On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 11:41:33 AM UTC-5, Dan Marotta wrote:
snic, snic, snic I love good sarcasm.



Are race car drivers who draft the leader leeching?* How about the
sailing captain who maneuvers into the "good air" of his opponent
essentially stalling his "engine"?* Aren't they simply making use of
tactics available to them?* Are the the above two examples against
the rules of their respective sports?* Should they be?* Do their
participants whine so much about it?


No. No. Yes. No. No. Some do.




Does knowing where the current soaring super star is and knowing his
height and rate of climb give you some advantage over him?* If you
think that knowing his state vector will give you an advantage I've
got a bridge to sell you.

Dan, with all due respect, I note that you haven't shown up in a single SSA Sanctioned race (unless your profile on the SSA Website is wrong, in which case I'll apologize for the assumption). So, maybe you haven't had to make some of these decisions in a contest setting.

The short answer is: Flarm information matters. A lot. Not always in the way you are implying. As stated ad-nauseum, races are frequently won/lost at the start. Knowing where everyone is, how high, etc. gives a huge insight as to what is happening and what's about to happen as the gate opens. There are many days in East Coast contests where you can't see guys who are a couple of clouds away. In the start gate. Missing the "hot gaggle" can be the end of your day... before the task even starts.

More importantly, knowing which way the "good guys" are heading 6 miles ahead is hugely valuable. I'm coming to the end of this street. Is the gaggle jogging left to the "obvious" street (at least obvious to me) or is it going right? Stop viewing it as a thermal finder and start thinking of it as tactical situation indicator.

It's interesting though - I'm also seeing some level of divergence of opinion between East Coast and West Coast pilots. Maybe the on-course options out West are so "obvious" or defined (e.g. running the Whites or Sierras - nobody's gonna charge out into the Owens Valley) that Flarm info is less valuable. And obviously, with much higher closing speeds up at high altitude, one can see where any perceived degredation of warning time would raise eyebrows.

Again, to my knowledge, nobody is yet flying with a PowerFlarm setup with dedicated tactical information screens optimized for competition support. If they are, it would be very interesting to see the UI for those systems.

P3