I had another grand day out with a borrowed FLARM and formation with a mate in his Skybolt - both of us with SkyEcho 2s. He could see my FLARM at around 5nm most of the time - so, again, as aircraft to aircraft, that is good enough for me (and that is the normal detection range for FLARM to FLARM).
I had a look at the PA28’s stack and it looked like it has Garmin GTX ES transponder. The Ops Manager wasn’t about so I couldn’t see much more. However, I saw another couple of aircraft today that were of interest. The first was a Twin Commanche that had no red circle around it:
Again I saw the aircraft and it was exactly where it was showing on SkyDemon.
Later on, whilst flying around with the Skybolt (SBOL) then I could see his SkyEcho 2 with no circle around it. But a 2nm circle around a Cessna 182 at Turweston (at first I thought they had their ATZ back!!!) sitting at the hold for Rwy 27.
I then watched it take off with the same 2nm circle around it. Again, this is a certified EASA Cessna 182 and so I was surprised that it was not reporting a better position quality (just like the others that I had seen over the last few days).
I still can’t see how this is a SkyEcho issue as I saw a Twin Commanche displaying normally, a Skybolt displaying its position normally via its SkyEcho 2 and now another certified aircraft displaying this red circle of uncertainty.
Finally, another first today. One of the Forumites asked how SkyEcho 2 performs during aerobatics. Well I watched the Skybolt fly a series of loops and rolls about 2nm from me and I could see his position and relative height displayed to my SkyDemon display accurately. Obviously, the sample rate is once or twice a second so it didn’t track everything, but I could certainly see there was an aircraft there doing things within a small piece of sky above and below relative to my own aircraft.
Anyway, I’m kind of done with flying for the next couple of weeks now whilst the other part of the day job catches up. But I will certainly be keeping a weather eye on others’ experiences with these new ‘circle of uncertainity’ depictions.