You know I think FLARM is starting to take off (ho ho) more and more in the UK. I was looking at FR24 the other day and noticed a whole load of targets circling The Park gliding site. Clicking on them brought up the glider info.
Think I’ll fit a PowerFlarm to my aeroplane now…
FLARM is going to be standard in all small aircraft when the new EASA regulations comes in effect. This will make it much cheaper/easier to install.
It is not fair to compare suchs a site to Flight Radar 24.
Flarm has a power output of only 10 milliWatt versus 250 Watt of a KT-73 / TT-31 / GTX-330
The range is MUCH smaller, just a couple of km, as it is design to meet free ISM band requirements and forfills it’s task to collision aviodance, not for tracking.
FLARM is going to be standard in all small aircraft when the new EASA regulations comes in effect. This will make it much cheaper/easier to install.
That new regulations will be usefull to speed-up design, it will safe you 290 Euro for installation of a Flarm in most aircraft.
FR24 can also display flarm now in some areas
Presumably then some gliding sites have a FLARM receiver which is internet connected or how does the data get onto the Internet? That seems like an eminently sensible idea as it means we can have a quick look online and see if a certain gliding site has any activity around it.
By the way, does PowerFlarm need any approvals to fit? As far as I can tell it is virtually a portable system unless you mount hull antennas. I am guessing that to mount a hull antenna is a minor mod of some sort in the same way as installing a GPS antenna? In the case of N reg is this accomplished by an IA sign off?
By the way, does PowerFlarm need any approvals to fit? As far as I can tell it is virtually a portable system unless you mount hull antennas.
Only if you do a panel mount for which there are STCs. An external antenna is not going to improve things according to the PowerFLARM developers as the additional cable length will more than offset the improved reception. I keep it on the dashboard with a second antenna on the door post inside and I rarely ever miss traffic (things I see are on PowerFLARM, things I get told by ATC/FIS is on PowerFLARM).
Are there any FLARM receivers whose output can be merged into the ARINC429 data stream coming out of a TAS605 or similar TCAS box (in a manner similar to what I believe a GDL88 can do with ADS-B data) and which come with an FAA STC?
If no STC, then to keep things strictly legal you will probably need to do a Field Approval which is very difficult to do in Europe.
How many inputs does a GDL88 have? For FLARM and ADS-B it would need 3 inputs.
Speaking of which, I was wondering if PF can accept a TIS input from the likes of a Zaon XRX and then output the combined traffic (Flarm / Mode C) onto one display? I plug the Zaon into the Garmin GPS which displays traffic quite well (range / azimuth / height) but it would be best if I had all the traffic on one screen (whether it be the iPad or Garmin GPS) rather than multiple traffic screens. I prefer to show it on the Garmin Aera as this is wired into the audio system so you get a traffic annunciation.
I see PF has a TIS output, which I believe will only output the FLARM data to a compatible GPS (like the Garmin) ?
