On Sunday, December 20, 2015 at 9:01:20 PM UTC-8, wrote:

1. There can be no real dispute that open FLARM allows greater leeching. Stop arguing about it. Others have reported on it in this forum and many of us can confirm it. The REAL question is whether this is antithetical to the objectives of U.S. competitive events. Elderly pilots such as myself who have to be helped into our gliders from our walkers and who couldn't conjure up a weather forecast on our flip phones if our Social Security checks depended on it agree it is. Technophiles who babble on about how unenlightened it is to oppose change--and who are unapologetic about the $4,000 they dropped on their 3D televisions last year when they slavishly embraced THAT stillborn change--give a cautious nod (barely) to soaring over fiddling with their Playstations/Xboxes but would like to see all "platforms" reflect their belief that whomever masters the latest technology should win. The rest are somewhere in the middle.

Hyperbole about AI robots becoming US National Soaring Champion notwithstanding, the question on the table is whether attempting to use Flarm to leech helps enough to make any meaningful difference in a contest, and even if it did, does that fact somehow make contests unfair or invalid. The answer, based on the only facts introduced into this discussion so far: nope - leeching at a distance results in poorer, rather than better performance - poorer climbs, poorer daily speeds, poorer placement in contests overall. Even if it did help occasionally - like finding the local pilot who knows where the house thermal or convergence line is - or locating the one pilot who hits the lucky climb that gets him home across a blue hole when the rest of the field faces landouts, I'd argue that it more frequently cancels out luck than skill. In any event, these things happen today where the lucky eagle-eyed pilot sees the wing flash three miles out. Now the geriatric pilot with bifocals won't get occasionally cheated out of getting home by his failing vision.

Again, these sorts of things happen once in a great while - and it's not typically a bad thing when they do. It's certainly not important enough to redirect the time and energies of developers, contest organizers and pilots to fiddle with degraded instrument settings. It's certainly not a reason to freeze the technological advancement of the sport in 1989.

The cost argument in favor of stealth is upside-down - arguably it is slightly more expensive in time and effort to make stealth mandatory. No one is suggesting we get rid of Flarm to save money and no one is suggesting we ban moving-map displays - 2D or 3D.


2. The other question is whether Stealth mode reduces safety. OK, it may, but the real question is by how much? My own opinion is that it's a very small amount but who really knows? More worrisome are recent comments that raise questions about whether some pilots are already relying too heavily on graphically displayed FLARM data to maintain situational awareness at the cost of looking out the window. Regardless, anyone who truly opposes mandatory Stealth for safety reasons should also be just as vocal in opposing ANY use of Stealth by ANY pilot. Additionally, they should be campaigning loudly for mandatory FLARM at all contests and perhaps even across the U.S. glider fleet at large, followed closely by mandatory ADS-B out. Not that open FLARM insures against midair collisions; I've read at least one reference on this forum that a midair involving FLARM-equipped aircraft has already occurred.

One reason for the introduction of ADS-B is because studies have consistently showed that human vision is not up to the task of reliably finding collision threats (the success rate is about 50%). I am not convinced that in a contest where the vast majority of gliders are carrying Flarm and much of the other traffic is carrying ADS-B that looking at a display of traffic isn't better for finding potential collision threats than looking out the window (obviously doing both would be best an no one would suggest that head in the cockpit is a good idea in a crowded thermal - but that's not the situation we are talking about anyway). My own experience tells me that restricting Flarm range to 2 km instead of 6-8km translates to a pilot looking down 3-4 times as much in an effort to maintain situational awareness (whether that be for safety reasons to avoid unpleasant surprises or in a leeching effort). Do you really want guys steaming into your thermal heads down because they only had a few seconds to sort traffic on their display? We all know the display in the cockpit is far more reliable at finding gliders than looking out the window - shortening the range means less time to translate from screen to out the window and on thermal entry that could lead to bad habits getting a bit worse.


3. Lastly, those who are truly committed to staying at the leading edge of technology and maximizing safety no matter the cost should be lobbying vociferously for mandatory FES gliders, 1,500' AGL "hard decks", and a no-landout policy for all competitive events. After all, we have the technology to eliminate off-airport landings, still one of the greatest risks of cross-country soaring. Who cares what that would cost? Quit yammering about the liability associated with mandated Stealth and imagine how a jury would react to learning that contest organizers tasked an entire field of pilots of varying abilities with flying 300 miles over populated areas WITHOUT AN ENGINE!!!! Horrors! How irresponsible is that!!!

I make a distinction between mandating expensive technology options that increase safety and mandating expensive (in time, effort and development dollars) technology options that (to some as yet unknown extent) decrease safety. Flarm stealth mode is the second category, FES and the other things are in the first. I'm generally not in favor of mandating things that require time, effort and expense unless the requirements are modest and the benefits are clear. Even making Flarm (in any mode) mandatory has not gotten into the rules yet, but we are jumping into a stealth mandatory discussion.

9B