Freeflight documentation mentions an FDL-978-RXD, but that one seems to be vaporware. It is not available anywhere. I've heard of an MLB-200 or MLB-100B, but that was quite a while ago and I haven't heard any recent news.

I have an AXP-340 with an MLB-100, but traffic displayed is not the same as what I see with even a lowly Stratux home-made portable system on an iPad EFB. I would much rather have a dual-band receiver that does not need to fully rely on ground stations for most information. I think most of the planes I see are transmitting on 1090MHz, with only a few sporting UAT transponders.

I would really prefer to keep my Avidyne stack, including the IFD-540 and AXP-340, but I'm getting close to just swapping out the transponder and MLB-100 in favor of something like a Lynx NGT-9000, or maybe the new Garmin GNX375, if it can display traffic and weather on the IFD-540.

According to AviSteve:

I'm still hoping they'll come out with something like the Sandia STX360.  That is UAT Out and dual-band In.  The only thing it is missing for me are the audio alerts for traffic, which Avidyne took away from the IFD in a recent software "upgrade".

Last I heard, Sandia was stalled in certification so not sure when such a product would come to market, but that is what I want:

UAT for the output (because I would prefer to have the anonymous mode) and dual band for the input.

What is the status of the replacement for the Skytrax 100.

It's been ~2 OshKosh's ago since I was promised there's something in the works.

I've got a piece of equipment I paid for that has never worked reliably for traffic

and weather.   It irks me to think I have to fork over the money for a Garmin 345

to resolve this issue.

rpostmo

How has yours not been reliable?

There has been promises for years on this, 2 months isn't even a drop...  Don't hold your breath.

Freeflight Systems is supposed to be coming out with a dual-band solution anytime now. They said Pctober when I inquired perhaps 6 months ago. We'll see if it actually happens. 

I often get messages on the IFD that the ADS-B info is not available.

I forget the exact wording.  Even when I don't get the message, I will

rarely see any traffic....less than 10% of the time does traffic show up

on the IFD 540 and IFD100.  Weather shows up more often, but it is

overall unreliable, and thus to me pretty much worthless.

Depending on what your message(s) is/are, there are other posts on this forum that talk about how the "No TIS-B" and "No SIGMETS" messages are more of an IFD software issue.  Replacing the Skytrax would not solve that problem.

Do you have ADSB-out?  Without that, traffic data from the ground is not guaranteed.  With it, traffic should work fine, and if it doesn't, then you may have antenna installation issues, or settings in your transponder (which reports whether you can receive UAT or 1090) or your IFD that are limiting the traffic shown.

Note that if your transponder says you can receive both UAT and 1090, then the ground may not be resending 1090 targets near you (expecting you to get those directly), or may be broadcasting traffic on 1090 (expecting you to pick up that signal).  Since the Skytrax only receives UAT, you may be missing that traffic.  You can improve that situation by changing your ADSB-out settings to say you can only receive UAT (978), in which case the ground will re-send any 1090 targets in your area, and only send that data to you via UAT.  (Arguably, this situation would be less confusing if you replaced the Skytrax with a dual-band ADSB-in receiver, but you should still be getting good traffic data today if your settings are configured correctly.)

I don't know what "weather is overall unreliable" specifically means, but weather should work.  I use it all the time, and it agrees well with my yoke-mounted tablet fed from a Stratux box.  Occasionally, one will have newer weather data that the other doesn't have (and it's not always the tablet or always the IFD that gets it first...seems about 50/50) and I can't explain that, but the differences are "rare" (doesn't happen every flight) and usually don't seem to last more than 5-10 minutes.  It's like maybe a data packet got garbled, and it took the next data cycle to clean it up or something.  If it's not working consistently, then there's probably an antenna or setup problem that needs to be resolved.

There are plenty of folks flying with the MLB100/Skytrax 100 that are getting good performance from the box.  There is no reason why you can't, too.

+1.

Through a lot of searching, we found out that if your Xponder is reporting dual frequency in capability - then ground doesn't send anything, assuming you get it primarily.  Kind of a problem for those of us who have both the Skytrax and TAS-A ; the Skytrax needs the Xponder to report 978 in to get the TIS-B and ADS-R; the TAS-A needs the Xponder to report 1090 in to get the UAT rebroadcast to get all its inputs.  So you can have one or the other but not both.

And then also, there hasn't been lack of clarity around what the IFD-s send out by wifi - from what i can glean here, it is NOT a composite of active traffic and ADS-B, rather if you have a capstone-like input (Skytrax), it outputs this to tablets.

I personally have found that my Stratux seems to perform better for traffic - (but that is dual frequency in).  Weather seems to be about the same between the Stratux and the Skytrax.

Thank you all for the f/u.  I have a IFD-540, AXP-340, and the MLB-100

all installed at the same time in about late 2015.  It seemed to work adequately

after installation, and at times I have had both weather and traffic.  If it is indeed

a single band exclusion only, I'm surprised at the absence of other equipped aircraft

where I fly.  Not only that, but when I'm flying in proximity to another aircraft of

a friend that I know has ADS-B out, he doesn't show up on my screen.  I've had some

avionics work done since the original installation, but I doubt any setting changes

have occurred that might degrade the performance.   At OSH it seemed that my

problem was known and a solution was in the works.  I suspected it was a Navworx

issue...which is a dead end.  Next time back at the avionics shop (which is top-notch)

I'll ask them to go through all the settings again.

Bob