The truth about Flarm Stealth and Competition definition...

A random check on flarm files, as we currently do for weights, would fix that.

On Monday, January 4, 2016 at 9:08:41 PM UTC-5, Andrzej Kobus wrote:
On Monday, January 4, 2016 at 8:57:29 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Monday, January 4, 2016 at 7:02:55 PM UTC-6, Andrew Ainslie wrote:
"The ongoing overstatements about degraded safety are folks who want to use open FLARM tactically (or, for the fun/learning of watching what others are doing.) Let's talk about that if you want to but let's not continue turn that into a safety argument.

XC "

Sean, this is just complete crap. This is ONE folk that doesn't want this for tactical advantage, this is a folk who wants to maximize safety.

You are, in essence, calling me and others liars. Based on what evidence?

What evidence do you have that I want farm to leach?

Just stop this bull****, Sean. On the offside that uppercase gets your attention, WE DON'T WANT TO DIE. Simple. One of the scariest and most off putting aspects of competitive flying is the continuous proximity of other pilots. I and many others think it asinine, foolish and cavalier to compromise safety to make the sport more manly.

Not speaking for XC, but I'll take you at your word that you are sincerely interested in Flarm for the safety aspects. So am I. And, I'll say again, for me, I do not care about leeching, regardless of whether it's good 'ol visual leeching or Flarm enabled. As hard as I have tried, I can't making leeching work for me, and god help anyone who follows me. However, it is known, or at least strongly suspected, that pilots are turning off or suppressing Flarm output to deny tactical information to competitors. Imagine someone being just out of reach of the podium on the last day by just a point or two. Inbound to the last turn, that pilot sees a chance to break from the pack and maybe grab a win. However, our pilot knows everyone and his brother will see him on their Flarms and rush in to exploit our intrepid pilot's good fortune. How tempting to just turn off the Flarm and zoom away for the win, but putting fellow competitors are risk. You and I, holding safety paramount, would never do such a thing. However, there will always be those who will (or are already doing it) for the sake of a win.

Limiting the tactical use of Flarm is at least worth exploring IF it will contribute to safety.

Since most of our antennas are on glare-shields it would be quite visible to competitors if someone tries to cheat by putting a hat over an antenna. If found cheating penalty should be disqualification.

I doubt if any of our top pilots would resort to that. Can you imagine the shame associated with such an action? We can argue here all day I just don't believe that 99% of contest pilots in the USA would do such a thing. The 1% that would do will probably not achieve much in a long run anyway if he needs to cheat to succeed. Somehow the top pilots can win no matter what. They were winning before Flarm and they are winning with Flarm. Some, I will not name don't have Flarm and they still win.

Maybe we should look for a solution and stop this back end forth.

Let me fix my writing. I need to stop drinking wine while writing.

Since most of our PF antenna installations are on glare-shields it would be quite visible to competitors if someone tried to cheat by putting a hat over an antenna. If think cheating penalty should be disqualification.

I doubt if any of our top pilots would resort to that. Can you imagine the shame associated with such an action? We can argue here all day I just don't believe that 99% of contest pilots in the USA would do such a thing. The 1% that would do will probably not achieve much in a long run anyway if that person needs to cheat to succeed. Somehow the top pilots can win no matter what. They were winning before Flarm and they are winning with Flarm. Some, I will not name here don't have Flarm and they still win.

Maybe we should look for a solution and stop this back end forth.

I doubt if any of our top pilots would resort to that. Can you imagine the shame associated with such an action? We can argue here all day I just don't believe that 99% of contest pilots in the USA would do such a thing. The 1% that would do will probably not achieve much in a long run anyway if that person needs to cheat to succeed. Somehow the top pilots can win no matter what. They were winning before Flarm and they are winning with Flarm. Some, I will not name here don't have Flarm and they still win.

Maybe we should look for a solution and stop this back end forth.

Hi Andrzej, Not sure if you are responding to my post, but just in case you are, let me say again: I don't care about leeching. I don't care if someone wins by leeching. I don't care if someone wins a world championship by leeching with Flarm, Mark I Eyeball, or machine vision (google "optical collision avoidance). Competitive advantage was not the point of my last post. The point is: Given incentive to do so, there will be pilots who will suppress their Flarm output to deny competitors tactical information. In doing so, they put the rest of us at risk. I have no idea how much of a risk that is or will be. However, the people who developed Flarm wrote "We do not recommend the use of Stealth mode, but it is better than turning FLARM(R) off for tactical reasons." (See S.Fidler's post that started this thread). They were concerned about the issue enough to write that. I happen to think they are correct.

I concur that we should look for a solution. Given Flarm or similar equipment, the best solution, in my opinion, is a competition mode that presents no incentive to suppress Flarm output. In the longer run, passive collision avoidance tech, such as machine vision systems, may provide a better solution.

"Given Flarm or similar equipment, the best solution, in my opinion, is a competition mode that presents no incentive to suppress Flarm output."

I love this logic. Let's suppress flarm output so no one suppresses flarm output.

On Monday, January 4, 2016 at 9:31:58 PM UTC-6, Andrew Ainslie wrote:
"Given Flarm or similar equipment, the best solution, in my opinion, is a competition mode that presents no incentive to suppress Flarm output."

I love this logic. Let's suppress flarm output so no one suppresses flarm output.

Well, OK, Andrew, maybe I should have been more specific. Would you agree that not all the information coming from Flarm is relevant to safety? Some have suggested that a competition mode that does not present contest ID's and climb rate would do nicely to reduce the incentive to suppress or turn off Flarm. Is this not a reasonable compromise?

Wallace Berry
WB

Imagine trying to explain this to the FAA, or to your wife, or to a tort lawyer after an accident.

"Our contests were becoming too weak assed, so we found a way to make it more manly to stop people from finding out where other pilots were moving in 3 D at 100 mph until they were 60 seconds away... More or less,depending on their antenna location, how much metal was in their cockpit, etc etc.. Sometimes 90 seconds, sometimes 20 seconds, who knows? It's not like any of us really test how good each of our installations are. But I digress... We felt that the compromise in safety by reducing the device that let us know where everyone was by 75% was utterly worth the increased sense of manliness that we all felt. Oh, and apologies for your dead husband, he was a nice guy. For what it's worth, he felt like a total man just before he died, because he loved the testosterone laden sense of joy that comes from being a manly non follower".

Awesome.

Put differently, no, I don't agree.

Ok, truth be told, IF we could do that it'd be great. I get your point, and suppressing IDs and climb rates would be fine. Seems like a good compromise.... But, the authors of software like clearnav could write software to calculate a first derivative on height in about 3 minutes. Are we going to regulate that too?

On Monday, January 4, 2016 at 10:33:32 PM UTC-6, Andrew Ainslie wrote:
Ok, truth be told, IF we could do that it'd be great. I get your point, and suppressing IDs and climb rates would be fine. Seems like a good compromise.... But, the authors of software like clearnav could write software to calculate a first derivative on height in about 3 minutes. Are we going to regulate that too?



You do have a point that tech can eventually outstrip regulation (and sometimes before the ink is dry on the reg).

Now that you mention it, I'm wondering why Clearnav and all the others have not added that feature. It could be a selling point.

On Monday, January 4, 2016 at 8:02:55 PM UTC-5, Andrew Ainslie wrote:
"The ongoing overstatements about degraded safety are folks who want to use open FLARM tactically (or, for the fun/learning of watching what others are doing.) Let's talk about that if you want to but let's not continue turn that into a safety argument.

XC "

Sean, this is just complete crap. This is ONE folk that doesn't want this for tactical advantage, this is a folk who wants to maximize safety.

You are, in essence, calling me and others liars. Based on what evidence?

What evidence do you have that I want farm to leach?

Just stop this bull****, Sean. On the offside that uppercase gets your attention, WE DON'T WANT TO DIE. Simple. One of the scariest and most off putting aspects of competitive flying is the continuous proximity of other pilots. I and many others think it asinine, foolish and cavalier to compromise safety to make the sport more manly.

it's 8 am and that's enough internet for me today already..... i get what you both (VW / XC) are saying and i'm not getting ****ed. i want to put something in perspective though; i don't have a flarm and you happily fly in my vicinity all summer. things get blown out of proportion on the internent. how about you two discuss it over a beer at the hill, eh? the internet makes people lose their **** unnecessarily. and andrew, this is NOT pointed directly at you at all. i think the entire discussion is getting a little too heated.

it's 8 am and that's enough internet for me today already..... i get what you both (VW / XC) are saying and i'm not getting ****ed. i want to put something in perspective though; i don't have a flarm and you happily fly in my vicinity all summer. things get blown out of proportion on the internent.. how about you two discuss it over a beer at the hill, eh? the internet makes people lose their **** unnecessarily. and andrew, this is NOT pointed directly at you at all. i think the entire discussion is getting a little too heated.

What can I say? Every time Sean goes off and accuses anyone disagreeing with him as either a wimp or a liar, my blood pressure goes up about 20 points! But I'll shut up on this... for now. And I hope you get a FLARM this year