PowerFLARM Eagle mobile ADS-B

A fixed installation is the right answer for an aircraft you own. It is the wrong answer for a club fleet, a rented glider, a tow plane you fly twice a month, or a competition in somebody else's aircraft. The mobile Eagle is the same PowerFLARM electronics as the panel unit, in a housing that brings its own display, speaker and battery.

Nothing is cut, drilled or wired. Put it where you can see it, switch it on, fly. It transmits as well as receives, so the aircraft around you see you too — a portable that only listened would protect nobody but its owner.

This model adds ADS-B In

FLARM covers the gliders. It does not cover the tow plane returning on a straight line, the airliner descending through your class E, or the twin transiting on autopilot — those carry a Mode-S transponder. This unit has FLARM's own ADS-B In module fitted, so transponder traffic arrives inside the same collision logic and appears on the same screen as one picture rather than two.

Where an ADS-B target reports its position, you get its position. Where it does not, it is shown as non-directional traffic: a ring at the distance the object could be at, in any direction. That is a real warning, not a bearing.

What you see and hear

The built-in screen draws the traffic around you and the warning itself: which direction the conflicting aircraft is in, whether it is above or below, and how far away. The speaker carries the alert without a headset connection, which matters in exactly the situation a portable exists for — an aircraft whose audio system you have never seen before.

Configured from your phone

The unit raises its own WiFi access point on power-up, with the key printed on the housing. The portal holds status, FLARM settings, file transfer, the logbook and a range analyser that plots the range actually achieved across twenty 18° sectors, from real receptions in flight. Firmware, the obstacle database and licences load through the same page.

It grows with licences

The FLARM module takes licences you can buy at any time and upload through the portal: the IGC flight recorder, ENL for motorgliders, antenna diversity and Garmin TIS.

One honest limitation

A portable sees what its antennas can see from where you put it. A unit lying flat under a carbon canopy rail will not match a properly placed aerial on the fuselage. Give it the best view of the sky the cockpit allows, keep it clear of metal and carbon, and read the range analyser after a few flights rather than assuming.