Over the past couple of years the FFA have been carrying out a study within some clubs trying out a TCAS/TAS system called Flying Neurons.
Yesterday I flew with someone who is testing it out. Basically it is an ADSB out system plus it sees ADSB, mode C and mode S (anything that would normally be seen on a secodary surveillance radar) . The system also has a Flarm system called NeuroFLARM which can be seen by other Flarms and see other Flarm and Power Flarm outputs. All this can be seen on any system which accepts the GDL90 protocol (whatever that means) such as SDVFR, EasyVFR, Foreflight and Skydemon. Via bluetooth? (and now you can tell I don’t know what I’m talking about) And an App called NeuroFly.
I got to see how it worked on a SDVFR and Skydemon with the gliding club. I was pretty impressed but it was only a short flight and the gliding club had been using FLARM for a long time but it did pick up club’s DA40 doing a discovery flight all the way around its route probably a range of 15km to 20km.
According to the gliding club the whole thing only weighs about 50grammes and it cost them about €1250 including taxes and they fitted themselves in less than an hour.
I do not have anything to do with Flying Neurons but I think the President of the gliding club might well have been trying to persuade the flying club to order a system for the DA40 and the ULM so that we could order in bulk and get a very good discount.
Unless it is actually giving steering/Avoidance instruction it isn’t TCAS…Sounds very much like Pilot Aware?? But independent and with the ADSB/Flarm out added. However the Pilot aware system has a grid/net function whereby modules communicate between each other and ground stations for added info.
I believe it’s only non-directional Mode-S traffic awareness?
No it is directional. I could see on the Skydemon and SDVFR screens exactly where the DA40 and the gliders were. There was a green line depicting the route of some aircraft which were not conflictual, a red line with the route of an aircraft which might turn out to.be conflictual and an amber beam leading from the aircraft I was in to the DA40 which had I have seen by mk1 eyeball was in a zone of conflict but moving away. The guy I was flying with said there is also an audible warning but he’d switched it off due to the fact that the aircraft we were in is normally the glider tug and it was driving him mad.
Perhaps @Capitaine might have seen information on the system in Info Pilote. I am told they have run several detailed articles on the system.
I will try to find out more. Maybe I was just impressed at seeing all these gliders and a couple of aircraft around me on my SkyDemon and exactly where to look, when I I couldn’t see all of them, looking out.
I did a google on NeuroFLARM and got here which is the core product, and then you connect it with this to get FLARM in/out.
There is nothing directional there; any bearing (azimuth) data on transponder traffic must be coming from a ground station, unless the target is also ADS-B OUT in which case it is obviously displaying that and not Mode S.
AIUI there are 4parts to this system, maybe more. There is the internal aerial, there is the bit that picks up mode C and mode S directly in from transponders (don’t forget that most French aircraft have at least a mode C transponder) They see what an SSR transponder sees. They also pick up ADSB signals.Then there is an additional box which allows one to see Flarm and PowerFlarm etc. Then there is the App which allows you to put this information on your tablet or your smartphone. With the
right protocols the information of the position of the transmitting aircraft can be seen on SDVFR, Skydemon, FF etc.
@ Peter I think you have only looked up the Flarm part of this system as in NeuroFlarm which I believe gliders have been using for some time in competitions.
On the tablet and smartphone I saw, iy definately shows the position of mode S equipped aircraft.
I will have to see if I can find some back copies of Info Pilote as I do not subscribe to it anymore.
The first mention I saw of Flying Neurones was in the RSA mag for Annexe 1.
But I believe it can be used in certified aircraft now, although 1 piece needs to be installed in a maintenance shop. Don’t know which piece. It’s difficult to take in all this technology on a short demonstration flight🙂
I can only say it looked pretty good to me but I understand the FFA is still evaluating the feedback from users.
Azimuth on Mode C/S is a very old topic and the products which do it are
You need a directional antenna and thus far nobody has made a compact one, for fairly basic physics/wavelength reasons.
The core Neuron product is this
which is definitely non directional.
That might be the core. But it is not the system.The system being used here shows the actual position of the traffic with a trailing line showing the route. You see on SD or SDVFR or I presume FF exactly where the traffic is. It is nothing like the Zaon box. It is more akin to what you can get on your smartphone when you can get a connection whilst in the air. AIUI.
I’ll try to find out more but I did forget to mention that we had to pair the tablet with the system via bluetooth and it came up on the tablet as a split screen SD on one side and NeuroFly map on the other half. I didn’t set ot all up so I don’t know if you can superimpose one on the other or not.
I’m told that there is a report in the June issue of Info Pilote but the system was described in an earlier edition when the study first started.
There is a recent product (can’t find the thread right now) which uses a server on 3G/4G mobile data to distribute traffic data.
Obviously it works only at very low levels, but that may be fine for this market (standard aeroclub traffic).
gallois wrote:
The system being used here shows the actual position of the traffic with a trailing line showing the route.
I think you’ll find that those readouts are for aircraft with ADS-B OUT, which includes GPS position in the transmission. That information can be used to track the aircraft in question.
