Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
By Lefty
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1845757
Whilst I would like the option to fit an external antenna, having led design and development teams for various RF transceiver devices, I am only too aware of the complexities of designing devices with both an internal and external antennae.
External antennae devices are by far the easiest to design and build.
Internal antennae devices are difficult to get right because of the RF energy interfering with the onboard electronics.

Having both internal and external is far more complex as you have to automatically detect the presence of an external antenna - and then switch the RF signal away from the internal antenna and onto the external one.

I would expect that to fit an optional external antenna to SkyEcho would increase the size by something like 50%. Still not big, but loosing some of SkyEcho’s attractiveness for small cockpits.
By Crash one
#1845763
Straight Level wrote:15 posts about a variable brightness LED. The weather must be bad ;-)


It is windy and raining at the 56 parallel :D
#1845795
Straight Level wrote:15 posts about a variable brightness LED. The weather must be bad ;-)

and unless I've missed it, nobody's pointed out that it's controllable via the Wifi settings page - you can even make the LEDs flash to show they're working.

Comme ça
:thumleft:

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PS. That's not in the manual - you need a SkyEcho to find it :whistle:
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By gaznav
#1845809
@Cub

it does work very well for short range air/air interaction in accordance with a published standard within the aviation spectrum


You just said short range “air to air”, but this seems pretty reasonable in a Cessna 172 for “air to ground” with a CAP1391 SkyEcho2 - I wonder if it is flying around a set of higher performing ATOM ground stations?

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#1845849
gaznav wrote:You just said short range “air to air”, but this seems pretty reasonable in a Cessna 172 for “air to ground” with a CAP1391 SkyEcho2 - I wonder if it is flying around a set of higher performing ATOM ground stations?

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Maybe the Atom station is detecting the LED? (keeping thread on topic).
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By HedgeSparrow
#1845872
HedgeSparrow wrote:... unless I've missed it, nobody's pointed out that it's controllable via the Wifi settings page - you can even make the LEDs flash to show they're working...

Iceman wrote:I wrote that in my first post on the thread.

Iceman 8)


So you did - I grovel :salut:
#1845896
I have recently heard from a 'source' that in order to mitigate the low range seen on poorly installed SE2, Pilot Aware are upgrading the ATOM ground station network with new PROTON 430Thz technology. Using the latest patented technology will allow the ground stations to 'optronically phase leverage' the variable brightness LED within SE2. Set the brightness to maximum using the slider on the SE2 settings page for best long range detection by the new Phase Receiving Optical Transponder Optical Network PROTONTM stations.

Data gathered during prototype testing and analysed by VECTOR below, shows the 100% coverage using the new 403Thz protocol out to 60km which not only out performs the old 1090mhz technology, also has the additional advantage that it can not be tracked by any of the flight tracking websites, therefore ensuring your privacy.

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Crash one, HedgeSparrow, gaznav and 2 others liked this