AIRNAV RADARBOX

[Striker941]

Anyone have or used this AIRNAV RADAR BOX.. its pricey...$500-700+ but looks like it could be used for mission base plane tracking in real time..or atleast a 5 minute delay.

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Looks like it requires special equipment in the aircraft that would send the signals this thing is made to receive.

[NIN]

IIRC, most GA aircraft are not equipped with ADS-B.  Cool idea, but ultimately impractical. 

But the cool thing is that you can see aircraft within 250 miles w/o relying on the network or the 5 minute delay thing. 

Embedded APRS or something very similar to that has been within CAP's grasp for the last 10-12 years, but has not found widespread acceptance.  Now, there are other technologies (SPOT, for example) that are commercially available and work without any "wonkishness".  And that you can not only use for general "housekeeping" during a mission, but also for emergency notification purposes.  You can hand a SPOT unit to a ground team or an aircrew, drop it into "let my peeps know where I am" mode, and off they go..

[es_g0d]

I'll second the motion on the SPOT unit.  They're crewdog simple, and they just WORK.  They're relatively minimal investment.  They also work beyond-line-of-sight, a serious limitation for APRS-based systems.  Last, they work even in the most remote of locations.

Another option is to tap into radar data to track our aircraft (obviously not as valuable for our ground teams).  This will require even less investment on the part of CAP than the SPOT.  There are some technical and administrative hurdles to negotiate, which is being handled by a volunteer from Chicago.