Reality check - 3000 units worldwide out of how many
gliders and light aircraft? Hardly something I would
call universal. Two european countries, half the antipodes,
and parts of the USA does not in my opinion equate
to most of the world either.
Fitting the unit is my glider right now would be stupid
and if the straw poll I have conducted over the past
couple of days is anything to go by will remain so.
I have yet to speak to a pilot who has any intention
of fitting an (relatively) expensive piece of kit
which may or may not be useful in the distant future.
Certainly according to Tim no-one in the UK has shown
an interest as yet.

If I thought for one moment that FLARM improved safety
I would be the first to support it. At best right now
it is ineffective at worst it distracts attention away
from a more practical way of solving the problem, an
irrelevance.

While there may be very few of the worlds problems
that cannot be solved with high explosive, problems
in gliding cannot all be solved by an electronic gizzmo.
Proper pilot training has to be the way to reach the
majority. Do you think that FLARM will ever be used
by the majority voluntarily? (How many Ka6's are there
in the world?)

At 23:30 06 March 2006, Eric Greenwell wrote:
Don Johnstone wrote:
I think Tim in his reply to my post highlighted the
biggest failing in FLARM, lack of interest by the
majority.
Having a FLARM in your glider is totally useless unless
eveyone else has one in theirs, and the only way to
achieve that is by compulsion.
Anyone who thinks that the majority of pilots will
fit one voluntarily is deluding themselves.
Right now in most of the world FLARM is just a useless
expensive piece of electronics and unless fitting
it
becomes compulsory it will go the same way as Betamax
video tapes.

FLARM: 3000 units already delivered without compulsion,
because the
benefits are obvious to the pilots flying in the high-traffic
glider
areas in Europe. It won't go the way of the Betamax,
unless someone
develops the VHS equivalent of FLARM.

In my opinion, compulsion will only be needed in areas
where FLARM has
little or no value. And, if FLARM continues to include
new features such
as an IGC approved flight recorder and club aircraft
monitoring, it
might not take much compulsion, either.

--
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Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

www.motorglider.org - Download 'A Guide to Self-launching
Sailplane
Operation'