I just installed the SkyWatch transceiver with AHRS and I thought I'd share my experiences and ask some questions.
I fly an RV4 with a bubble canopy. The blade transmit antenna was mounted vertically in the rear of the canopy with a clear view all around. However, I was getting only sporadic traffic that was usually far away and clearly not intended for me, and it seemed that the ground stations were not getting my transmissions. I talked to Don at SkyWatch, and on his advice installed an external transmit antenna from Delta Pop on the belly of my plane. That solved the problem and now I'm seeing tons of traffic, but I don't know why the blade didn't work.
Like others, I'm seeing some ghosts but they are usually pretty obvious because they don't behave like real aircraft.
When I select a target and call up traffic information with the Options button, I'm not seeing any call signs or the hexadecimal identifiers, not sure why.
I can run the SkyWatch app in my iPhone simultaneously with the iFly, and I do that because I like the verbal alerts better than the ones from the iFly. Since I fly in the SF Bay area with hills all around, I get terrain alerts all the time, and I can't disable them without also disabling traffic alerts. I think that it would be better if the iFly allowed separate settings for traffic and terrain alerts, rather than lumping them together as collision alerts.
The triangle symbols for traffic appear in different colors, mainly orange, light blue and dark blue. The dark blue ones are often blinking. I can't seem to find an explanation for the different colors in the manual or on the forum.
A couple of times the iFly seems to have a problem with its connection with the SkyWatch, so it switches back to using its own GPS and stops showing traffic, although it says thast the WiFi connection is OK and the SkyWatch control panel reports that it is still receiving weather. Also, the AHRS display is still working. Turning both units off then on again sometimes solves the problem, sometimes not.
I would like to display the electronic compass heading from the AHRS as a instrument on the map screen. Is this possible?
Allan