PowerFlarm at Region 9 Contest

Here's a brief review of my experience with PowerFlarm at last week's Region 9 contest in Moriarty.

As some of you know, I've been a bit annoyed with some of my PowerFlarm experience - setup isn't really intuitive and it's hard to find all the info you need in the manual. The antennas are cheesy and mounting them effectively is tough - I ended up with a setup that looked like a bomb sight from Dambusters!

Having said all that, I got it up and running and had my first flights during the contest. It works extremely well and in four contest days I got three alarms of imminent conflict that I took action to avoid. One of them really caught my attention as my cockpit view was filled with a glider crossing my path! I'm now an enthusiast!

A second major value was the information about gliders in your vicinity. It really, really, helps a pilot with situational awareness of where everyone is and this definitely helps to avoid conflict.

The Butterfly display works well and with Flarmnet data gives you the contest numbers of the gliders located (hence its value as a leeching tool). Its audio, however, is totally inadequate - especially for a half-deaf old geezer in a noisy cockpit. Some PDAs and PNAs also give you better presentation of the data.

During the contest, we had one very close mid-air (6 feet) with two gliders that were not Flarm equipped and that would likely have been avoided if they were. I hate making proprietary equipment compulsory, but I have to say that I am leaning that way for PowerFlarm for contests in the USA.

Some pilots whined that being able to see other gliders and their climb rates would forever change the way we fly contests and this may be true. This will not be the last we hear of this topic!

Mike (WA)