Messages

91

Technical Support / Re: Hex ID / Flight ID

« on: May 13, 2017, 12:45:04 pm »

I think I have configured correct with my hex id and flight ID but constantly getting warning of VERY close proximity aircraft when nothing close or nearby so think it's alerting to my own transponder - any suggestions?

I have the opposite problem.   Having recently fitted a transponder (which I know is working because Luton are able to "see" me fine),  PAW doesn't show my transponder at all.   I was expecting it to do so as a way of checking that the transponder was working, but it doesn't appear on the targets list at all, regardless of whether I have the filter on or not.

Is this normal?   I wondered whether it was because PAW and the transponder antennae are too close together, they are perhaps 90cm apart?

Geoffrey

92

Technical Support / Re: Unable to adjust Radar range and height

« on: April 25, 2017, 08:19:27 pm »

I am informed I got the + and - the wrong way round, have you tried both ?

Thx
Lee

Thanks, sorted!

Lee,

At least that confirms that the + and - as currently configured are counter intuitive 

Glad you've got it sorted Ian and welcome to the Club!

Peter

When I first started with my PAW,  I too was going to lodge a message also that the + buttons didn't work on the radar screen.   It was only by accident that I found out how to make it work.

So its not counter-intuitive Lee,  you just need the users to be trained better !

Geoffrey

93

Technical Support / Re: Is there a dummy PAW program?

« on: April 25, 2017, 08:15:04 pm »

I have also reconsidered the screen i'm using, I would love to know if it is viable in an aircraft (brightness wise) as something this small (1.3" screen) would be easy to fit on a dash without blocking any forward view, so it might be possible to use the setup I have already (it might be big enough if it were placed on top of the existing panel in direct line of sight).

You're always going to have challenges with the screen readability in a cockpit where one minute its in the shade and the next its got full glare of the sun across the screen.    I found my Airbox Aware was unreadable in some late evening lighting conditions until I fitted an anti-glare screen cover (bought a 99p one off ebay for a large tablet and just cut it down to size).
The screen size doesn't look that much different to the screen on my transponder and that's perfectly readable.  Most instruments are not much bigger than this.

Good luck with the project.   

94

Technical Support / Re: Is there a dummy PAW program?

« on: April 24, 2017, 11:37:33 pm »

Hi Jon,

Great proof of concept video,  really shows what your idea is.

I was originally thinking that having another device wouldn't be a good thing and that overlaying this on an existing display would be more beneficial,  but having seen the simplicity of the screen I've changed my mind,  something cigarette packet or a little smaller would be ideal to give a 'one glance' mechanism of conflicting traffic.
Would have to be self-contained battery, ideally micro-USB rechargeable to avoid yet more cables.

Need to think how to show multiple conflicts (maybe cycle through them if they exist),  and what do to about bearingless targets,  but i can see this adds value.

Geoffrey

95

General Discussion / Re: Antenna Location & GPS Input

« on: April 21, 2017, 09:09:02 am »

The crew in the other aircraft may well have their bodies attentuate the signal as they flew away from you, given that they or at least their upper torso and heads would then have been between the dash-mounted PAW and your receiving antenna?

Yes fair comment, that could have been a factor.   I was interested in what others experience of range on the P3I is.  Seem to recall it is up to 30km straight line of sight, reduced as you say by obstructions.

Geoffrey

96

General Discussion / Re: Antenna Location & GPS Input

« on: April 20, 2017, 10:25:01 pm »

Try 'hanging' the antenna 'upside down' by attaching it to the plastic pitot pipe to the left of its present location with a cable tie (doesn't need to be pulled too tight). That will move it far enough away from the front strut to be effectively 'out in the clear' and will give much less screening to the right. The antenna will work fine upside down and that location should not cause any problems this far forward in the pod.

I followed your suggestion and hung the P3I antenna off the pitot pipe.  I didn't need a cable tie, just looped the cable over the pitot pipe,  but found that the antenna hung down and was going to collide with the front forks.   So I affixed a sticky pad to the inside of the pod and cable tied the bottom end of the antenna to that pad.

See attached photo.

I could see another PAW equipped plane 4Km away, and they could pickup my PAW signal as well, so its working in this position,  but they did appear and disappear a couple of times as they flew away from me (their PAW is in a Skyranger on the dashboard) so maybe something is sub-optimal as I'd have expected more than 4Km range?

Geoffrey

97

General Discussion / Re: Antenna Location & GPS Input

« on: April 19, 2017, 10:13:51 pm »

Try 'hanging' the antenna 'upside down' by attaching it to the plastic pitot pipe to the left of its present location with a cable tie (doesn't need to be pulled too tight). That will move it far enough away from the front strut to be effectively 'out in the clear' and will give much less screening to the right. The antenna will work fine upside down and that location should not cause any problems this far forward in the pod.

Thanks for the idea Peter, I will try that.

I'm having to move the Aware slightly further backward as I've spent today fitting a Trig transponder to my flexwing and ended up with the Trig control box mounted under the base tube exactly where the Aware was.  Unfortunately the lead on the ADSB antenna that I shortened may now be too short and I'll have to buy a new one - grr.

Geoffrey

98

General Discussion / Re: Antenna Location & GPS Input

« on: April 09, 2017, 06:29:03 am »

You've got the P3i antenna right up against a metal pole. You really want it out on its own away from any metal.

Hi Paul

Yes I did think about this.  Following the advice that the P3I should be vertical, the alternative would have been to Velcro/sticky pad it to the inside of the pod,  but that would have been less secure and I thought I'd first see whether it worked first on the front strut,  which it did.

My fuse box is on the top of the base bar otherwise I'd have probably gone for something like Peter did.   I pass on my experience as being one implementation that is working OK for me,  ultimately there's going to be some compromises in fitting the antenna as far as possible clear of metal, engine, pilot and any other obstructions.   

Cheers, Geoffrey

99

General Discussion / Re: Enhancement Requests

« on: April 08, 2017, 10:43:07 pm »

Flew today from Sandy to Damyns Hall and then onto Stoke.

PAW definitely helped in the haze today.  Although it was legal flight conditions it was still challenging and there were several times that PAW warned me of other traffic well before I could otherwise see it.  One one occasion it was a Skyranger on very similar height and converging towards me,  the Danger alert I got from PAW definitely helped me find it.

Having been using the Radar feature all the time today I have two suggestions to improve it;
1.  Different colour screen.   When flying towards the sun it was quite hard to see white on black text.  So in addition to the current screen styles is it possible to have black on white?
2.  An auto save for the filter settings on the Radar screen.   Each time I go into the Radar I have to change the height and range filters from the default 50km, 50,000' settings.   Would be good if the settings I chose 'autosaved' so they were preserved next time I went into the Radar

Thanks,  Geoffrey

100

General Discussion / Re: Antenna Location & GPS Input

« on: April 08, 2017, 10:35:50 pm »

Here's some photos of my PAW installation that I've recently completed in my Flexwing Microlight (Pegasus Quantum).

There's not a massive amount of spare space inside the cockpit and I didn't really want to start making holes in the pod unless I absolutely had to,  so I started off with installing PAW underneath the base tube,  and to my great surprise it works absolutely fine.   
I was a bit worried that the GPS would need to be in the front of the pod to get a clear view of the sky, but where it is it sees 7 satellites quite happily and works fine.
I did move around which was plugged into which USB socket,  but that was only so I could see the GPS light when sitting in the pod,  and also had access to plug a USB stick in for upgrades.

The ADSB small antennae cable was shortened by prising the bottom off the antennae and stripping back the cable length.  I soldered the outer braid to the bottom tab of the antennae base (previously it was just resting on the base), and reduced the antennae height as advised on this forum.   Finally Velcro'd the ADSB antennae to the top of the base tube,  again works fine, picking up planes from 50+ km away.

For the P3I I decided to cable tie it vertically to the lower section of the front strut.   Although this is therefore behind the fibreglass of the pod I figured this was least worst option and is clear of engine, me, etc.

Only thing I have had any difficulty with is the power supply.  Originally tried a car USB plug but loads of noise through the headset.  Then tried an Anker twin USB converter and that worked fine but when I connected PAW audio into my Microavionics unit I was getting feedback that varied with engine power.   No audio and it was fine but I wanted the audio.
So today I tried my son's Power Bank (model #B30224) and this works perfect.  No feedback and I can hear PAW audio all the time.

Geoffrey

101

General Discussion / Re: Enhancement Requests

« on: April 06, 2017, 01:05:51 pm »

If one were able to access the PAW Configuration Home screen (the 192.168. Numbers, numbers, numbers thingy) and set the filters there, then they could then enjoy the advantages of the filters on any EFIS (and I’m pretty certain you’ll see a lot more people going that way, so I’m helping to future proof  ) and the XC Soar etc people can do the same.

The ability to set range and height filters on PAW would get my vote,  XC Soar is very cluttered with all the "long distance" aircraft currently clustered all around the edge of the 6 mile outer circle and I'd really like to only see the aircraft that might be posing a threat not the airliners overhead.

Maybe if this was added as an "advanced option", default turned off,  so for the majority of users that use SkyDemon etc can leave this turned off in PAW and do the filtering in the EFIS.

102

General Discussion / Re: Enhancement Requests

« on: April 04, 2017, 04:13:14 pm »

Hi Geoffrey,
Unfortunately ModeC/S use barometric altitude.
So there is no way of knowing the height above ground, its only height difference to a reference pressure of 1013.25mb

Thx
Lee

Hi Lee,

I was assuming from the GPS data that PAW knows its height above MSL?

The suggestion was to expand the list of mode CS separation ranges that PAW can select from to give more filtering choice,  currently +/- 500,  +/- 1000, +/- 2000 with say 3 additional entries:
+/- 1500 .... works the same as the existing filters based upon difference in barometric height
+2000/-1000 ..... larger range filter for traffic approaching from above than below
"Smart filter 2000" .... +/- 2000 if GPS data height is > 2000,  +2000/-1000 if GPS data height is < 2000

Maybe this isn't a common request or others haven't noticed ground based aircraft causing alerts.  At the time I received these alerts I was flying outside and to the North of Luton CAS and there was no other airfields in sight or on the map.  So maybe it was ground based CAT at Luton that PAW was picking up and reducing the mode CS sensitivity would filter these out,  but if possible I'd like to not have to keep changing the settings whilst flying - taking gloves off etc is a hassle in a flexwing.

Just my 2p suggestion

Cheers, Geoffrey

103

General Discussion / Re: Enhancement Requests

« on: April 04, 2017, 08:11:11 am »

You say.....

I had set the Mode C/S separation to +/- 2000 feet and was was flying along at circa 1500 feet which is fairly normal, but found I kept on getting audio alerts for aircraft that were 1300 feet below me,  1100 feet below, etc.

...so they could quite clearly have just taken off and were potentially climbing towards you.

This type of alert should only occur with 'bearingless' Mode C or S aircraft, where the alerts are based on received signal strength as well as relative altitude, because their position and distance are otherwise unknown. Whilst your suggestion for an 'automatically variable' relative altitude filter certainly has some merit, in order to effectively provide the 'variable' relative altitude filtering you are suggesting, PAW would have to take account not only of your current altitude, but the height of the ground you are flying over, which we cannot possibly do for the whole of the UK, let alone further afield. Without this information, rising ground would rapidly bring aircraft on the ground back into an 'alert' situation and falling ground would drop climbing aircraft out of your chosen alert bracket without you even being aware this was happening.

Hi Peter,  thanks for your reply,  glad that my idea potentially has merit 

The alerts I received (and there were a few of them as I was flying) were bearingless CS targets because all I was warned of was the target altitude.  I think I had the mode CS range set to the recommended setting of 'Short', but I will check this.
You're right, as I never saw any of the warning aircraft I am surmising that they were aircraft on the ground based upon my altitude and their relative altitude,  and they could have been aircraft that were taking off and so were becoming a danger.   With some kind of offset altitude alert +2000/-1000 or smarter logic like I suggested based upon my own altitude I feel that I would have had less false positives which has to be a good thing.  The last thing I want is to become complacent and start ignoring alerts because I am receiving too many of them.

I do agree, having a database of altitude information within PAW would be impracticable, and so I thought of the smart range logic as being an achievable alternative.

I have also just been looking at your post over in the 'Altitude Filter' thread. You seem to have at least 27 contacts showing on your XC Soar screen at the same time, with nothing inside 6 miles from you, so can I ask how you know the aircraft were all on the ground?

This is the other issue I faced, that XCsoar doesn't offer any ability to filter out traffic so is I believe showing everything that PAW is detecting, regardless of range or height,  and is plotting them on the 6 mile+ ring which makes for a display that is impossible to use.   When I click on some of these individual aircraft I could see that in several cases they were jets flying thousands of feet above me,  but with so many aircraft plotted and XCSoar not offering any ability to filter based upon range or height, I can't separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff. 

I guess this comes from XCSoar being originally developed for gliders where the low power FLARM would only collect alerts from fairly near aircraft.  PAW picks up stuff miles away and so the display is now overloaded.

104

General Discussion / Re: Enhancement Requests

« on: April 03, 2017, 10:52:52 pm »

I agree with all the discussion about the problems of filtering out CAT traffic.  I'd rather know about it if it is a potential conflict.

My comment though is having used PAW for the first time in anger I found I was getting quite a lot of alerts from traffic on the ground.  I had set the Mode C/S separation to +/- 2000 feet and was flying along at circa 1500 feet which is fairly normal, but found I kept on getting audio alerts for aircraft that were 1300 feet below me,  1100 feet below, etc.
Now I'd prefer to fly with a 2000 feet separation range if possible rather than 1000 feet separation because I'd like more advance warning of something climbing up to meet me,  but getting alerts off stationary ground based traffic was distracting to say the least.

So is it possible to either:
- Have a +/- 1500 feet separation option?
- Have some "smarts" in the separation detection based upon the height PAW is at,  say +/- 2000 if PAW > 2000 feet, but if PAW is between 1000 and 2000 feet then apply -1000/+2000 - this would filter out a large number of the 'below but stationary' traffic

My preference would be the latter

105

General Discussion / Re: Altitude filter

« on: April 03, 2017, 10:41:11 pm »

XC Soar also doesn't have an altitude filter.

Yes that's my experience as well.   I've just started using PAW and as I use an Aware for my GPS I've installed XCSoar on my old phone as the display for PAW.   It works quite well but having no ability to filter out traffic that is too far away does reduce its effectiveness considerably.
Can options be added to PAW to filter out the traffic before sending to nav software such as XCsoar?  Recognise this might need to be an "advanced mode" setting as most people will be able to do the filtering in their nav software,  but it would considerably improve PAW for me and other XCsoar users - see screen print.

PS: Yes I know I can use the inbuilt radar display but I found XCsoar was clearer, and in particular the black on white was easier to read