Years later, I have a new bit of info on this mysterious product “which cannot possibly work as described” 
I’ve read an account from one owner, saying that the ATD300 gives you relative altitude, distance estimated by signal strength, and with a “special antenna” it can tell you if the target is in front or behind.
mm_flynn wrote:
I passed on the powerflarm because I hoped to have something ‘installed’ to display on the 530, but the European powerflarm manually says ‘do not install in US aircraft’ which makes it a bit challenging to get an avionics shop to install it anyhow !.
The issue is with FCC IIRC. I vaguely recall that the frequency used by the European version can’t be used in the US. They eventually did a US version but it uses a different frequency. Just as a little side note if someone wants to investigate further.
While the reason for the restriction on installation is the different radio frequency usage (and FCC not FAA issue), my avionics shop took a view that installing something where the instruction manual explicitly forbid the installation wasn’t something they were comfortable doing.
Martin wrote:
The issue is with FCC IIRC. I vaguely recall that the frequency used by the European version can’t be used in the US
Correct, the ISM frequency used in Europe is not one of the ISM frequencies in the US.
Peter wrote:
ZAON never did anything better than just resolving the four quadrants, from various people I flew with who had it.Anyway, it does look like the Monroy works a lot less well than most expected…
That 90 degrees is within the 200 degrees accuracy we defined before isn’t it? So it helps you finding your target in one or two quandrants, which is better then nothing, but a lot worse then TAS / GTS for example. So at 10x price difference, you get a 10x accuracy difference.
Which option is good for who, is up to the user to decide. Most people seem to have expectations which not meet up with the performance for these low cost systems though.
mm_flynn wrote:
I passed on the powerflarm because I hoped to have something ‘installed’ to display on the 530, but the European powerflarm manually says ‘do not install in US aircraft’ which makes it a bit challenging to get an avionics shop to install it anyhow !.
The issue is with FCC IIRC. I vaguely recall that the frequency used by the European version can’t be used in the US. They eventually did a US version but it uses a different frequency. Just as a little side note if someone wants to investigate further.
It can do better then that in ideal situations, it is not ideal, and the result is this poor resolutions, which is basically is front / back / left / right… If you consider that is suiteable, then ZAON or Monroy will suite your needs,
ZAON never did anything better than just resolving the four quadrants, from various people I flew with who had it.
Anyway, it does look like the Monroy works a lot less well than most expected… I think this is the problem. The advertising doesn’t say anything about this.
Steve6443 wrote:
Could you clarify what you mean, it doesn’t pick up 1090-ES Data?
If you have an target which has ADS-B out, you will not benefit from ADS-B (GPS) data, as this unit does not process ADS-B data. It only reads mode A and C. So ADS-B or non ADS-B aircraft will be displayed with the same poor resolution.
Peter wrote:
but it looks like this will give only front/back/left/right resolution, with the type of antenna likely to be used here. Like the old ZAON did.
It can do better then that in ideal situations, it is not ideal, and the result is this poor resolutions, which is basically is front / back / left / right… If you consider that is suiteable, then ZAON or Monroy will suite your needs, if you need / want better accuracy you should be looking at different systems, such as TAS or other types of systems such as Flarm / ADS-B.
mm_flynn wrote:
Overall, it is not my best investment ever! Annoyingly, it doesn’t pickup 1090-ES data, so in that sense is less useful than say a powerflarm for decting mode-S traffic. I passed on the powerflarm because I hoped to have something ‘installed’ to display on the 530, but the European powerflarm manually says ‘do not install in US aircraft’ which makes it a bit challenging to get an avionics shop to install it anyhow !.
Could you clarify what you mean, it doesn’t pick up 1090-ES Data?
