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Old August 12th 12, 06:58 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Evan Ludeman[_4_]
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Posts: 484
Default USA PF Brick question

On Aug 12, 1:02*pm, Andy wrote:
On Aug 11, 5:58*pm, Andy wrote:

Anyone else see this amber LED after loading? If so, do you have an explanation?


The amber led was caused by the command

$PFLAC,S,PCASRANGE,9656

This command is documented in the data port addendum which states its
max value is 65535m.

However, experimentation has shown that the max value is between 9250
and 9300. *9250 gives a green LED after loading but 9300 gives an
amber LED after loading.

It appears that the amber LED indicates that a command line was not
parsed correctly but that does not seem to be stated in the
documentation.

GY


Mine behaves differently (but good catch!).

If I set pcas and adsb range to 9600m, the file loads with ten or so
green flashes, one red flash, amber very briefly then steady green.
If I set both ranges to 9000m, I get only green flashes, amber
briefly, then steady green. Too bad I have no way to inspect the
settings.

I'm also wondering what "XPDR Alarm" and "Farm UI" options do in the
display setup.

The first, presumably, turns on the warning chime for PCAS (and ADSB?)
traffic. The default, oddly, seems to be "off". Up til now, all I've
gotten from pcas contacts has been a single chirp. Totally useless as
"warning". But I thought that perhaps I just hadn't been bold enough
to let a pcas contact close enough to trigger the warning alarm. Now
I have it turned on, I guess we'll see. I would like to know what the
warning algorithm is for adsb and pcas. The "Flarm UI" default is
also off. The docs make reference to this (flarm external display
instructions, pg 11) but give no clues as to what might happen if I
turn it to "on". I don't recall seeing this option before I did the
2.40 update. It may have been there... scratches head... there's
just so very much about this device that isn't (well enough)
documented.

Opinion: We should not be having to experiment with a device this
expensive (and this difficult and potentially hazardous to test in
flight) in order to figure out what it does and what the optimum
settings are.

-Evan Ludeman / T8