Peter
I wish your post #40 had been post #2. It makes me wonder what I have bought.
You have bought the very best there is 
In fact you have bought the only thing that actually works at all…
5nm is plenty. It’s almost impossible to spot a light GA target beyond that.
Plus, your installation may work a lot better than mine, which was bodged by a Grade A bodger.
Finally, since mine does show bizjet etc targets to 15nm (not head-on, as described earlier) it does suggest a lot of the deficiency is poor transponder installations in the other aircraft.
I agree with Peter. It is a nice bit of kit. There are some issues with these as well, quite rare though. Most issues with these units are due to incorrect installation, mainly on the RF side (coax cables and antennas).
Thanks chaps, I’m breathing properly again.
A quick update. I’m in my forth week of installing the TAS600 in my RV. It’s been a lot of work but I am lucky that I am in the hangar next to RGV who are the suppliers and they have given me a lot of useful guidance and help. The display will be on the GTN750 and audio on the GMA35. The Avidyne box and encoder are mounted on the starboard side of the luggage bay. The box is about 12ib and this was the only place that had strong enough fixing points, there was also plenty of room. In the next few days the installation should be complete, circuits tested and I will be able to ground test. I’ll post another update.
Expensive TCAS 1 such as Skywatch and TCAS 2 definitely sees targets a lot further out than 5 miles, including light GA. I think that tends to point towards limited performance of the TAS600 installation on SEPs. Maybe the propellor is an issue looking forward? That’s a bit of an issue as it’s what’s in front that worries me…..
Not convinced by this prop obstruction stuff on SEPs. A quick calculation shows in the cruise his prop is rotating once every 3 metres or so.
As we know that is plenty slow enough to let birds fly though it untouched so I can’t see him missing too many microsecond length responses to his pings
As to target range, 5 miles is 1 minute warning at a closing speed of 260kts or 30 second warning at 520kts. Even 30 seconds is plenty enough time to react when the TAS600 is audibly telling you exactly where it is. No need to look at a screen to decide.
At typical light GA closing speeds he should have 1 minute, enough time for a sip of coffee and relaxed fart before reacting :)
We will see…
Neil
I can’t see much advantage in the Skywatch system for my particular application.
http://www.avidyne.com/publications/guides/AV679_Choosing_Traffic.pdf
Chart on page 12-13.
The canopy went back on this morning and the TAS installation was finally completed after five weeks. Ground testing looked OK so we went for a test flight. Everything seemed to work exactly as it should which was a great relief. Still some testing to do but first impressions are really good. We had concerns about the top antennas view “through” the prop, several loops of coax in the back end (min cable length is 15’) our own ability etc. but it seems all our concerns were unfounded. Very many thanks to SteveN, RGV and the forum for help and support.
