Surecheck trafficscope - any experiences or opinions?

A fellow member of a local aviation group was recently killed in a mid-air.
Another member found and posted this link to our mailing list:

http://www.surecheck.net/avionics/micro.html

It is certainly inexpensive...but is it worth it? I'd appreciate anyone's
opinions or experiences.

My initial response is sceptical. The mid-air in question occurred not far
from an airport on a nice, VFR day. How useful would something like this
be in that environment?

Thanks...

Andrew

Andrew,

It is certainly inexpensive...but is it worth it? I'd appreciate anyone's
opinions or experiences.

I have experience with a similar product, the Monroy ATD-200 and -300

My initial response is sceptical. The mid-air in question occurred not far
from an airport on a nice, VFR day. How useful would something like this
be in that environment?


Well, it depends. Yes, in general it would be very useful. No, in case the
other guys don't have their transponders on or their transponders aren't
interrogated, it will not alert you. But in many cases, it will stil give you
a good heads-up. You may think that not getting azimuth info on the target
(i.e. direction) is a problem, but in my experience, that isn't the case.
These units tell you "Hey, better look outside right now!" - and when you do
that, in most cases you'll spot the target right away, or it will not be a
real factor anyway.

So, in summary, I would say these units are very cheap insurance. And when my
co-owners wanted to get one, I was the sceptic. I'm convinced now. So
convinced actually, that my wife has since started offering these units in her
German pilot shop.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Andrew:

I have had experience using the Micro for a little while now, flying
with it regularly, and I have to say I'm very impressed. The only
complaint I've seen (not by me... there's another rather spirited
discussion going on about this on another post) is that it doesnt have
audible warnings. But I dont need them. The 10 LEDs definitely get my
head out of the cockpit. I put it on the glareshield just to the lower
right of the compass, and believe me, I know about aircraft I wouldn't
have. Thats the other point... no device should take the place of
proper scanning. That's my only worry... that I'll become too
complacent and treat this device as a replacement instead of an
additional pair of eyes. But the fact that it is really only a
proximity alert and doesnt pinpoint keeps me wary. At least thats my
opinion.

-T. Johnson

"I have experience with a similar product, the Monroy ATD-200 and -300"
I don't consider it "similar" at all. The Monroy doesn't work in my
opinion. None of these devices dating back to Terra are anywhere near
TCAS or TIS, but I do agree with these "after-market" makers that a
simple system that gives us a "heads-up" for rock bottom price is good.
GA needs affordable CAS. Unfortunately, the Monroy system doesn't
measure up at all. There are brief instances where it does work, but
the overwhelming majority of the time it was a noise meter. It detects
when I retract my flaps and contact ground on 121.8 very well, where
the trafficscope seems to focus on traffic and give much more accurate
results.