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In the US there are Flight Information Services Broadcast (FIS-B) transmitters strategically located to provide WX, NOTAMS and other flight information utilizing the ADS-B infrastructure. ADS-B has two physical layers, being the Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) and a 1090 mHz Extended Squitter (1090 ES). FIS-B utilizes the UAT, which are located at 978 mHz.

These UATs are intended for ADS-B use, as well as FIS-B, and additionally Traffic Information Service (TIS-B). They are primarily designed to service traffic below FL180. While they are not deployed to cover all locations, some design goals of the system include having CONUS enroute coverage.

The FAA publishes a coverage map, however, it has apparently not published a list of ground UAT sites. It would be possible to scrape UAT sites and develop a database of ground facilities, however, no one has published the results of doing so, at least that I am aware of.

Having such a list would be helpful to operators such as pipeline, geophysical, agricultural and other operators who tend to fly low, yet may still wish to have FIS-B (and perhaps TIS-B) services, or at least predict where they might be available.

Furthermore, the FAA has said that there is no security provision restricting the disclosure of UATs for FIS-B. However, they have declined releasing a list of such ground facilities.

Where are the FIS-B UAT ground facilities, and has anyone compiled a list and published it for general access?

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  • $\begingroup$ Link to the FAA coverage map: faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/coverageMap $\endgroup$
    – 2NinerRomeo
    May 28, 2018 at 20:44
  • $\begingroup$ AIM 2018 7-1-11 helpfully tabulates the service available from different tier towers, but, as pointed out, there is no publicly published list of facilities to help predict when which "tier" of tower will be available. When that becomes available, I want to know about it. $\endgroup$
    – 2NinerRomeo
    May 28, 2018 at 20:45

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The FAA does publish a list of towers but no locations, only a generic coverage map.

However, the towers do broadcast their own location, and some Stratux users have collected that data and turned it into a map.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the map link. Limited testing locally shows it to be reasonably accurate. $\endgroup$
    – mongo
    Jan 6, 2020 at 14:34
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John Collins on the Beechtalk forums crowdsourced a list of the tower locations a few years ago. It may not have been complete then and there may be more now, but it's a good starting point: https://www.beechtalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=82540

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