Wow - I would have thought it completely self-evident that having this information via a screen was/is "bad" relative to what we (I) traditionally think of as "the sport of soaring". Not meant to sound sarcastic - just shows how differently people can look at this topic.

Without regurgitating a long post I made about a year back, it's completely obvious that IF we go in the direction of using Flarm as a tactical tool, then the next frontier of development will be highly optimized screens that interpret the data and present it in a way that's optimized for competition. Need to track KS or P7. Check. Two gaggles 3 miles ahead and want to know which has achieved the highest average climb among the 5 gliders involved. Check. Is the glider to the left or right achieving a better L/D over the last 2 minutes. Roger.

Of course, the best display and best software will cost more money, so let's just drop another $10K on top of the $100K we've already got locked up in this silly sport.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to get opinions from people who have actually flown under both scenarios.

P3