PowerFLARM Fusion - anyone using it?

I went with the competitor device, Air Avionics AT-1 with 80mm Air Traffic Display. I was considering the PowerFlarm Fusion but Avionik Straubing, who did the installation, recommended the AT-1 instead. Both devices have a similar feature set. As I see it, the AT-1 with either 55 or 80mm Air Traffic Display can be mounted as one unit behind the panel, thus reducing cabling.

Keep in mind the following iPad limitation, irrelevant from (and therefore applicable to) both PowerFlarm and AT-1:
An iPad will not connect to a cellular network when connected to Wifi. In other words, receiving traffic info over Wifi renders using cellular data in flight pretty much useless. There might be a possibility to use Bluetooth – I didn’t look into that. I originally wanted to display traffic information on Skydemon but quickly realized that 1) having the possibility to download approach charts in flight using cellular is more important to me, and 2) the small display of the Air Traffic Display is sufficient for the purposes of traffic avoidance. Your use case may be different.

I recommend placing the display somewhere “high” on your panel in order to keep your eyes outside as much as possible, particularly when receiving a traffic alert! Connecting the audio out to your intercom or audio panel is advisable too.

Hope this helps!
Etienne

eurogaguest1980 wrote:

According to this Canadian reseller, you can do the config via a web browser.

As a user of that unit I can confirm that’s how you do it. Both config and software updates are done via a web browser.

In this segment there seem to be 3 quite similar products:

Funke TM350
https://www.funkeavionics.de/produkt/tm350/

Air Avionics AT-1
https://www.air-store.eu/epages/AIRStore-LuftfahrtbedarfundAvionik.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/AIRStore-LuftfahrtbedarfundAvionik/Products/AT-1

FLARM Fusion
https://flarm.com/de/produkte/powerflarm/powerflarm-fusion/

From what I hear from installers the AT-1 seems to have the biggest market share so far but I have no idea if this has any technical reasons, I can confirm the AT1 will work just fine without any FLARM display but you have to pay special attention to notice the firmware expiration date etc.

There are so many that nobody can tell them apart

Sebastian_G wrote:

In this segment there seem to be 3 quite similar products:

The Funke unit detects mode A/C transponders and not only mode S. That’s a big advantage in some countries (e.g. in Scandinavia) where mode S is not mandated for VFR.

Airborne_Again wrote:

The Funke unit detects mode A/C transponders and not only mode S. That’s a big advantage in some countries (e.g. in Scandinavia) where mode S is not mandated for VFR.

That might be an aspect but we have to remember passive mode A/C/S transponder detection is not very precise. So I would argue that those device provide 1090MHz ADS-B In and FLARM. Then they throw in free Mode A/C/S detection as an add on which might work or not. Actually some ADL devices with ADS-B will also detect passive Mode S traffic but as that feature is so delicate it is not even advertised but just thrown in for free…

Regarding Mode A/C/S detection with mode S at least you can track the same target. So the ADL device will try to calculate a rate of climb. It will also monitor the signal strength over time and try to remove a warning once it goes down significantly from its peak, assuming the target is flying away. With raw mode A/C you can do none of those things. You can not ewen really tell apart multiple targets and in real flying having multiple targets is the standard. This further limits the capabilities of a weak approach. So flying in such an environment with many Mode A/C transponders I would not pay extra to get passive Mode A/C detection but bite the bullet and buy an active traffic system…

You get no azimuth with Mode A/C/S detection – in all these boxes. Many many threads on that aspect. The marketing is deliberately misleading, playing on the widespread lack of understanding of how this works.

etn wrote:

etn19-Sep-22 13:0632
I went with the competitor device, Air Avionics AT-1 with 80mm Air Traffic Display. I was considering the PowerFlarm Fusion but Avionik Straubing, who did the installation, recommended the AT-1 instead. Both devices have a similar feature set. As I see it, the AT-1 with either 55 or 80mm Air Traffic Display can be mounted as one unit behind the panel, thus reducing cabling.

Keep in mind the following iPad limitation, irrelevant from (and therefore applicable to) both PowerFlarm and AT-1:
An iPad will not connect to a cellular network when connected to Wifi. In other words, receiving traffic info over Wifi renders using cellular data in flight pretty much useless. There might be a possibility to use Bluetooth___Underline___ – I didn’t look into that. I originally wanted to display traffic information on Skydemon but quickly realized that 1) having the possibility to download approach charts in flight using cellular is more important to me, and 2) the small display of the Air Traffic Display is sufficient for the purposes of traffic avoidance. Your use case may be different.

I recommend placing the display somewhere “high” on your panel in order to keep your eyes outside as much as possible, particularly when receiving a traffic alert! Connecting the audio out to your intercom or audio panel is advisable too.

Hope this helps!
Etienne

Regarding the “..There might be a possibility to use Bluetooth..”.

Do we know if it is in fact possible to use any of the 3 named units and maintain BOTH cellular network (mobile data) and WIFI received traffic info on iPad devices?

From what I read in the PowerFlarm Fusion manual, this device can connect to devices via Bluetooth, so I suppose this would be an advantage in conjunction with eg. iPad SkyDemon when utilizing both cellular network data (for downloading weather, charts etc. on the way) and Bluetooth to connect to the PowerFlarm Fusion.
I don´t think the Air Traffic AT-1 has Bluetooth.