PowerFLARM leeching comments

On Thursday, October 18, 2012 12:22:26 PM UTC-4, (unknown) wrote:
I do not think that flarm will make that good of a leaching tool. Read Dave Leonard's excellent analysis of flying at the worlds. http://leonardzl.dyndns.org/uvalde/ They were trying to team fly and talking with each other and it was still very difficult to find each other. ASW27BV

From another flarm thread:
All in all, I am very happy with the brick/9000 combination in my glider. I was able to see targets on the map out to about 10 miles and I found it particularly useful during the start period in Uvalde to keep track of the locations of the various start gaggles across the 10 km start line.

Dave Springford
www.foxonecorp.com

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 9:35:12 PM UTC-4, Craig R. wrote:
Time to state the obvious.

It sure is.

If you aren't very close to other gliders, you're
not going to be able to leech.

How long does a thermal last ?
Not very long, and likely weak or gone when you arrive.

Will they be at your altitude when you arrive ?
Nope.

Keeping track of where other gliders went ?
Maybe, but only at short range.

Leeching ?
Not particularly helpful.

Try following a good pilot sometime, from an even position.
See how many minutes it takes for him to loose you.
Won't take long, even if you start dead even.
Especially if your head is in the cockpit playing video games.

Consequently, in Europe, "stealth mode" has proven an
irrelevant annoyance and is largely abandoned in practice.
At WGC, nobody bothered with this.

As ever, look out the cockpit for the best clues !

Hope that's helpful,
See ya, Dave

I'm with Dave on this one. Even though we have seen competitors zoom off towards a PowerFlarm target they saw climbing strongly, I am not sure this will turn out to be the advantage many wish for. I can't count the times I have ended up a thousand feet or so below a colleague climbing at ten knots to find nothing there - the thermal bubble had departed upwards!

My opinion is that knowing the location of nearby competitors is useful for both safety and tactics, but will impart no advantage if the information is available to everyone. I strongly oppose the adoption of the "stealth' mode for this reason.

Mike

On Oct 18, 10:23*am, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 9:35:12 PM UTC-4, Craig R. wrote:
Time to state the obvious.

It sure is.

If you aren't very close to other gliders, you're
not going to be able to leech.

How long does a thermal last ?
Not very long, and likely weak or gone when you arrive.

Will they be at your altitude when you arrive ?
Nope.

Keeping track of where other gliders went ?
Maybe, but only at short range.

Leeching ?
Not particularly helpful.

Try following a good pilot sometime, from an even position.
See how many minutes it takes for him to loose you.
Won't take long, even if you start dead even.
Especially if your head is in the cockpit playing video games.

Consequently, in Europe, "stealth mode" has proven an
irrelevant annoyance and is largely abandoned in practice.
At WGC, nobody bothered with this.

As ever, look out the cockpit for the best clues !

Hope that's helpful,
See ya, Dave

Dave,

Well said. The thought of PF as a "leeching" tool never entered my
brain.............I'm surprised some are terrified it might erode
whatever lead they may feel they have over their fellow pilots.

Brad

On Oct 18, 1:19*pm, Mike the Strike wrote:
I'm with Dave on this one. *Even though we have seen competitors zoom off towards a PowerFlarm target they saw climbing strongly, I am not sure this will turn out to be the advantage many wish for. *I can't count the times I have ended up a thousand feet or so below a colleague climbing at ten knots to find nothing there - the thermal bubble had departed upwards!

My opinion is that knowing the location of nearby competitors is useful for both safety and tactics, but will impart no advantage if the information is available to everyone. *I strongly oppose the adoption of the "stealth' mode for this reason.

Mike

My view: There are two basic questions about flarm leeching:

1) Does it work, really, in practice? As others have mentioned,
information more than a few miles away is pretty useless. I can see
some help in keeping teams together, and the comments on uvalde blogs
bear that out. But if you can't see the glider, it's not obvious that
going to its thermal is going to help.

2) If it does work, do pilots like or dislike the change in the racing
experience? The answer from Europe seems to be "like." We have not
heard a chorus of "flarm leeching is ruining the sport" though
they've been at it 10 years. We have heard a bunch of "I miss the AST
when you knew where people were," and perhaps flarm displays will
bring back some of this experience.

Still, our (US) ratio of theory to experience on both issues --
especially the second -- strikes me as pretty large at the moment.
Next year will be an interesting racing season.

John Cochrane

On Thursday, October 18, 2012 2:37:27 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
... our (US) ratio of theory to experience on both issues --
especially the second -- strikes me as pretty large at the moment.

Make that "Rampant Aviation Speculation" grossly exceeds "actual knowledge"...

Just to be clear ;-)

See ya, Dave

In the first seasons of competition flying with FLARM in Germany a few people were turning on stealth mode, especially if they did not have a display to get any tactical data. Turning FLARM off was also observed regularly. Now I hardly notice anyone using stealth mode anymore. The initial fear of having a competitive disadvantage seems to have run dry.

Flarm is far from giving you a clear picture of the thermals ahead. On average the range is smaller than the distance you can see with your eyes, so your best bet for finding a thermal is still looking outside. There are occasions where Flarm brings another glider to your attention you would otherwise have missed but it is far from being a reliable thermal finder.

FLARM range is extremely variable. I fly a lot of club gliders with different antenna installations and I have seen gliders with carbon fuselage with hardly 2km of reliable range for collision avoidance. Especially to the rear a carbon fuselage will often completely block the Flarm signal so that a target flying right behind you will sometimes not be visible. In other cases I have had peak ranges up to 25km which usually only last long enough to display the target for a few seconds. A very good installation should give you fairly reliable contacts up to 4 - 6km and irregular peaks of up to 8-16km. Remember that the range always depends on antenna installation in both gliders. Even with a perfect installation you will not see some Flarm equipped gliders even on short range.

Flarm will give you some benefits in competition flying. Besides the advantages mentioned above it is particularly good for tracking what is happening around. You can marker specific targets to keep track of your team mate or see your progress against a selected competitor. It’s not like the range and reliability is good enough to leech someone outside your eyesight but you get an occasional fix of your marked competitor a few km ahead (or behind) giving you some sense of whether you are gaining or losing ground. Personally I enjoy this because it makes gauging my own performance a little bit easier.

The most useful feature of Flarm is still collision avoidance. You get a really good situational awareness of what is happening around you. Bad surprises of a glider appearing out of nowhere, hardly happen anymore.

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 9:35:12 PM UTC-4, Craig R. wrote:
Time to state the obvious. After reading the comments in many of the recent PowerFLARM threads, many folks want to use PowerFLARM for “leeching”.. Many are asking for programs to expand and simplify the use of that data. While that information is a byproduct of the important aspect of PF collision avoidance data, I think it has hidden issues. I understand that many folks just want to say they flew X miles on today’s flight (local bragging rights or OLC standings come to mind). If they get the flight data from someone else, that is just dandy. It certainly is easier. Instead of learning from the mistakes they made and trying to improve their skills, they won’t learn and won’t improve. Unfortunately, this may give them confidence in skills they really don’t have and perhaps put them in situations they shouldn’t be in. They will just grouse that their PF reception is substandard, they couldn’t see that glider 6 nm out and what lift they were in and missed that great thermal that shortened their day.... Personally, I would prefer to look back on my flight and know that I read the terrain and weather conditions properly and made the most of the day. I can analyze my flight and know where I had issues and learn from my mistakes. I can kick myself when necessary and move on. The challenge for me is to see how well I do without any “hand holding”. Hopefully, my skills will improve and I will fly faster and farther the next time. Obviously, I’m setting myself up for major flaming here (GPS, computers, programming, etc will be brought up). However, none of those tell me which specific spot to fly to on course for a 700 fpm thermal and puts that exact location on my moving map. Only a radio call from the person in that thermal approximates that and that data is not as accurate as the PF readout. Generic radio calls happen so infrequently that it isn’t an issue (team flying may or may not give that data, depending on your partner and your relative position - and how many really team fly?). With the PF data, some of that inaccuracy goes away. Certainly, you won’t use this information on every thermal throughout the day, but 3 or 4 spotted thermals can be the difference between an average day and a very good day. Will this data go away or will people stop using it in this format? Of course not. However, I would like to see people consciously use the PF data for collision avoidance and ignore the leeching aspects. Pilots that continue to learn and improve are better and safer. That is good for everyone. I know that “ain’t going to happen” so stealth mode FTW ;-) Craig R.

On Thursday, October 18, 2012 2:20:25 PM UTC-7, Alexander Swagemakers wrote:
In the first seasons of competition flying with FLARM in Germany a few people were turning on stealth mode, especially if they did not have a display to get any tactical data. Turning FLARM off was also observed regularly. Now I hardly notice anyone using stealth mode anymore. The initial fear of having a competitive disadvantage seems to have run dry.



Flarm is far from giving you a clear picture of the thermals ahead. On average the range is smaller than the distance you can see with your eyes, so your best bet for finding a thermal is still looking outside. There are occasions where Flarm brings another glider to your attention you would otherwise have missed but it is far from being a reliable thermal finder.



FLARM range is extremely variable. I fly a lot of club gliders with different antenna installations and I have seen gliders with carbon fuselage with hardly 2km of reliable range for collision avoidance. Especially to the rear a carbon fuselage will often completely block the Flarm signal so that a target flying right behind you will sometimes not be visible. In other cases I have had peak ranges up to 25km which usually only last long enough to display the target for a few seconds. A very good installation should give you fairly reliable contacts up to 4 - 6km and irregular peaks of up to 8-16km. Remember that the range always depends on antenna installation in both gliders. Even with a perfect installation you will not see some Flarm equipped gliders even on short range.



Flarm will give you some benefits in competition flying. Besides the advantages mentioned above it is particularly good for tracking what is happening around. You can marker specific targets to keep track of your team mate or see your progress against a selected competitor. It’s not like the range and reliability is good enough to leech someone outside your eyesight but you get an occasional fix of your marked competitor a few km ahead (or behind) giving you some sense of whether you are gaining or losing ground. Personally I enjoy this because it makes gauging my own performance a little bit easier.



The most useful feature of Flarm is still collision avoidance. You get a really good situational awareness of what is happening around you. Bad surprises of a glider appearing out of nowhere, hardly happen anymore.

This is consistent with my experience over 7 days of contest flying with PF.. It is occasionally modestly helpful out on course in keeping track of competitors who are within a few miles of you. I found four specific instances where it was helpful:

1) Running down a group of pilots who started a couple of minutes ahead of me. On a blue day in particular, getting the right first climb can save a couple of minutes by keep you in touch with markers a bit better. On one occasion I was able to close on a group of very good pilots by about 2-3 minutes over the first 30-40 miles. They were just outside of visual range most of the time, so PF made a difference.

2) Calling attention to where there might be a good climb ahead - this was most often useful when making long-ish glides between areas of lift. With a big enough field of competitors, depending on the course, you randomly end up with situations where you'll pick up someone climbing in front of you - for me it happens a couple of miles before the naked eye can make the target out. It's possible that you might pick them up anyway, but just knowing where to point the nose to find a climb at the end of a long glide was modestly helpful and worked for me a couple of times.

3) Choosing a direction coming out of a turnpoint. Gliders collect at turpoints so I occasionally had a couple of targets out in front of me at turns. Should I take the deviation out to the cloud street or head straight down the courseline? I found myself using trends in altitude differential over several minutes to gauge climb much more than the PF transmitted climb rate, which is too noisy to be useful beyond "climbing or not?" questions.

4) Marking my progress against known competitors. I wrote down the PF codes for specific competitors as I became aware of them. On a couple of occasions on long legs I made different courseline decisions from other pilots and was able to mark progress as they came back into range dozens of miles later - this didn't really yield useful tactical information, but it made me feel good to come back in range with a rival having made some ground on them.. Discovering the opposite is a bit disheartening, but motivating.

I'd say in total it made maybe 1% difference in total points over a contest, though I'll never know for sure if it saved me from flying into a hole or led me astray in specific situations. A bigger search radius for other gliders out on course certainly doesn't hurt and I found it increased my enjoyment by making racing slightly less solitary.

Most importantly, PF called my attention to a handful of collision targets that I am certain I would never have seen without it. It's sobering to realize how many potential midairs in the past must've been avoided by nothing more than random chance.

9B

At 18:19 18 October 2012, Mike the Strike wrote:
I'm with Dave on this one. Even though we have seen competitors zoom off
t=
owards a PowerFlarm target they saw climbing strongly, I am not sure this
w=
ill turn out to be the advantage many wish for. I can't count the times
I
=
have ended up a thousand feet or so below a colleague climbing at ten
knots=
to find nothing there - the thermal bubble had departed upwards!

My opinion is that knowing the location of nearby competitors is useful
for=
both safety and tactics, but will impart no advantage if the information
i=
s available to everyone. I strongly oppose the adoption of the "stealth'
m=
ode for this reason.

Mike

We did have a period of about 2 years where competition directors were
"instructed" to mandate stealth mode. Despite this I never did for the very
simple reason that I was very uncomfortable with the concept of instructing
pilots to lessen the efficiency of an anti-colision assistance device.
While we do not have the same "litigate everything" culture that exists
elsewhere I could see some grieving relative making a claim on me for
contributing to the death of their loved one by lessening safety, unlikely
maybe but that is the way things are going even here in the UK.
It is just not possible to uninvent something and rest assured, like
artificial horizons on iPhones, someone will make and install a gizzmo just
to give them an advantage and it will be cheaper than FLARM. The only way
forward is to accept that such things are going to be used whatever you do
so the only sensible way is to not mandate against it,