I'd like to hear other people's experience of PCAS performance for the
portable unit. I'm particularly interested in side by side comparison
with ZAON MRX.

Yesterday I flew my PA28-180 with both the ZAON MRX and the portable
on the glareshield. Several times I saw traffic reported by the MRX
and nothing shown on PFP. In one case the MRX detected traffic 900ft
lower and 5 miles. It tracked the target as the range reduced to less
than 1.5 miles and -900 ft. I had acquired the traffic visually and
confirmed that the MRX indication was reasonable. The Power FLARM
Portable never displayed this traffic, while the MRX tracked it from
first detection at 5 miles until it had passed me and gone out to 5
miles.

There were a couple of times when PFP and MRX agreed on traffic
(similar range and same altitude) but these were the exception rather
than the rule. There were several times that PFP reported traffic
that MRX did not report and which was not seen. I suspect that these
targets resulted from confusion between the mode A and mode C
replies. FLARM has acknowledged that this is a problem, however ZAON
seem to have worked out how to resolve this ambiguity (see user manual
discussion).


Andy GY