Hi

Has anyone had experience with the Zaon PCAS unit in regards to performance and reliability.

Thanks

Bill

I have the MRX unit. Depending on where your xpndr antenna is mounted, this particular unit may or may not work well in the airplane. The unit itself works as advertised, but in my installation does not. So I am selling it. If you want a good buy, contact me. If your xpndr antenna is in the front of plane versus behind the wing, you should have no problem. Since it is a portable unit, I have used it in other planes, and it works just fine. There is a remote antenna available which would resolve the problem, but since I have TIS it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to do that.

Dave Gitelman

I have a Zaon XRX tied into a Garmin aera 510. From what I have seen so far it works quite well but you must understand it's limitations. It's not an active system so it won't keep repainting traffic as the traffic moves unless... ground based radar or an active TCAS system in the area cause the target aircraft's transponder to respond and your Zaon picks up that response. So sometimes it seems to paint the traffic right where it is and sometimes it is painting the traffic where it was a short while ago. It does do a good job at alerting me to the presence of traffic and gives me a general idea where to look.

- Charles

I have had an XRX for a couple of years now. Its ok...it will point you in the right direction as to where to look. But I've seen it give false alarms many times. Bottom line...it's better than nothing. It has, on several other occasions, pointed out traffic that I wouldn't otherwise have seen.

Rick Mascari
N64400

I agree with Rick's last post. I would also add that if I were spending $ on this today I would head in the direction of ADS-B. While ADS-B traffic is not yet fully available if you don't have the ADS-B out capability it is coming. For more info there are many on-line articles explaining why with an ADS-B solution you only see part of the available traffic unless you are "out compliant" or flying near another aircraft that happens to be.

- Charles

I love my XRX. It does have limitations, but it has also shown me traffic that I would have missed. Mine is coupled to a Garmin 496. I do plan to add the Zaon MX 1090 which adds ADS-B traffic to the system. The active systems are better, but you are comparing a $1,400 unit to one costing 30K to 50K.

I'm probably in the middle of opinions. I have an XRX on a 496 as well. It's good for being far out enroute cross country(both because that's where you hit ADS-B holes{see below}, and because of less traffic). It seems that it gives good indications in that environment.

In a place like the LA basin it's close to useless. Not because it doesn't detect a valid aircraft here and there(I do notice it alerts me to lower flying helicopters which we have a lot of). More because of the previous mentioned limitations. Basically, it gives too many 'less than' accurate indications to be all that reliable.

Bottom Line(assuming proper install, no issues with own transponder, etc.):

-the XRX first detects that there is traffic
-then 'should' give a reasonable estimate of altitude
-and finally gives a very 'rough' idea of direction

In heavy traffice enviroments, you will find a lot of returns that bounce all around your plane, and often are off in direction by 90 degrees or more.

*ADS-B holes, IMHO - seems like the XRX is good for getting what might be bounces off of someone elses active TCAS when ATC radar is too far or shadowed to get the same return, or you are too far/low to get ADS-B back up from them.

For what it's worth I was doing pattern work the other day and my Zaon did a pretty good job (not perfect but very good indeed) of displaying other traffic on my aera510. It was a busy traffic day and the other traffic was pretty much where shown. Occasionally it would "jump" and show a target elsewhere and then it would come back and show the target in the right place.

- Charles

Thanks for all the replies, Zaon is clearing the XRX units out for 499.00 at my Pilot Shop in Calgary so my plan is to buy one and get what benefit I can out of it.

It will be a while before the ADS-B will be operating in Canada.

Bill

Zaon went out of business it appears. I have two PCAS units and they worked well for several years until about six months ago in 2014, one of them started giving me a phantom follower and then died. The other followed the same pattern here in 2015. It is like their firmware load had a timer in it that made it go bad. The phantom indications started with an indication that someone was at my same altitude and within about a mile from me and would just stay there. The first time I had this happen I did a left 90 followed by a right 270 and the indications stayed the same even with a me changing altitudes. I finally just stopped using them.

I agree that going the ADS-B route is probably the next step for me. I already have a Garmin 400W, but I will put in one of the newer units in my PA30 and then put the 400W in my back-up airplane, a Cessna 172 (N8289L).

Stan N7110Y

Stan in the Zaon user manual it talks about there being certain transponder codes to avoid or a ghost image of your own ship (your phantom) can appear. Ever since I've had my plane (and the Zaon came with it) I have on occasion seen the "phantom". Once in a while it happens but then again I've had that happen with Mode-S from a Garmin transponder and also with the Skywatch system in a Cirrus (TCAS 1). I don't have the manual in front of me but I recall it asking the user to try and avoid transponder codes with multiple zeros (0s). I know it sounds crazy but that's what I remember.

Anyway soon I will be going ADS-B myself but right now I'm still using the Zaon with success. Remember that you won't get the full traffic picture on ADS-B "in" until you are first sending an "out" signal.

- Charles