Graeme Cant wrote:
FLARM is directed see and avoid. It's to direct your lookout, not
replace it. Making it mandatory would waste the money of the vigilant
few and encourage the worst habits of the complacent. We have enough
bureaucracy, lets leave it optional. The element of uncertainty will
help keep us all looking.

Although seriously perverted in the detail, this is correct in so far as
FLARM is directed see and avoid.

Where this analysis falls off the rails is the assertion that an element
of uncertainty will "help keep us all looking out".

Were that true, then we would have devices fitted to our parachutes that
would randomly disable them so to encourage us to avoid their use after
a collision! I certainly am not aware of any such device, but perhaps
the author of the above remarks can sell you one as he, of course,
always flies with such a device.

Back in the real world, those of us who have now flown many competition
and club hours with FLARMs are convinced of their value by our experience.

I - and indeed every single pilot I have spoken with about using FLARM -
have experienced FLARM pointing out a glider too us before we had
acquired it through our scan.

Of course, it would be possible to claim that this just proves that our
scans were inadequate - which obviously they were as we did not see the
gliders before FLARM pointed out to us. However, this entirely misses
the point that, for competition pilots, we are talking about probably
the most collision and look out aware group of pilots in Australia. If
their scan is missing gliders, what about the average club pilot?

The simple fact of the matter is that no scan is ever going to be
perfect (even allowing for blind spots, which all gliders have). FLARM
augments our scan, it can never replace it.

Even if every glider was fitted with FLARM (and ignoring the possibility
of FLARM failures from whatever cause), we would still need to maintain
an excellent scan: I see no evidence that wedge tailed eagles (or other
large birds) are under any evolutionary pressure to evolve FLARM units
(to name but one of many non-FLARMed airspace users).

FLARM is a great way of augmenting our lookout, as it helps us find
those airspace users that are proven to present the highest collision
risk: other gliders (and glider tugs).

--
Robert Hart
+61 (0)438 385 533 http://www.hart.wattle.id.au