Flarm collision alert from Tow Plane ADS-B

Now that our club tow plane has installed ADS-B out, I’m getting a constant collision alert on my S80, Flarm butterfly and Qudie while on tow. Is there any way to silence the collision alarm while on tow without turning off ADS-B targets on Flarm all together. I like seeing ADS-B targets while flying in congested areas. It would be nice is there was a way to identify specific ADS-B IDs that should not be reported like tow planes. It’s bad enough to just see the Flarm collision alert screen with the red 12 o’clock the whole time on tow, but having the constant beeping is just too much to tolerate.

On Friday, March 16, 2018 at 2:42:59 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Now that our club tow plane has installed ADS-B out, I’m getting a constant collision alert on my S80, Flarm butterfly and Qudie while on tow. Is there any way to silence the collision alarm while on tow without turning off ADS-B targets on Flarm all together. I like seeing ADS-B targets while flying in congested areas. It would be nice is there was a way to identify specific ADS-B IDs that should not be reported like tow planes. It’s bad enough to just see the Flarm collision alert screen with the red 12 o’clock the whole time on tow, but having the constant beeping is just too much to tolerate.

I don't know what the answer is, but masking all tow planes all the time is probably not a good one. There have been a few collisions between tow planes and gliders, those are ones you really want to avoid.

On Friday, March 16, 2018 at 5:42:59 PM UTC-4, wrote:
It’s bad enough to just see the Flarm collision alert screen with the red 12 o’clock the whole time on tow, but having the constant beeping is just too much to tolerate.

What about turning the volume down until you're off tow? If you hook up an external speaker, you could use a SPST switch?

I agree that you don't want to block alerts on the tow plane and you don't want the tow plane to turn off ADS-B out during tow.

If the towplane has [Power] Flarm, the relevant Flarm parameters a

Transponder - Mode S
ICAO ID
Aircraft Type - Towplane

Mind you if the towplane installed UAT, Flarm won't see the ADS-B.

On Friday, March 16, 2018 at 7:45:06 PM UTC-7, George Haeh wrote:
If the towplane has [Power] Flarm, the relevant Flarm parameters a

Transponder - Mode S
ICAO ID
Aircraft Type - Towplane

Mind you if the towplane installed UAT, Flarm won't see the ADS-B.

That's for the towplane flarm. My understanding is that this towplane doesn't have flarm, it has ADS-B out. Flarm might be smart enough not to consider a towplane going the same direction 200 ft ahead as a threat, but would not know anything about an ADS-B target. Perhaps this is a request we need to make of the Flarm people - if you could add an ICAO address to the Flarm net data base, Flarm could ID the towplane and do the right thing.

You can add a 1090ES only entry to the FlarmNet database today, and that may help display target IDs in a more friendly way. I don’t have any idea if it makes a difference to actual target handling,

On Saturday, March 17, 2018 at 9:18:58 AM UTC-7, Darryl Ramm wrote:
You can add a 1090ES only entry to the FlarmNet database today, and that may help display target IDs in a more friendly way. I don’t have any idea if it makes a difference to actual target handling,

So, the assignment for the OP is to try it and report back - more people are going to be having this issue.

I have almost the same set up - Flarm = S8 = Oudie 2 and the same problem with tow planes.

I set the Oudie volume to 20% as part of my pre-flight and leave it there until I get off tow. At a comfortable time thereafter, I change the Oudie volume to 80% - which is the normal volume I like.

I find the screen touches to do that are quite easy.

That's worked decently for about 2 years now.

In another glider that had Flarm wired to an on / off switch, we just didn't turn the Flarm on until we were off of tow.

YMMV -

Lou

On Friday, March 16, 2018 at 4:42:59 PM UTC-5, wrote:
(snipped) Is there any way to silence the collision alarm while on tow without turning off ADS-B targets on Flarm all together.

Take shorter tows?

66

On Friday, March 16, 2018 at 9:42:59 PM UTC, wrote:
Now that our club tow plane has installed ADS-B out, I’m getting a constant collision alert on my S80, Flarm butterfly and Qudie while on tow. Is there any way to silence the collision alarm while on tow without turning off ADS-B targets on Flarm all together. I like seeing ADS-B targets while flying in congested areas. It would be nice is there was a way to identify specific ADS-B IDs that should not be reported like tow planes. It’s bad enough to just see the Flarm collision alert screen with the red 12 o’clock the whole time on tow, but having the constant beeping is just too much to tolerate.



I don't know what the answer is, but masking all tow planes all the time is probably not a good one. "There have been a few collisions between tow planes and gliders, those are ones you really want to avoid."

Do you mean at crowded contests or a one off tow or a commercial site with concurrect tows, or what? And where?