On Tuesday, July 30, 2019 at 8:47:16 PM UTC-4, Mike Schumann wrote:
On Tuesday, July 30, 2019 at 7:26:19 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Tuesday, July 30, 2019 at 12:45:36 PM UTC-7, kirk.stant wrote:
On Tuesday, July 30, 2019 at 9:25:46 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I would choose ADSB over PowerFlarm now, for a glider and a towplane.

Yeah, right, I'm not holding my breath for all those club gliders to get ADS-B out! PF is the way to go for gliders; of course ideally, tow planes should have both.

Kirk

Kirk, with respect, are you holding your breath for all those club gliders to get Flarm? ADSB is CLEARLY the 'way to go' for best traffic awareness in the USA.

I totally agree. FLARM may be OK for contests, but for those of us who soar recreationally, GA and airliners are just as big a threat as other gliders.

I was talking to uAvionix at Oshkosh last week, and they have the perfect solution for us: SkyEcho2 (https://uavionix.com/products/skyecho/). It is 1090ES ADS-B OUT and dual band ADS-B IN and supports FLARM. Cost is ~$500. The only problem is that it is not FCC or FAA approved in the US. We need to get the SSA and AOPA on the bandwagon to get this approved.

Interesting. What do you mean by "supports FLARM"?

But I would argue with your statement that "GA and airliners are just as big a threat as other gliders". That depends where you are flying. In our area (Northern New England, USA) there is some GA traffic (which are visible and audible on PowerFLARM if they have ADS-B), but I think other gliders are the bigger threat since we concentrate near cloudbase in certain small areas such as over the high ridges and under cloud streets.

It is a shame that the ADS-B system is so byzantine, power-hungry and expensive. Theoretically, if it was ubiquitous in gliders, we could have displays that use algorithms similar to FLARM to avoid alerts about your towplane or gaggle-mates. Instead some of us install PowerFLARM, which does warn us about powered traffic that transmits ADS-B, but does not make us visible to them.