On Saturday, May 7, 2016 at 10:11:29 AM UTC-4, David Kinsell wrote:
On Thu, 05 May 2016 11:50:39 -0700, Richard wrote:

On Thursday, May 5, 2016 at 11:17:11 AM UTC-7, wrote:
Here at Chicago Glider Club we have the dubious distinction of flying
right under the approach path into Midway airport. I have looked at
SouthWest planes coming through from all angles, including head-on.
Flying with a C-mode transponder helps a lot, Approach will guide the
big iron around us although I'm sometimes wondering about the spacing.
My PFlarm will indicate through the FlarmView display a blue dot around
my position that is blinking ONLY when a SW or bigger commercial plane
(equipped with TCAS?) is coming through. Could there be a connection
such that the transponder when interrogated by a TCAS responds in a way
that is picked up by PFlarm? What else might the blue blinking dot
mean?
Please enlighten me.
Herb, J7

that is a mode C or mode S transponder it is non directional and as it
gets closer the circle should get smaller. Blue means it is above you.

Richard www.craggyaero.com

I've been bench testing 6.06 firmware, and see what I believe Herb is
seeing. A small flashing dot right at current position, but it's short
lived and never gets bigger. It's like the range for mode c/mode s
targets is terrible. I see lots of ADS-B targets at distances greater
than 12 miles, but hardly any mode c/mode s. Maybe they gave up trying
to estimate distance for those targets?

IIRC PF's max (software limited) range for non-directional "traffic" is 6 miles. It's in their docs, somewhere.

Why would you want flarm to report non-directional "traffic" beyond even 3 miles? Nice to know your device is working I suppose, but in flight this is just another distraction.

Suggest you set the range of your display to something useful like 2 - 4 miles. Set to 24 miles, which is what I guess is going on here, the important stuff (the close stuff) will not be displayed properly (e.g. blinking dots).

best,
Evan Ludeman