I recently “inherited” a PowerFlarm system from a flying colleague and I have to say I am quite happy with it. It does show ADS-B as well as FLARM Targets with direction and delta alt, as well as normal mode C airplanes as a ring with the alt difference. I did use it some times on recent flights and was able to detect quite a few targets following the indication of the device.
The problem are Mode C and non/ADSB Mode S aircraft who do not transmit position data. I reckon that with time this problem will eventually go away as more and more airplanes are getting equipped to transmit data, but until then all we can get from them are range rings and their Mode C alt readout.
Peter, if you read the details in my link BEARING then indeed there are other solutions but all of them have there draw backs
I have just read it. I cannot get my head around the detail but it looks like a system which detects the different time of arrival of the signal at different antennae, from different directions.
If I understood it correctly, it’s a suprising patent because this is so obvious.
To dig out this old thread, 4 years later, why has nobody produced a replacement for this box – which gives you a rough range, relative altitude, and importantly the azimuth of a Mode A/C contact?
Today, one would combine it with FLARM and maybe ADS-B IN, but today and for years to come the most valuable traffic warning aspect would be from the above.
Did Zaon patent something and somebody is sitting on the patent?
I would think for the same reason why Zaon must have gone out of business in the first place. Because nowadays, everyone in the US can get traffic from TIS-B and of course ADS-B, so the only market left is medium size GA in Europe, which happens to be in rapid decline.
The PowerFlarm does all this apart from Mode C azimuth, which frankly didn’t really work on the Zaon, in my experience at least.
