JB,

Thank you for your posting. I truly appreciate your taking the time to do so.

It seems clear that we're taking past one another. Maybe that's because we've never met and don't know each other's personality or background, or maybe because we can't get important clues from intonation or body language on what is actually meant, since text doesn't convey such clues. For example, you say I was argumentative when I was simply asking for a clarification about what I saw as an important inconsistency in your honest answer on leeching, which you posted in a discussion group.

Perhaps one day we'll actually meet and, if you're willing, talk about this important issue face to face. For now, let's agree to disagree and just drop it.

-John, Q3


On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 11:14:22 AM UTC-4, wrote:
John/Q3, I gave you an honest (if lengthy) answer about leeching and you chose to be argumentative in your response. Fine. But your intentional misrepresentation of Erik's comment goes further. He said he was done (I know the feeling) so I'll jump in again on this point because a few people might actually believe your distortion of his position.

Erik didn't say he would reject help from FLARM. He said this was the last situation in which he would want to RELY on it: i.e., low, no place to land, few options. And I agree. Without getting into how you would allow yourself to get into that situation in the first place, a "FLARM radar" image of a few gliders circling up ahead is no guarantee of a workable thermal. It's the same way that savvy motorglider pilots talk about never relying on their engine to get them out of trouble. If it works, great. If it doesn't, though, they always have an alternative.

Not having a psychology degree or paranormal powers, I don't have any idea what you're referring to when you say his "strong dislike of FLARM stems from something much deeper than pride." Are you talking some kind of childhood trauma?

I can say that Erik, like me, thinks that FLARM is a very good addition to safety. But he's also said, and I agree, that we should limit its use to safety, not to providing a look ahead that invites certain people (not mentioning names) to blindly follow other pilots without making their own decisions OR to trust technology to bail them out of making bad decisions, as both FLARM and GPS have the potential to do. And yes, before you counter, I know of at least one nearly disastrous outlanding caused by a pilot blindly following his early GPS-enabled flight computer down to pattern height on final glide before, in sudden sink, bothering to look out to see what the landing prospects were (nearly nonexistent).

Misuse of FLARM also begs for another technical arms race of better antennas, ground station repeaters, FLARM cloaking devices, etc. It's soaring, not video games. We've consistently rejected remote thermal finding devices in our rules for a combination of reasons. To me, FLARM in non-stealth mode is on the borderline. I'll go further and say that if we continue to allow the use of FLARM for remote sensing, we're hypocritical if we don't allow the use of IR imaging, cloud-based aggregation of FLARM and SPOT data, and other ways of displaying distant thermals, updrafts, and flight tracks on a screen. And that will make the cost of a FLARM device seem like small change indeed.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
U.S.A.