I’m converting an experimental from G3X Touch to the new Garmin AXIS (dual GDU 116B) and have hit something I think will matter to a lot of us in Europe, so flagging it early.
On the G3X, my PowerFLARM Fusion feeds traffic over serial in Garmin TIS-A format and FLARM targets show on the PFD — the standard trick many of us use. On AXIS (Rev 1) that path appears to be gone:
So as far as I can tell, on AXIS today there is no direct way to get FLARM traffic onto the displays — the only third-party route is via a GTX 345 transponder (I have a GTX 35R, Out-only), and I’m not even sure a GTX 345 ingests PowerFLARM. Fallback is FLARM audio into the audio panel + traffic on a tablet (SkyDemon etc.), which covers the alert but not the panel picture we’re used to.
Questions for the group:
1. Has anyone confirmed this with Garmin (or found it works)? Am I missing an input path?
2. Does a GTX 345 actually accept a PowerFLARM feed, and how?
3. Anyone else in Europe looking at AXIS and weighing this? It seems like a real regression from G3X for FLARM country, and worth a collective nudge to Garmin if so.
Given the US-centric early adoption, I suspect we’re early to this. Keen to hear if others have better info.
Don’t know if they’d be willing to answer, but you might ask Bristell if their plans for rolling out AXIS on the B23 at the end of the year include support for FLARM and how they plan to do it.
One other way to do it would be a cheap GDL50 instead of a GTX345 for ADS-B in and a Golze ADL that will take FLARM RS232 and radiate the targets as a low-power ADS-B ground station.
Certainly slightly convoluted but it‘s a possible way and also gives you weather on the panel (which now in Switzerland the experimental FIS-B stations do as well).
You might also contact the FLARM guys directly to see if they have any visibility on this issue. I’ve found them to be quite responsive.
mri wrote:
One other way to do it would be a cheap GDL50 instead of a GTX345 for ADS-B in and a Golze ADL
Yes that works. The only question here is if the Axis will work with the cheaper GDL50 or only talk to the expensive GTX345?
The cheaper configuration would be GTX345 (or maybe GDL50R) receiving the ADS-B traffic and ADL150B/ADL190 injecting the Flarm traffic.
The high end configuration woudl be GTX345 with active traffic system connected and then the ADL150B/ADL190 injecting the Flarm traffic. That is, as far as I know, the only solution to have all three ADS-B, active traffic and Flarm display on a single Garmin display. That is what we all want but unfortunately it is expensive while the ADL part is the cheapest puzzle piece in there.
Indeed, you would need something to “whitewash” the traffic for you. Yet another option would be to use an RPi (or build something around ESP32 – more work because being an MCU it doesn’t simply run desktop software) and inject FLARM traffic into Axis via Connext.
I ran a thread here on merging TAS, ADS-B and FLARM traffic and feeding it into my traffic displays.
Obviously this is “illegal” (no STC support 
) but it can be done. The TRX1500 was one component. This is much less work than an RPI and it does serial and ARINC429, but the CNC boxed version, much more suitable for aircraft mounting, is not shown there. In an uncertified plane, this is all legal.
Garmin lists the GDL50(R) as compatible.
Peter wrote:
Obviously this is “illegal”
If you inject it via Bluetooth over Connext impersonating GDL 50, there are no physical connections between devices, and you are using exactly the interface that is supposed to be used for this purpose and the way it is supposed to be used. I wonder what the legality of that is. I guess it might be a gray zone. Last time I was trying to find a legal foundation for connecting an ICfly (the OEM version of Air Connect) to TRX-1500, we managed to do it under CS-STAN CS-SC051d .
