I apologize for necroposting this...
I was wondering if anyone has brought this device up in a Airbus or Boeing or is everyone bringing them up in GA aircraft. (or willing to admit to doing it - I guess I'm just putting myself out there - come get me FAA)
Messing with just a Bad Elf GPS in an EFB flight bag in an Embraer or Canadair - you found blind spots where the Bad Elf just wouldn't receive a good signal -(I have no actual idea why the degraded GPS reception - I'm guessing due to the heated windows) - moving the Bad Elf GPS receiver to the unheated portion of the window usually solved the problem.
However in an Airbus all the windows are heated, and I'm only having sporadic luck getting a GPS signal inside the cockpit with the Elf.
So I'm wondering if anyone else is willing to admit having experience playing with this thing in an Airbus or Boeing.
I went ahead and built one with the latest parts list using the Raspberry Pi 3 iteration instead of the 2 from last year.
So far my experience has been mixed. Like
@wheelsup I'm mostly interested in the weather info pushed to me and the big picture radar mosaic.
Traffic I already get from TCAS, but it's a very limited picture - just relative position and relative altitude no id.
Weather I can get - but it's all pull only if ACARS is working today. If it's not working I have no weather other than what I can dial up over COM2.
Radar, I have too but I can only see as far as the next thunderstorm cell - I can't see if there's another cell hiding behind it.
GPS from Strattux has been rock solid compared with the Bad Elf. I have a valid usable GPS signal no matter where I put the GPS receiver.
1090/UAT reception - I get more 1090 than I receive UAT.
Traffic - I can receive my own transponder - average -1db signal strength. Other 1090 traffic in the flight levels is unreliable - sometimes I can see other folks, other times I can't. There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason. Sometimes I receive 1090 signals from aircraft hundreds of miles away, but I can't get the 1090 squawk from the guy that just 10 miles away. Average reception strength is -25 to -30 db for the ones I do receive (so 1000x weaker than my transponder signal? - each 3db is half power I believe). The altitude reported by the 1090 requires interpretation because Strattux converts it to a relative altitude compared to your GPS altitude, which is not the same altitude you're flying at. So you have to do the mental math to correct the altitude info.
However when I do get the full 1090 message decoded, I know exactly who that guy is on my TCAS display and I can see his heading, speed, transponder reported altitude, tail number, and flight ID (whatever he entered - usually flight number but sometimes I decode other unrepeatable phrases instead of their flight number)
When I get lower in the terminal area, I start getting UAT traffic, but by then there's so much traffic the display is very cluttered and makes the traffic presentation unusable. - I wish there was a way to filter the traffic.
FIS-B reception - mixed. When I get the UAT transmission, weather is great - I get the METARS but I get what I get, and sometimes I want a METAR for a specific airport, well I didn't get that part of the broadcast so there's no info.
I am able to get the radar mosiac pushed to the Foreflight app, but because reception is spotty I don't have the full picture. So far it's not 100% reliable, and so I'm guessing maybe 25% of the time I'm able to get a broadcast.
Then I found out I mixed my antennas up - I plugged the 978 antenna into the 1090 radio and vice versa, so I've got that fixed. and will play with it some more to see if things change.
The biggest drawback - since I fly for a low tier airline with no wifi service, the pax in back that don't have their devices in airplane mode, they've connected to the Strattux hotspot looking for GoGo internet service and not finding it ... I've seen as many as 40 connected clients to the Strattux, that could be why I'm getting mixed performance with the FIS-B download and display. And if anyone's in back from the FAA to help, they'll easily figure out what's going on and might decide to visit up front afterwards.
It has been an interesting experiment. It's nice to have the extended 1090 info when everything is finally implemented in 2020. Whether the airlines will equip their aircraft to display to extra 1090 info, I doubt it - there's no need.
(The Navy if they don't plan on installing 1090 decoding capability on their ships, should - it makes the ID job of sorting out non-cooperative air tracks simpler?, but then I'm guessing bad guys could equip their planes to send out bogus 1090 info, so maybe not.)
I'll most likely disassemble the device when I'm done experimenting and use the Pi for something else, like a retro arcade gaming emulator.