PowerFLARM Eagle

Every FLARM calculates where its own aircraft will be over the next few seconds, broadcasts that predicted path twice a second, and listens for everyone else's. When two predictions cross, both cockpits are warned — direction and relative height of the other aircraft, early enough to act on. In Europe essentially every glider flies with one, and EASA accepts FLARM for fixed installation in certified aircraft.

The PowerFLARM Eagle is the smallest device on the market that does this: a 68 × 50 × 23 mm aluminium box weighing 76 g, with no screen and no controls. It mounts out of sight behind the firewall and feeds whatever you put in the panel.

This is the FLARM-only model

The ADS-B version is the same box with FLARM's own ADS-B In module fitted, so it also sees traffic from Mode-S transponders — airliners, tow aircraft and most powered traffic. If you share your airspace with them, buy that one. If you fly among gliders, this is the model to buy. Both are built as a mobile unit as well, with its own screen, speaker and battery, for a pilot who changes aircraft.

It drives any FLARM display

Two RJ45 ports use the standard FLARM pinout and protocol, so the Eagle works with any FLARM-compatible display, ours or anyone else's. FLARM 1 is two-way and also configures the FLARM module; FLARM 2 is output only. Audio warnings leave a 3.5 mm jack that will drive an intercom, an audio panel or a powered speaker of up to 5 W.

With nothing fitted in the panel the Eagle still streams traffic over WiFi to a phone or tablet. Treat that as a convenience rather than as the warning device: a screen you have to go looking for is a screen you will not look at.

Configured from your phone

On power-up the Eagle raises its own WiFi access point, named after its serial number, with the key printed on the housing. Join it and the configuration portal opens: status, FLARM settings, file transfer, the logbook, and a range analyser that plots the range each antenna 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 — a second antenna filling the first one's shadows — and Garmin TIS.

Before you install it

Range is decided by the antennas, not by the box. The same unit will see a converging glider at four kilometres or at eight, depending on where the antennas ended up and what sits between them and the sky. Mount the GPS antenna horizontally, and never under carbon. There is no fuse inside the unit, so an external 3 A circuit breaker is mandatory. The knowledge-base article "PowerFLARM Eagle: installation, antennas and range" covers the rest.