On Tuesday, May 1, 2018 at 8:49:11 AM UTC-4, wrote:
You think you are safe at cloudbase because you have a transponder and or Flarm? Hooked up to a hobby battery with wires and connectors from radio shack. Lolz. Good number of the posts on RAS are about our glider electronics malfunctioning. And with working gadgets we still have the monkey brain electronic gadget interface incompatibilities.

Actually no, I've never thought I was "safe" in a glider, at cloudbase or otherwise. Soaring, like most activities that involve human control of lots of energy is *inherently* dangerous. It's my job to mitigate the risks. Statistically, we know that the biggies are take off emergencies and bad landings, frequently seasoned with a measure of poor judgement (go/no-go decisions, etc). Mid air threats are secondary, but nasty buggers because our monkey brains and monkey eyes have inherent limitations. Flarm looks through all 4 pi steriradians at once for other flarms and adsbs, and it does a great job. Smart pilots look at flarm as part of a layered defense against midair threats.

T8