Appreciation post: I thought ADS-B was just a fad pushed by the FAA, 8 years later I was wrong

Cora Scott · 2026-10-07T21:10:03.728131+00:00

Back around 2016 I was working GA avionics out of a hangar near Tulsa and I flat out refused to drink the ADS-B Kool-Aid. I told my boss it was a money grab, that mode C transponders had worked fine for 40 years, and that nobody would actually install those boxes once the rebate check ran out. Then we started getting planes in for the 2020 mandate and I watched a guy in a 1978 Cessna 182 track traffic on a $900 tablet like he had a mini TCAS in the cockpit. The thing that really got me was a near miss he described over the practice area, two targets, one callout, and he said he never would have seen the other plane looking out the window. I did maybe 60 of those installs over two years and not one customer came back complaining about the money. Now when a young tech asks if the old stuff was better I just laugh, because I was that guy once. Anyone here install the early UAT boxes and remember how bad the wiring diagrams were?

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Appreciation post: I thought ADS-B was just a fad pushed by the FAA, 8 years later I was wrong | Avionics Technicians - SMM Buzz