The closest thing I’ve seen to what you’re seeking Peter is the TRX-1500A mentioned in the first post of this thread. Since it shows Flarm & ADS-B In (Mode S with squitter & GPS) but doesn’t show Mode A/C/plain S, it could be a good fit with your TAS. The tricky question might be connection to your display or its replacement. I don’t know if an EASA minor change approval is of any use on an N-reg (i.e. to convince a US A&P to also sign it off as minor).
The problem is that (most) screens accept only one traffic source.
So it would need a merging unit to work out two sources.
This is what the GTX345 does.
Not sure the TRX1500 is able to do that.
This lines up with the stuff here and is basically a debate on what (if any) traffic of the kind and in the scenario which you are most likely to hit is emitting any of the “non- or less-certified” conspicuity signals but is not flying with a transponder.
Personally I just can’t see it. Who would go to the trouble of rigging up any of these things and not have a transponder turned on?
* as posts above show, it would be trivial to monitor Flarm from one or more centrally located receivers, and automatically alarm on CAS busts, so you can bet somebody is already thinking about it, if not actually doing it (but they would need an ATC radar trace to support any action).
Good point about the certification. I think most people would just get a “legal” installation done and as far as interconnections go, hook it up and say nothing. The whole topic of what may be connected to what is debatable. The absolutely strict position, under both FAA and EASA, is that any connection not covered by an STC / Field Approval / shown in an installation manual is illegal. In reality most people in the avionics business think this is ridiculous because it would render even data collection (e.g. connecting a data logger to the NMEA output of a panel mounted GPS) illegal.
However the problem with traffic is that you need to merge it somehow. It would be damn confusing if you were picking up an un-merged target showing as two, a mile apart. I have no idea how you would merge any of this stuff. Merging works with ADS-B-emitting traffic and TAS-visible traffic because it all carries a Mode S transponder (you cannot have ADS-B OUT without a Mode S transponder) because the 24-bit aircraft ID is common to both Mode S and ADS-B. But you can’t merge in the other stuff except by making various possibly dodgy assumptions.
buzz53 wrote:
Out of interest, right now the OGN (=Flarm) tracker system is showing a pair of aircraft over northern England doing 200kt+ at 20000 feet, received by e.g. a groundstation at Cambridge 174km away. Pretty good for 10mW and suggests that those who “never see Flarm targets” maybe need a better antenna! I presume these are the RAF Tucanos.Most of the other blue (power) targets on there are the RAF Grobs. Very few PAW targets are ever shown which makes me a bit sceptical about the actual utilisation of that system, despite apparently 1500 units sold).
http://live.glidernet.org/#c=53.06144,-0.35008&z=8&s=1&u=i
Alan
Alan, how are the different sources (PAW, FLARM) depicted on that map? Also are there historic data available?
Here’s the instructions, which you may already have seen:
http://live.glidernet.org/help-en.html
The data source is not shown explicitly on the graphic, but if you click on an aircraft you can see the name of the most recent receiver station. I believe the PAW receiver stations are all prefixed “PW_”. To add to the fun there is yet another airborne tracker system called “OGN” which was/is an attempt to create an open protocol system as opposed to Flarm’s encrypted one. I don’t think it has much of a following, especially in the UK. The OGN ground system receives those as well but I don’t know how you identify them.
If you uncheck the “Ignore Offline” box then you will see all flights for that day. The final position of aircraft no longer transmitting is shown in grey. I believe the OGN servers only retain the data for a short time, primarily for SAR purposes, but third parties can access the data. For example FR24 take a feed so you can see full historical data there. The targets derived in this way are identified on FR24 in the “Radar” field as “T_FLRM”, if I remember correctly (none at the moment as it’s dark)! I don’t know if PAW is shown differently on FR24.
Flarm is unique in offering various layers of privacy under the control of the aircraft owner, which means you don’t always see everybody, or they may have randomised IDs. This does not affect the collision avoidance functionality.
Alan
buzz53 wrote:
Flarm is unique in offering various layers of privacy
There are ways around flarm’s “stealth mode”. During a gliding race one wants to be positively sure he is getting a positive return of investment on his flarm unit by following the leader 
Robin_253 wrote:
There are ways around flarm’s “stealth mode”. During a gliding race one wants to be positively sure he is getting a positive return of investment on his flarm unit by following the leader
Obviously nobody on this forum would stoop to such ungentlemanly behaviour The important point is that, so far, a Flarm user who doesn’t want to be stalked can avoid being easily tracked unless by skilled and/or dedicated observers. It’s not perfect but it does make it more likely that they will participate in a collision avoidance system, which is a Good Thing in my book.
A
A report was just released yesterday regarding a collision in Switzerland in 2015 between a glider and a Diamond Katana. The glider had Flarm and the Katana had a Mode S transponder but no warning system. So neither pilot received an electronic warning. The report is in German, but here it is for anyone interested.
investigation report of a glider/Katana collision in Switzerland in 2015
Just the details describing how they reconstructed a 3D graphic model of the accident from the Flarm and AirNav Pro data in the two aircraft and radar data is interesting. The report also mentions 2 collisions and 6 airprox in Switzerland between 2013 and 2015.
Steve6443 wrote:
However it’s missing Flarm, which is my next task. To do this I will connect a Flarm mouse to the PAW using a modified USB cable. The Flarm Mouse will be velcroed to the console, replacing my MRX. The splitter from the Mouse will be in the centre console underneath the arm rest where the splitter will be plugged into the 12v socket, supplying power to the Flarm Mouse. The output from the splitter will be sent via this USB cable to the PAW and it will show all Flarm targets as well, in addition to transmitting my position to other Flarm equipped aircraft. So in the end, I will be able to see:- Mode A (proximity)
- Mode C / S (proximity and altitude differential)
- Flarm (exact position)
- ADS-B (exact position)
- PAW (exact position)
hello can you maybe keep me updated with this installation (maybe some pics and links for hardware) as I would like also to expand my PAW for FLARM
many thanks allready now
chflyer wrote:
A report was just released yesterday regarding a collision in Switzerland in 2015 between a glider and a Diamond Katana. The glider had Flarm and the Katana had a Mode S transponder but no warning system. So neither pilot received an electronic warning.
Well we hear similar stories from time to time. I remember back in the days when flarm was not hugely popular people who were selling the boxes came up with a theory that if 100% of gliders would be flarm equipped then there will be no mid air collisions. And they pressed on until they got it. Nirvana didn’t last long though. I remember very well the day when 2 flarm equipped gliders collided. Unfortunately one of pilots didn’t make it. How did they manage to hit each other? Didn’t they get a warning on their alarms? That was a wake up call for many pilots.
