To help encourage aircraft owners to equip to meet the FAA’s 2020 ADS-B Out mandate, the Aircraft Electronics Association will randomly award five aircraft owners with $1,000 toward an ADS-B compliant upgrade during the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, which takes place July 20-26.
“The avionics repair shop industry in the U.S. has only 53 months remaining to equip the entire general aviation fleet of more than 100,000 aircraft with ADS-B Out equipment,” said AEA President Paula Derks. “Aircraft owners who wait to equip will face scheduling pressure and higher installation costs as we get closer to the deadline. By awarding $1,000 to five different aircraft owners to help them become compliant sooner rather than later, the AEA hopes to send a message to owners of general aviation aircraft that the time to act and upgrade is now.”
Aircraft owners may enter to win one of the five $1,000 awards at the AEA’s AirVenture booth (No. 2035/2036 in Hangar B at Wittman Regional Airport) beginning July 20. AEA will announce one winner each day from July 21 through July 25.
Each of the five winners must use an AEA-member avionics shop to complete the installation, and the installation must be scheduled by Aug. 1, 2016. One entry gives aircraft owners a chance to win each of the five daily drawings.
This AEA ruse is an utterly useless self serving PR stunt, pushing a very bad idea of a seriously conceptually flawed FAA ADS-B version, that will never successfully or economically work to solve the nation’s or global ATS modernization issues. A pilot or operator would be better off to not even accept the money, and just wait until the FAA’s flawed ADS-B criteria in 91.225/91.227 are withdrawn, and are substantially revised (i.e., a substantially revised and eased NIC and NAC, and dumping of RTCA DO-260B), so as to allow for a simpler and less costly, and less complex, and more effective form of ADS-B (e.g., where everybody including UAVs can see each other without ADS-R), and as now already used in other parts of the world, without UAT.
Could not have said it better myself!