C-GMPB is a pilatus owned by the RCMP, Canada’s national police force. It often spends hours practicing left hand turns over an area. The best they have admitted to in the newspapers is “surveillance”. Tell me something I don’t already know! It used to be only visible via MLAT. Several months ago I noticed that it was transmitting ADS-B. Nice I thought. No need to depend upon MLAT. The last couple of days it is back to only mode-s & MLAT. So my question what would cause this? TIA
Thanks for the quick reply. I should have pointed out that this a/c is based in London Ontario and flies mostly in Canada. I believe the requirement for ads-b is on a different schedule here. I was watching it today on adsbx and it definitely said MLAT. Occasionally it does venture into the US though, so it must have ads-b capability.
At least the military has ADS-B waivers, so they don't need it. US CBP has waivers for their helicopters as well i think. They go a step further and use ModeC instead of ModeS to avoid even MLAT. (this is speculation based on listening to ATC and not seeing the helicopter in question over NYC) I'd expect such planes may be getting exceptions as well. Not sure how it is in Canada though.
