On Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:38:43 AM UTC-7, Kimmo Hytoenen wrote:
In our club we have "Academy" training evenings during winter
season. Few weeks ago I was telling about FLARM units, and this
week one our member who works for accident investigation was
telling about safety issues in competitions. Safety is an issue here,
since within 12 months lifes of 4 Finnish glider pilot were lost. 2 in
midair with an eagle (!!), one because of motorized take-off spoilers
open, and one because of midair with other competitor.

The conclusion of the last incident, midair between two competing
planes, both equipped with FLARM units, flying 10 minutes very
close to each others, was really scary. FLARM seems to be
something that might warn you if someone is approaching under the
same cloudstreet, but in competition where you have several planes
near to you all the time, you still might loose situation awareness.

FLARM antenna installation is really a problem. PowerFlarm seems
to have two antennas, I have no idea how that works. I have
installed several FLARMs into our club gliders, and I have used "RF
Range Analysis" tool provided by FLARM.
http://flarm.com/support/analyze/index_en.html
This should tell you if your antenna installation has problems - and
there often are problems. I would like to see this analysis extended
into 3 dimensional graphic.

Everyone who installs FLARM in a plane should use this analysis
tool.

Kimmo, thank for sharing and very sorry to hear about the fatalities, especially giving that 3 life were lost in midairs in one year alone. Can you share some more details so we can all learn? This is the first time I am hearing of a fatal midair collision with an eagle. One more thing to worry about now...

Ramy