On Sunday, December 9, 2012 7:35:17 PM UTC-8, kd6veb wrote:
Hi Steve

I have had a portable PowerFlarm mounted with Velcro on the glare shield above the instrument panel in my glider. It is mounted at a height close to that of my eyes and is carefully orientated so that there is the least brightness attenuation when using Polaroid glasses. It is very very marginal because of the small screen and the tiny characters and symbols and in my opinion much inferior to the original Flarm used in the rest of the world.

There are other issues but I won't go into them here and now.

Would I purchase a new PowerFlarn if I lost my old one? No I would buy a Zaon MRX PCAS which I used for 3 years before installing the PowerFlarm. PowerFlarm is a work in progress which is progressing extremely slowly. I am not convinced in its present incarnation that it could be or is a viable product. I have kept mine because I would truly like PowerFlarm to be successful but I think they have got themselves into deep water biting off more than they can chew. I would like to be proven wrong but I don't think so.

Dave

Dave, c'mon that is largely hubris, PowerFLARM has had teething problems and slower getting to market than anybody wanted, but it is a viable product as is. It is really the *only* viable product in the USA that helps provide effective glider-glider traffic awareness/collision avoidance (much better than transponder/PCAS ever can do).

It was not clear what the the original poster wants the PowerFLARM for - e.g. for glider-glider collision avoidance, for GA traffic PCAS, for 1090ES data-in, or what. But if its for glider-glider collision avoidance then there is not much point making a comparison to a Zaon PCAS device. Maybe in Dave's case his use of PowerFLARM really is as a PCAS only device, but that is not what most other folks here are really going to be wanting from the PowerFLARM.

If its purpose is for Flarm collision avoidance with other gliders, then there will hopefully be other gliders in the area already equipped with PowerFLARM -- so hopefully an opportunity to look at the displays installed in those. And everybody's eyesight is different, best to look at the real thing.. And make sure you understand the different screen modes--e.g. tryign to spot regular traffic vs a traffic alert display. All described in the manuals available online. http://powerflarm.us/manuals-softwar...release-notes/

Darryl