OzRunways outage?

[skippydiesel]

Yesterday afternoon, I was stooging around, just to the West of the new Badgerys Creek airfield, when , for the second time in as many months, my OzRunways Blue Balloon Traffic indicators, all disappeared. About 3-5 minutes later they came back. 

 

I have no recollection of this sort of "outage" any time in the 10 years + that I have subscribed to OzRunways.

 

Anyone;

 

• Got an explanation?
• Had a similar experience?

 

I have writen to OzRunways & hope to receive a response next week.😈

 

 

[PureCaboose]

Did you keep you internet access as well?

 

The issue with flying and using the mobile towers is you can transition between towers at speeds that the network does not plan for. This can lead to outages as the network re-routes you traffic.

 

The interconnects are planned on the basis of how most users will transition between towers, it sounds like you were out over the dam/waterboard area. You could have been switching between towers on either side of the area and they would not be configured to easy hand off between towers.

 

Caboose

[Moneybox]

4 hours ago, skippydiesel said:

Yesterday afternoon, I was stooging around, just to the West of the new Badgerys Creek airfield, when , for the second time in as many months, my OzRunways Blue Balloon Traffic indicators, all disappeared. About 3-5 minutes later they came back. 

 

I have no recollection of this sort of "outage" any time in the 10 years + that I have subscribed to OzRunways.

 

Anyone;

 

• Got an explanation?
• Had a similar experience?

 

I have writen to OzRunways & hope to receive a response next week.😈

 

 

 

Very interesting Skippy. I was sitting in bed last night preparing a route from Cue to Northam. I can't fly it but I will drive it and do various calculations as I travel just as an effort to further understand OzRunways.

 

While I was at it I turned on traffic and saw none. It was the middle of the night so I thought it may be possible but then I went to Flightradar at there they were. Right now I only have five aircraft in all of Australia.

 

[Arron25]

Boeing'🤣?

[Garfly]

 

 

16 hours ago, Moneybox said:

 

Very interesting Skippy. I was sitting in bed last night preparing a route from Cue to Northam. I can't fly it but I will drive it and do various calculations as I travel just as an effort to further understand OzRunways.

 

While I was at it I turned on traffic and saw none. It was the middle of the night so I thought it may be possible but then I went to Flightradar at there they were. Right now I only have five aircraft in all of Australia.

 

 

Moneybox, I think the reason you are seeing so few targets is that your OzRunways is, by default, only set up to show the aircraft participating in its own (web-based) 'traffic' exchange system. It does not include the ADSB traffic that Flight Radar 24 (and similar) apps display.  There is an explanation about how those various systems operate and interact here:

 

15. Traffic

DOCS.OZRUNWAYS.COM

 

But there is a way to have ADSB traffic show on your EFB (OzRwys or AvPlan) map page (short of using an ADSB receiver) and that is by using the AvTraffic app.  The Premium version allows integration with OzRwys/AvPlan such that it displays ADSB traffic (sourced from the ADSB-Exchange) merged with your own EFB's in-house traffic. 

 

The EFBs use various symbols to indicate the different sources of data. But all of this type of traffic info is subject to some slight delay since it is coming via the internet. For more reliable aircraft-to-aircraft, real-time traffic you'd need to have an ADSB-IN device (like the SkyEcho2 or better).

 

But even AvTraffic doesn't bother displaying ADSB targets from all over the country (and world) like FR24 etc. because it's designed as a practical piloting tool.  Still, I think it shows everything within a hundred nautical miles or more. OzRyws' own system limits itself to the 18 nearest (participating) aircraft, which, at night, might well cover the whole country as your screen shot shows.

 

 

 

 

AvTraffic

AVTRAFFIC.COM

 

Edited 18 hours ago by Garfly

[coljones]

23 hours ago, skippydiesel said:

Yesterday afternoon, I was stooging around, just to the West of the new Badgerys Creek airfield, when , for the second time in as many months, my OzRunways Blue Balloon Traffic indicators, all disappeared. About 3-5 minutes later they came back. 

 

I have no recollection of this sort of "outage" any time in the 10 years + that I have subscribed to OzRunways.

 

Anyone;

 

• Got an explanation?
• Had a similar experience?

 

I have writen to OzRunways & hope to receive a response next week.😈

 

 

Which mobile service were you using.

 

4 Corners had a segment last week about the limitations of mobile phone coverage. There are black holes even in Sydney.

[skippydiesel]

Some more info;

• I have always used Telstra, as it is supposed to give near nationwide service (recent news seems to dispute this claim).
• I have an SE2 linked to my OzRunways - its info was also absent during the outage.

😈

Edited 15 hours ago by skippydiesel

[PureCaboose]

16 minutes ago, skippydiesel said:

Some more info;

• I have always used Telstra, as it is supposed to give near nationwide service (recent news seems to dispute this claim).
• I have an SE2 linked to my OzRunways - its info was also absent during the outage.

😈

I don't have mobile service at my property, and I live in a 'Village'. If I walk up the hill 1km I can get 5 bars of coverage.

 

When I fly over the house/village there is a mobile blackspot at 1500 AGL just west of the village as well. Drops out calls as well as streaming ADSB data. my SE2 keeps working though, so not sure why you's blanked. I am using AVPLAN-EFB though.

 

PureCaboose

[skippydiesel]

"my SE2 keeps working though,"

 

I assume my SE2 continued to work (transmit) throughout the outage but there was no information being displayed on my iPad. Both OzRunways & SE2 came back,  without any intervention from, me after 3-5 minutes being AWOL😈