Flarm Ghost

[MikeD]

I managed an hours flight yesterday (chuffing cold!) with my new PAW housing.  (see photo)
Two issues that I noticed:

1. The GPS dropped out twice. My plan is to bring the dongle outside the box with a very short USB cable.

2. I had several contact during the flight but the last one was a little stressful to say the least! First the nice lady inside PAW told me that there was a contact +400 ft above and ahead (I couldn't see anything) then within 20 seconds it was reported that contact was same level and 200 metres. I still couldn't see anything but it wasn't for the want of trying!

Having replayed the flight on SD, I know notice the associated number of the contact, this is fact my own FLARM unit. Why hadn't it done this on the first half of the flight? NOTE: The FLARM antenna is mounted externally and is at least 1 metre in front of the PAW antenna.

Question:
Are the two antenna too close together? (see photo)


OGN Registration
---------------------------
Device type   Device ID      Aircraft type   Regist.
Flarm      DDD5CC      RF 5              G-BJXK

[Admin]

I managed an hours flight yesterday (chuffing cold!) with my new PAW housing.  (see photo)
Two issues that I noticed:

It’s going to get colder !

1. The GPS dropped out twice. My plan is to bring the dongle outside the box with a very short USB cable.

Can I just confirm what you mean by this, can you describe the issue you observed, error / warning messages etc
Also, what version of Pilotaware are you running

2. I had several contact during the flight but the last one was a little stressful to say the least! First the nice lady inside PAW told me that there was a contact +400 ft above and ahead (I couldn't see anything) then within 20 seconds it was reported that contact was same level and 200 metres. I still couldn't see anything but it wasn't for the want of trying!

Having replayed the flight on SD, I know notice the associated number of the contact, this is fact my own FLARM unit. Why hadn't it done this on the first half of the flight? NOTE: The FLARM antenna is mounted externally and is at least 1 metre in front of the PAW antenna.

Remember PilotAware does not pickup Flarm directly, it only receives via the OGN-R
I presume you were close enough to a rebroadcast station
The reason it is reported is because Pilotaware has no idea this your device
For it to be ignored, you must use the same hex I’d for both units, which should be the ICAO code for your airframe

If an aircraft was reported ahead (12 o’clock), this could not have been your flarm unit, unless this is a simple precision gps precision error and it was seen 10metres ahead

Question:
Are the two antenna too close together? (see photo)

No that is absolutely fine

Thx
Lee

[MikeD]

Lee,

Thanks for the quick reply.

GPS dropped out twice, was reported on SD screen that it had been lost.
I'm using the latest version of Pilotaware.

OGN-R - You are probably spot-on there.
PWKinsto is just South of Madley. If you look at my photo you can see I'm abeam Madley.

I will change the hex codes to match both units.

Mike

[Admin]

Hi Mike
SD can give 2 different messages

1. Waiting for satellites
2. Disconnect from gps device

1 will recover on its own, 2 requires you to re-select goflying
Which of these did you have ?

Regarding latest version, can you please confirm the version reported on the home page
Can you also report the kernel version from the same page

Finally, were you using the flarm or pilotaware connection method in skydemon?

Thx
Lee

[MikeD]

Lee,

#2. Disconnect from gps device. I had to  re-select goflying.

Version: 20180129
kernel = 4.9.35-v7+
I was using pilotaware connection method in skydemon.

Mike

[Moffrestorer]

Hi guys,

It’s nice to receive confirmation that the rebroadcast facility is fully functional. As Deker says on the New Stations thread, hours of fun to be had spotting contacts both PAW and Flarm/OGN via glidertracker.org so you know both Receivers of your Ground Station are working fine, but you don’t always get to know whether a rebroadcast has occurred unless you happen to see it real time via the diagnostics page. The chances of that are quite slim!

Sorry to received a fright, Mike. However there is a wider point here because we are all used to ensuring we enter our ICAO hex code (via G-INFO, other NAAs are available) into PAW especially if we have a Mode S transponder so our transponder is filtered out by our PAW, but this extends also to any Flarm or other conspicuity transmitter we may have in our aircraft. This maybe needs to be highlighted in the documentation. I didn’t know it is possible to change the Flarm I.D. which seems to be related to the unit’s serial no. I was going to ask whether there is any way to “look up” Flarm and OGN I.Ds in much the same way as you can with G-INFO because it’s always nice to see who’s flying through your patch!

Regards,

Chris

[MikeD]

Chris,

The following may answer part of your question:

http://wiki.glidernet.org/opt-in-opt-out states the following:

To clarify:
You can either use your internal (factory) FLARM ID (which is based on the serial number of your FLARM unit) or your ICAO address (if your aircraft has such assigned). In either case enter the ID you use into the OGN Devices Database.

When entering the details on the OGN database you can determine what others can see (ie. just the hex or full tail number)

I've registered our aircraft as:

Device ID   Aircraft type   Regist.   CN   
401FF5    RF 5              G-BJXK   JXK

I'm not aware of a G-Info type lookup.   

Mike

[MikeD]

Lee,
Any update on the following:

#2. Disconnect from gps device. I had to  re-select goflying.

Version: 20180129
kernel = 4.9.35-v7+
I was using pilotaware connection method in skydemon.

Mike

[Admin]

Lee,
Any update on the following:

#2. Disconnect from gps device. I had to  re-select goflying.

Version: 20180129
kernel = 4.9.35-v7+
I was using pilotaware connection method in skydemon.

Hi Mike,

How many times have you seen this previously ?
Is this a new occurence ?

If you had not seen this previously, I wonder if there is a fault with
- Power
- Power Cable
- WiFi Dongle

Thx
Lee

[MikeD]

Lee,

Thanks for your ideas.  I've now taken the GPS dongle outside of the case, this has given more room for the WiFi Dongle to sit square in the USB port, I think this may have been the problem.

I've tested at home today and had it running for 4 hours without any issues so lets hope this fixes the problem.

Mike