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Old September 4th 12, 03:14 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
kirk.stant
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Posts: 1,260
Default PowerFLARM protocol version 6

Ok, I finally picked up a couple of ADS-B targets Monday evening - first what appeared to be a bizjet, then an AA (American Airlines?) into STL.

Got the same bug where the ADS-B callsign (AA1) sticks at the bottom of the display after the track is gone. Annoying, but not a big deal.

With my antenna in the car (hanging from the mirror), I'm getting initial PCAS hits at about 3 miles, but they then hang on until reaching the 5 mile PCAS limit set in the config file (9250m). It does seem that the PFB has a delay identifying and displaying PCAS track at first.

On first look, I would say the Butterfly people need to tweak their PCAS display a bit for the US market: the distance ring needs to be thicker (and green if no conflict (above/below), the altitude font needs to be bigger, and it would be nice if there was a digital readout of range on the side.

I would like a single beep when the display changes to show traffic and whenever a new track is displayed, then maybe 3 beeps when traffic gets close enough to be a threat.

Also, a nice enhancement would be the capability to display local time in the center of the display (below the UTC time, in a bigger font) when not on the radar display. Add a config to set UTC offset, and choice of 12 or 24 hour clock. And make that goofy red butterfly smaller!

As previously mentioned in another thread somewhere - it's definitely worth your time to play with this thing on the ground before flying with it - too bad there isn't a simulation mode to show all the various displays.

Kirk
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