On Sunday, October 28, 2012 2:41:51 PM UTC-5, Andy wrote:
I'd like to hear other people's experience of PCAS performance for the

portable unit. I'm particularly interested in side by side comparison

with ZAON MRX.



Yesterday I flew my PA28-180 with both the ZAON MRX and the portable

on the glareshield. Several times I saw traffic reported by the MRX

and nothing shown on PFP. In one case the MRX detected traffic 900ft

lower and 5 miles. It tracked the target as the range reduced to less

than 1.5 miles and -900 ft. I had acquired the traffic visually and

confirmed that the MRX indication was reasonable. The Power FLARM

Portable never displayed this traffic, while the MRX tracked it from

first detection at 5 miles until it had passed me and gone out to 5

miles.



There were a couple of times when PFP and MRX agreed on traffic

(similar range and same altitude) but these were the exception rather

than the rule. There were several times that PFP reported traffic

that MRX did not report and which was not seen. I suspect that these

targets resulted from confusion between the mode A and mode C

replies. FLARM has acknowledged that this is a problem, however ZAON

seem to have worked out how to resolve this ambiguity (see user manual

discussion).





Andy GY

The portable that I bought this year has alerted me to traffic that was about to fly into my thermal at least 2 times this season. It has also shown me many planes flying in my vicinity. This has usually been with wall-of-shame installations with the antennas angled over and in contact with the canopy. After reading RAS i've been quite happy that I got the portable and not the brick.