Ghost aircraft whilst flying

Hi,

I’ve flown with Skysafe a couple of time now and found a random aircraft showing directly behind me. The reg was PH-VIP or something close to that. It played havoc with my concentration as Skydemon was warning me relentlessly that I had an aircraft directly behind. It was very distracting until I realised that it was in fact my own aircraft spawned with a random registration.
I silence SkyDemon’s alerts for the aircraft and carried onto the LAA Rally at Popham. The circuit was busy with lots of aircraft descending into the circuit. The A/G operator got very concerned and warned me of another aircraft following close and be careful. Of course I knew what it was and silenced it earlier but that doesn’t stop it being broadcast to other aircraft and ground stations.
This is obviously a bug and it’s a major one and one reason that I won’t be using it again until the developers have confirmed that they’ve squished it.
It’s a shame I didn’t find this problem before I paid for the premium version as at the moment the product is not ‘safe’ at all, very distracting and because of that quite dangerous to use.

Hi Millsey,

Thanks for your message and sorry for these inconveniences…
Can you tell me if you have a transponder on board (mode S, ADSB, Flarm, SkyEcho, PAW…?) If yes, can you make sure that you indicated it in the preferences (button right under - then My aircraft - transponder : type / Code ? If not, you will indeed transmit twice.
( see Double Spots in the Tutorials : https://www.safesky.app/en/tutos )

Another feature helps you to ‘silence’ all traffic in the vicinity of an airfield/circuit: you will get a fixed view without alarms, just indicating where other planes are. This feature however is only available if you choose your country in Preferences - Maps - Manage countries : choose UK.

Hope this works out to solve your problems?
Thanks for your feedback.

Paul

Dear @Millsey

Thanks for your message. Paul gives you a precise answer.
The double echo during flying is not a bug as you write but the configuration of the plane and more precisely the indication of your hexadecimal code (Transponder / registration).
If SafeSky detects a double echo during your flight, it automatically suggests to erase it by automatically encodes this code for you (if you don’t know it) at the right place. This procedure is only possible when your are flying after ADS-B is spotted by antennas, and not grounded.
I hope that all is running right now.

Fly Safe

I believe I have SkySafe configured properly.

This is my configuration in SafeSky

and this is confirmation of my hex code from GINFO

So what is the problem?

The Echo or Ghost aircraft was a Diamond Twinstar PH-VIP if I remember highly not a Bristell so have I got this wrong or is there a bug in your system?

Dear Millsey,

Not a bug with SafeSky, I think.
Question. Do you have another devices, like a FLARM out, or SKY ECHO Adsb out ?
If you are squawking with more than one devices, it will be possible to have a double echo. This config is very uncommon, and currently we are not able to erase two hex code for the same aircraft.

Let me know if it is the case.

Thanks

I have a Rosetta that doesn’t ‘Squawk’ anything but it does transmit it’s own PAW protocol and a XPNDR-262 is Class 2 Mode S ADSB1090ES transponder. Rosetta manages to filter out my hex and doesn’t alert me to my own aircraft. I can’t be the only SafeSky user with this configuration and I note that some users on the forum are reporting scrambled hex codes.

Regardless of what is being picked up and not filtered out why has the SafeSky App decided to decipher a transmission associated to my aircraft hex and rebroadcast it as a dutch registered Diamond TwinStar?

To me, regardless of what you want to call it, it’s a bug. If it rebroadcast it as ‘G-MLSY’ then I could understand that, see it and disregard it. Even ground stations would see a duplicate of my reg and disregard it but when they see a second contact that’s got a different registration then that’s a failing and shouldn’t happen.

If it’s a limitation as you state then the reasons for the limitation should be identified and a warning issued so others don’t get caught out by this very distracting and potentially dangerous problem.

Thanks a lot for all the details.

Just back from MULM 2022 event in Blois. We are going to collect the logs and look precisely at which traffic was received in he close vicinity and figure out what is the issue.

Thanks again for supporting us with that issue.

Tristan

Thanks - If I can help in any way then please let me know.

Regards
Trevor

Hello Trevor,

We have spotted the issue and deployed a fix yesterday actually.

In short, we had a ‘feature’ to integrate with OGN using SafeSky custom aircraft IDs. PilotAware is the only system we know that is also receiving this feed simultaneously with SafeSky. The ID transmission was not taking into account the custom hex code in the transmission, which created confusion for deduplicating traffic. This is not the case any more.

Thanks a lot for your help on this. Please let us know on your next flight if this is working fine now.

Fly Safe,

Tristan

Excellent and well done for finding the issue so quickly.

I’ll await the update and test next time I fly which will be at the end of this week.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Regards
Trevor

Merci Trevor.

For information, it’s a backend fix we have deployed, no app update needed :slight_smile:

Fly Safe,

Tristan

I have been monitoring this today, and have seen the following

000050 : SKY000050>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083915h4530.85N/00540.71E’136/003/A=000958 !W28! id20000050 +000fpm gps5x3
130AD4 : SKY130AD4>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083914h4218.55N/00520.06W’013/106/A=003871 !W79! id20130AD4 +000fpm gps2x1
19BAB8 : SKY19BAB8>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083917h5852.11N/00927.13E’239/083/A=001256 !W21! id2019BAB8 +000fpm gps5x3
2310D7 : SKY2310D7>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083921h4703.59N/00646.00E’221/071/A=004055 !W97! id202310D7 +006fpm gps5x3
25900F : SKY25900F>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083938h4913.55N/00308.41E’234/077/A=001883 !W27! id2025900F +000fpm gps5x3
2E1480 : SKY2E1480>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083915h4217.10N/00520.05W’013/124/A=003900 !W70! id202E1480 +003fpm gps5x3
35311F : SKY35311F>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083919h4209.56N/00823.93W’025/048/A=001282 !W88! id2035311F +003fpm gps5x3
38A77D : SKY38A77D>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083951h4516.54N/00027.37W’434/000/A=000127 !W66! id2038A77D +000fpm gps5x4
38B810 : SKY38B810>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083915h4440.82N/00109.51W’282/104/A=001679 !W49! id2038B810 -003fpm gps2x1
395D9C : SKY395D9C>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083915h4440.31N/00554.55E’049/060/A=006138 !W83! id20395D9C +003fpm gps5x4
3DF39E : SKY3DF39E>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083921h5251.43N/00812.54E’214/091/A=000702 !W28! id0C3DF39E +000fpm gps4x1
48FD60 : SKY48FD60>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083915h5359.04N/01626.91E’290/099/A=004435 !W20! id2048FD60 +000fpm gps4x1
64F92B : SKY64F92B>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083915h4127.59N/00237.20W’206/085/A=005393 !W28! id2064F92B +000fpm gps5x6
934DF9 : SKY934DF9>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/083915h4749.84N/01613.49E’280/003/A=000902 !W95! id20934DF9 +000fpm gps5x6
These are (in the most part) already allocated, as you can see here

http://www.aerotransport.org/html/ICAO_hex_decode.html

Also I enabled my device and entered code 400123 , but saw the following sent out

444111 : SKY444111>OGNSKY,qAS,SafeSky:/084818h5223.53N/00127.45W’316/000/A=000239 !W14! id20444111 +000fpm gps5x3

So there is still an issue.

1 Like

Duplicate with Ghosting on Skydemon - #17 by SafeSky

Let’s continue on the other thread,

Tristan