On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at 6:40:49 PM UTC-6, XC wrote:
Thank you, John. Someone finally is admitting that FLARM is being used tactically.

I don't think I have ever used the word leeching in any of my posts. Rather, I believe this business of being able to see contest numbers and their established climb rates is bad for sailplane racing.

The losers in all this are those who are confident enough in their abilities to lead out, who have honed their skills at looking at the sky and finding the best thermals available and those who can best convert that rising air into altitude. In other words, the losers are those who could best navigate a given sky if they were the only ones flying that day. The losers are those who are the best at soaring.

The winners are those who use a heads down FLARM display to drive hard to catch up to gaggles or gliders outside of visual range, who then use the choicest thermals marked by others to enhance their score. This is not necessarily the leeching scenario described by many. Instead they can jump from best thermal to best thermal without find their own. They may not win, although this is quite possible, but they can consistently do well, even though they would do much worse were they to attempt the same flight without markers.

Biggest loser, though, is the sport of soaring. We lose our heros. These are the great personalities that make this sport attractive young pilots. This sport was built by bold pilots who did great things, who consistently demonstrated an uncanny knack for finding thermals when no one else could. It makes me sick that people want to replace or replicate this kind skill with a FLARM display and then expect us to clap for them at the end of the contest.

XC


Well said.

WB