Steve,

The holy grail of glider technology is the ability to read the strength of thermals at a distance. So far, accomplishing that has evaded all those who have tried. PowerFlarm offers the best hope for doing just that on a limited scale when there are other gliders in a cooperating network. If you want to view that as a leeching tool, so be it. Glider racing is inherently a cooperating process.

This holy grail has been working for decades already: Look
out and see how fast the others climb. If they're up faster than yourself,
join them.

Works for me (well, on a moderate scale proportional to my training level).

Having my eyes inside the cockpit and trying to match little dots
with associated numbers on a display with gliders out there does not help
particularly. Neither does it improve safety.


WRT Stealth mode: I reiterate, we do *not* recommend it. Neither does it
make you intrackable. What it does: It removes some information: Ground
speed, track and in particular, vertical speed. It also 'obfuscates' altitude
by adding some random numbers.

Best
--Gerhard (FLARM dev mgr)