factory AC removed
G5’S, G275, GNX375 Still can get lost.
Had a recent conversation on this topic. In theory, another clue of the single plane dogfight is that for displays which can render the other aircraft's information, the other aircraft will display Ownship's information. Meaning, it should display your Tail number / Call-sign.
Based on this, it looks like the dogfight is not only enabled by a lag in ADSB data, but also from software not able to gracefully handle when the outbound Ownship ID data equals the inbound target's ID. Based on this, it suggests a software QC issue.
Great observation! Never thought to check that “in the heat of battle.”🤪