Eric isoar11/12/2022 ![]() An auxillary channel is needed in spades at 2.4 GHz. PowerFlarm provides an auxillary receive channel to partially address this issue. This can be overcome to a certain extent with power margin but there isn't power margin. 2.4 GHz will be significantly more impacted by the nearby human body and other items of near wavelength dimension in the environs of the antenna. PowerFlarm uses a simple dipole for this reason and yet has greater range than is contemplated with the high gain antennas suggested here.Īlso related to the coupling matter is the choice of frequency. With a low gain antenna at both TX and RX, the link analysis will be significantly impacted and you will not have the range that has been speculated. It's important to use a low gain dipole pattern antenna in order to couple well with turning gliders. The use of a high gain (5 dBi) antenna is not advisable. On the hardware side, I think there are things the developers are not considering well. The electrical components are not the major part of the problem the magic is really in the software.Īnd for close proximate flight, I'm led to wonder how the designers might have come to the conclusion that 2-3 second latency would be acceptable for good warnings? Having flown with PowerFlarm, I have to believe that the latency is lower than that. It takes years of observation and feedback to make it work really well in the real world. Even the most brilliant programmer on earth cannot just sit down and write that code. In a fast changing environment of side by side cruising and close thermalling, PowerFlarm makes good determinations. Part of the goodness of PowerFlarm is the years of evolution in the algorithms for the collision risk analysis. Starting from where the developers are now, they are very far behind PowerFlarm. Soaring is not so strongly cost driven as consumer products for example and in general having an avionic component supported by a manufacturer is a very important benefit. Being equivalent (if it were) is not near good enough, even if the cost is lower. It seems to me that for one technical standard to replace another established standard it needs to be distinctly better than the first. Having a contingent of Flarm users and a contingent of WiFi users at a contest means that we cannot get to the significant level of safety improvement that would be otherwise achievable with fully adopted Flarm or PowerFlarm.Īs I read through the material I couldn't find a single element of technical superiority over PowerFlarm. Just like Flarm, this system requires that both gliders be like equipped. What makes it worse is the possibility that any pilot might consider waiting for this instead of installing Flarm/PowerFlarm right now. Though competition is usually good, it is not a good thing to have competition in this case. A system that competes with Flarm has only the possibility of reducing safety during the time frame that I expect to remain an active glider pilot. But it does not work with Flarm! Flarm/PowerFlarm is seeing rapid adoption. ![]()
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