PowerFlarm PCAS performance

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 8:04:39 AM UTC-4, (unknown) wrote:
From Houston,



The range for PCAS has also been disapointing for me as well. My range in detecting transponders has been less than 1 nm. My range for Flarm is 2 nm to 2.9 nm. I am told by the supplier that my antenna location and installation is good and that there is a software upgrade that is coming sometime in the future that should improve the PCAS range some.



John

Your dealer is probably referring to software upgrade 2.40 which was released end of July. With it, you can set the range in your flarmcfg.txt file. This has all been discussed on RAS already and info is availabe on the powerflarm.us website. Rather than being accused by "some dealers" of providing misinformation here is a snip from the manufacturers provided documentation:
PowerFLARM device configuration
===============================

A set of $PFLAC commands is available to configure the XPDR receiver
(PCAS and ADS-B) part of PowerFLARM.

* $PFLAC,S,XPDR,type
Configure whether a transponder is installed and active on board.

type is:
0 ... no XPDR (default)
1 ... Mode C
2 ... Mode S

* $PFLAC,S,PCASRANGE,oblique_range_meters
$PFLAC,S,PCASVRANGE,vertical_range_meters
Sets the PCAS oblique (PCASRANGE) or vertical (PCASVRANGE) range in meters.

Example:
$PFLAC,S,PCASRANGE,5000*
Sets the PCAS oblique range to 5km.

* $PFLAC,S,ADSBRANGE,horizontal_range_meters
$PFLAC,S,ADSBVRANGE,vertical_range_meters
Sets the ADS-B horizontal (ADSBRANGE) or vertical (ADSBVRANGE) range in
meters.

Example:
$PFLAC,S,ADSBRANGE,15000*
Sets the ADS-B horizontal range to 15km.

Notice: If FLARM determines that a PCAS or ADS-B target represents a
danger, it will be displayed/output regardless of the range setting.

Maximum value for PCAS and ADS-B ranges: 65535m.