Sebastian_G wrote:
- Judging reception range using normal other traffic is difficult as you do not know how their installation performs and you can fly for a long time without finding a suitable target. But at least in Germany there are quite some FLARM installed on wind farms.
“Range” is not very well defined term when in comes to FLARM in particular or traffic systems in general.
The manufacturer itself at least in the past used “furthest distance where a valid datapoint has been captured in a certain timeframe” which leads to great numbers for marketing but obviously is completely useless for practical purposes.
The most useful definition would be something like “distance in which 95% of all other flarm equipped aircraft are safely detected” would a) lead to too low numbers in the mind of many and b) is difficult to evaluate and therefore could only be done for some few reference installation and not for every aircraft"
To define the range in terms of best possible senders like windfarm markers, doesn’t seem to me as being the best choice for the intended purpose.
Having talked to some of glidings luminary’s who have been using FLARM a since it first appeared and the following opinions have been voiced, while FLARM was intended as a collision avoidance device the more competitive glider pilots are using FLARM as a strategic device to observe other competitors .
The general opinion is that FLARM performance is all about the antennas with targets observed at a maximum distance IRO 42km provided the target glider is playing the same game with a good system and first class antennas.
Normal detection for those of us who are using FLARM as an anti collision system the average detection range is considered to be 5-12 Km from average systems with badly installed or portable systems giving warnings at a minimum of 2Km .
The bottom line seems to be that if you have a well installed FLARM system even if you encounter an aircraft with an old and poorly fitted FLARM unit you will get ( just ) enough warning to do something about the warning.
