Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By gaznav
#1659953
cecilthecat wrote:Gaz, How do you get just the traffic screen to show on a phone running SD ?


Hi Cecil, when you are running in “Go Flying” then touch on the SkyDemon logo on the top left and select the “Traffic” option. :thumright:

Page 86 of the SkyDemon Manual:

If you have a smartphone running SkyDemon, the Traffic Radar is not displayed automatically in the corner of the screen, but instead it can be viewed as a full-screen display, which you might like to use as a complement to the normal map view on your main tablet. To bring up the full-screen Traffic instrument on your phone just open the main navigation menu by tapping the blue SkyDemon icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen, then choose ‘Traffic’.
kanga, Flyin'Dutch' liked this
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By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1660097
The weight of all that traffic seems to have tipped the country over.

Shoestring Flyer wrote:I wonder why the decision was taken to equip SkyEcho2 with Flarm and not the better range of PowerFlarm?


It doesn't have either, it's just a receiver.
gaznav liked this
#1660326
Shoestring Flyer wrote:
uAvionix-Ramsey wrote:All Flarm products use the same protocol and frequency (in Europe). PowerFlarm is a specific product which uses high-gain antennas to get a better reception range.


Thanks for that...Every day you learn something new! :D


I'm happy to be corrected, but Power Flarm has nothing to do with "high gain antennas"

From the Flarm web site:-
"With higher power and more sensitive radio receivers, range is increased for both sender and receiver, from around 3 km for old Classic FLARM to typically more than 10 km for PowerFLARM."
Image
Classic flarm 25mw Tx power and Power Flarm 40mw TX power.
Even so, the 'a bit more powerful 'Flarm' :lol: is puny compared to the 500mw of PAW (12x) and 20W (500x) of Skyecho.

The quoted range of 10km is PF to PF, this will be somewhere in-between 3 and 10km when the link is PF to Classic Flarm. Put the pilot or parts of the airframe in the way and the range is much less.

SL
#1660343
[quote="gaznav"]SL

If I may? There is an AV-75 antenna for PFLARM that vastly improves its range:

https://www.navboys.com/PWRFLARMCOREXTANTTOP.html

Gaz,

Are you saying that in order to achieve the quoted 10km Power Flarm range you need to fit a £200 antenna?

I don't disagree with the fact that antennas can improve range, just that the reason Power Flarm has better range is not due "high gain antennas" as stated by uAvionicsRamsey, but for the reasons I copied from the Flarm website .

In this application a high gain antenna is exactly what you don't want as gain results in directivity .

SL
User avatar
By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1660350
Straight Level wrote:In this application a high gain antenna is exactly what you don't want as gain results in directivity .


An external antenna is probably going to be better than one sitting somewhere within the cockpit. Also a colinear antenna (not saying that's what this is) will provide gain by flattening the "doughnut". I would suggest that horizontal range is more important than a good spherical omnidirectional pattern. Also saying that, it might not be a bad thing if there's a bit more gain in the forward direction.
gaznav, Ian Melville liked this
By Buzz53
#1660360
“High gain” is poor terminology in that brochure. It’s surely just a normal omni antenna but mounted out in the open where it can work properly and consistently. It looks very pretty but I don’t think you need anything as snazzy as that, for example PAW sell a variation on the normal transponder rod. I believe the RAF Grob’s have always had external Flarm antennae and it’s noticeable how comprehensively they are tracked even when operating outside areas with dense ground receivers. I share the concerns that the little internal antenna in SkyEcho is going to give disappointing results on Flarm for power people who always seem to want quite long range reception, but would be happy to be wrong.

Classic Flarm is nominally “less than 10mW”, I measured 8mW from mine.
Power Flarm is limited by regulation in Europe to 25mW hence “up to three times” more powerful.
My PAW only seems to manages 250mW but maybe it’s broken!

Classic Flarm has quite a deaf receiver, PowerFlarm is said to be twice as sensitive. I have been dabbling with the SoftRF unit that TerryWs has mentioned, and it also seems to be about twice as sensitive as my Classic Flarm. Its transmitter will comfortably do the permitted 25mW. I think this is a very interesting little unit although maybe a bit geeky at this stage.

Peak power is misleading in comparing these systems, amongst many other things you also need to consider the system bandwidth which has an inverse effect on range. ADSB is about 1MHz, Flarm and PAW maybe 25kHz-ish. Clearly 20W ADSB is going to go further but not as much as the raw power numbers might suggest. Nor do I see the increase the range of PAW over Flarm that the numbers imply so there is something else going on there too. Another important factor is the presence of interfering signals, and in that respect the ADSB frequency is protected. Flarm hops between two frequencies to try to mitigate this and in practice it doesn’t (yet) seem to be an issue (perhaps surprisingly, given it is a free-for-all band).

Alan
gaznav, Straight Level liked this
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