21 implementing the US’s ADS-B network. “I became a part of that program, first tangentially by delivering solutions to airports and airlines based on surveillance data, cloud systems and so forth, but eventually going on to become deputy program manager on the ADS-B program itself, learning how to run and manage an airspace network,” Ramsey continues. Concurrently (around 2013), the FAA published a paper that detailed a roadmap for integrating UAVs into the national airspace (NAS). That paper highlighted two core areas of technology that needed further advancement for UAVs to integrate safely: detect-and-avoid (DAA) and command and control (C2). “As I had access to a host of ADS-B and surveillance data, which I realised could be hugely valuable for creating DAA systems, I put together a pitch to Harris explaining how I could use the former to design the latter, got some seed funding, and started running r&d for UAS DAA for them,” Ramsey recounts. “And around 2015, I met Paul Beard, the founder [today CTO] of uAvionix. It was a vital meeting because we also needed miniaturised versions of ADS-B transponders for UAVs, and that’s precisely what his team was working on. Seeing the good fit with what we were doing at Harris, he convinced me to come and join.” The age of ADS-B In its pursuit of a complete ecosystem for integrating UAVs into NASs, uAvionix has since developed a range of solutions for general aviation (GA) aircraft, defence aircraft and ground support systems. “Those categories sprung up in somewhat distinct eras, each being reflective of what was happening in the industry at the time,” Ramsey recounts. “In 2016, commercial drones were just getting started: DJI Phantom 4s were still new, and the FAA and RTCA and other key standards-setters were more focused on military applications, like how to fly a Predator in the NAS. It wasn’t about certifying and integrating small things.” Nonetheless, uAvionix had brought together considerable talent to miniaturise transponders and related tech from systems the size of a CB radio down to being smartphone-sized (and reasonably priced). However, the company soon learned that crewed aircraft owners and fleet managers, having procured their ADS-B system avionics, were then having to pay avionics workshops an equivalent fee to install the systems on their aircraft. On top of that doubled price tag, the FAA’s 2020 mandate for ADS-B was looming, meaning such workshops were fully booked (with groaning backlogs) by aviation companies frantically trying to get their ADS-B systems integrated by trained specialists. “Shops were picking and choosing which jobs they took, largely prioritising the full cockpit overhauls way ahead of the simple box installations because the former were way more profitable,” Ramsey continues. “Because this was such a huge problem in 2018-2019, leading up to the deadline, we came up with the idea of SkyBeacon, our ADS-B wingtip add-on, as an easily installed solution.” Upon displaying SkyBeacon at the Oshkosh Air Show, uAvionix was surprised to find an increasing number of FAA personnel coming by to see the product. Over the course of several follow-up meetings, its agents expressed their wish to certify SkyBeacon as a means of resolving the severe bottleneck in ADS-B adoption across commercial and general aviation. “We’d never certified anything, ever! But it became a top-down directive from the FAA Administrator to help us get that certified,” Ramsey muses. “So, we learned certification, with a lot of priority from the FAA’s end in advising how we could certify not just a transponder we’d built but also a commercial GPS receiver that formed a key part of it.” That propelled the build-up of the company’s GA portfolio through product reconfigurations and acquisitions, as did restrictions on ADS-B Out systems for UAVs (because the FAA had spent $2 billion on a nationwide ADS-B infrastructure for commercial aviation that was not scaled to accommodate the number of UAVs that Amazon and Google were projecting). “After that 2016-2019 period of expanding from UAVs into GA, we were invited to join another company’s SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research] program for developing a Mode 5 IFF [Identification Friend or Foe] defence transponder, whose former partner hadn’t done well meeting the miniaturisation objectives,” Ramsey continues. Christian Ramsey | In conversation Uncrewed Systems Technology | August/September 2025 Miniaturising and certifying transponder, C2 and other solutions has taken exhaustive blanksheet engineering work, as well as experimentation with unconventional components
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