RC madness

snic, snic, snic I love good sarcasm.

Are race car drivers who draft the leader leeching? How about the
sailing captain who maneuvers into the "good air" of his opponent
essentially stalling his "engine"? Aren't they simply making use of
tactics available to them? Are the the above two examples against the
rules of their respective sports? Should they be? Do their
participants whine so much about it?

Does knowing where the current soaring super star is and knowing his
height and rate of climb give you some advantage over him? If you think
that knowing his state vector will give you an advantage I've got a
bridge to sell you.

On 12/20/2015 10:01 PM, wrote:
On Sunday, December 20, 2015 at 2:45:37 PM UTC-5, John Carlyle wrote:
SNIP
I think we need to discuss these proposed rules much, much more before they are presented to the SSA BoD!
Yeah, that's what we need. More discussion.

That said, I offer a few thoughts:

1. There can be no real dispute that open FLARM allows greater leeching. Stop arguing about it. Others have reported on it in this forum and many of us can confirm it. The REAL question is whether this is antithetical to the objectives of U.S. competitive events. Elderly pilots such as myself who have to be helped into our gliders from our walkers and who couldn't conjure up a weather forecast on our flip phones if our Social Security checks depended on it agree it is. Technophiles who babble on about how unenlightened it is to oppose change--and who are unapologetic about the $4,000 they dropped on their 3D televisions last year when they slavishly embraced THAT stillborn change--give a cautious nod (barely) to soaring over fiddling with their Playstations/Xboxes but would like to see all "platforms" reflect their belief that whomever masters the latest technology should win. The rest are somewhere in the middle.

2. The other question is whether Stealth mode reduces safety. OK, it may, but the real question is by how much? My own opinion is that it's a very small amount but who really knows? More worrisome are recent comments that raise questions about whether some pilots are already relying too heavily on graphically displayed FLARM data to maintain situational awareness at the cost of looking out the window. Regardless, anyone who truly opposes mandatory Stealth for safety reasons should also be just as vocal in opposing ANY use of Stealth by ANY pilot. Additionally, they should be campaigning loudly for mandatory FLARM at all contests and perhaps even across the U.S. glider fleet at large, followed closely by mandatory ADS-B out. Not that open FLARM insures against midair collisions; I've read at least one reference on this forum that a midair involving FLARM-equipped aircraft has already occurred.

3. Lastly, those who are truly committed to staying at the leading edge of technology and maximizing safety no matter the cost should be lobbying vociferously for mandatory FES gliders, 1,500' AGL "hard decks", and a no-landout policy for all competitive events. After all, we have the technology to eliminate off-airport landings, still one of the greatest risks of cross-country soaring. Who cares what that would cost? Quit yammering about the liability associated with mandated Stealth and imagine how a jury would react to learning that contest organizers tasked an entire field of pilots of varying abilities with flying 300 miles over populated areas WITHOUT AN ENGINE!!!! Horrors! How irresponsible is that!!!

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
U.S.A.

--
Dan, 5J

On Sunday, December 20, 2015 at 9:01:20 PM UTC-8, wrote:

SNIP
1. There can be no real dispute that open FLARM allows greater leeching. Stop arguing about it. Others have reported on it in this forum and many of us can confirm it.

There is no real dispute that open FLARM allows following gliders at a greater and greater distance. Whether that is a tactical advantage leading to faster times is the argument. We have heard from those who claim to have seen others following still others. The GPS traces are public record, yet no one has been able to show a case of advantage due to FLARM leeching. If it were the huge problem we are led to believe, examples would abound. Proponents of stealth need to make their case with evidence, not anecdotes and feelings. Here is a first person report: I have tried very hard to use FLARM to leech. I have the very best tools to do it. I have tried to leech from national champions and regional champions and just friends who were faster. At least in western desert conditions it does not work. You will not fly faster because of it. And Nephi is in the western desert.

In most any form racing, following a competitor at a greater and greater distance is not a path to the podium.

It seems to me pretty ironic that it is the Europeans who are moaning about Flarm and supposed leeching. Yet Flarm is a European invention designed to help avoid midairs and Flarm warns (as has been re reported here) stealth mode seriously reduces the efficiency of Flarm for all other users. Note too that in Europe the gliding rules (IGC) positively encourage leeching, the gaggles there are monstrous. It is only with exceptional exceptions (that blog from the Brit winner of the recent world juniors eg) that deliberately flying anti-gaggle works. But also note from that blog just how much tactical support the pilots got from other team members, who sacrificed their own last day's flying for the team, and ground watchers and advisors -- and that messages had to be increasingly coded to stop others leeching off the advice.
PS: I flew with Flarm here at Moriarty and at Nephi and still am amazed at the input it gave me. It showed me where gliders were a hell of a way from where I could possibly see them by eyeball and in one instance near the start one glider that "just appeared out of nowhere" but in time for me to move course. If I was going to Nephi this year I would be lobbying all and every person with any influence that this was another case where the US should tell the Euros to go play with themselves and leave us the hell alone to do the sensible thing. So there. And yes I am a former Brit.


On Sunday, December 20, 2015 at 11:22:32 AM UTC-7, Andrzej Kobus wrote:
From Rules Committee:

"This is where we are as of today for 2016 FLARM-related rules that will be recommended to the SSA BOD (note that rules are proposed by the RC and approved by the SSA BOD - this year at the Greenville convention):

1. For National Contests:
* Organizers may request a waiver to require the use of FLARM, otherwise carrying a FLARM is at the pilots' option
* Regardless of whether a FLARM is mandatory or optional in a National Contest, if a FLARM is used it must be operated in Competition (i.e. the expected derivative of the current Stealth mode)"


I simply can not believe that RC would propose to use technology that does not exist. You have no clue what it takes to create and test software.

You guys would not survive in a corporate world a month.

Thank God, there is SSA BOD to stop this madness. It would have been a different story if the technology already existed and it was proven and field tested.

Have a Marry Christmas, Andrzej

On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 11:41:33 AM UTC-5, Dan Marotta wrote:
snic, snic, snic I love good sarcasm.



Are race car drivers who draft the leader leeching?* How about the
sailing captain who maneuvers into the "good air" of his opponent
essentially stalling his "engine"?* Aren't they simply making use of
tactics available to them?* Are the the above two examples against
the rules of their respective sports?* Should they be?* Do their
participants whine so much about it?


No. No. Yes. No. No. Some do.




Does knowing where the current soaring super star is and knowing his
height and rate of climb give you some advantage over him?* If you
think that knowing his state vector will give you an advantage I've
got a bridge to sell you.

Dan, with all due respect, I note that you haven't shown up in a single SSA Sanctioned race (unless your profile on the SSA Website is wrong, in which case I'll apologize for the assumption). So, maybe you haven't had to make some of these decisions in a contest setting.

The short answer is: Flarm information matters. A lot. Not always in the way you are implying. As stated ad-nauseum, races are frequently won/lost at the start. Knowing where everyone is, how high, etc. gives a huge insight as to what is happening and what's about to happen as the gate opens. There are many days in East Coast contests where you can't see guys who are a couple of clouds away. In the start gate. Missing the "hot gaggle" can be the end of your day... before the task even starts.

More importantly, knowing which way the "good guys" are heading 6 miles ahead is hugely valuable. I'm coming to the end of this street. Is the gaggle jogging left to the "obvious" street (at least obvious to me) or is it going right? Stop viewing it as a thermal finder and start thinking of it as tactical situation indicator.

It's interesting though - I'm also seeing some level of divergence of opinion between East Coast and West Coast pilots. Maybe the on-course options out West are so "obvious" or defined (e.g. running the Whites or Sierras - nobody's gonna charge out into the Owens Valley) that Flarm info is less valuable. And obviously, with much higher closing speeds up at high altitude, one can see where any perceived degredation of warning time would raise eyebrows.

Again, to my knowledge, nobody is yet flying with a PowerFlarm setup with dedicated tactical information screens optimized for competition support. If they are, it would be very interesting to see the UI for those systems.

P3

On Sunday, December 20, 2015 at 10:22:32 AM UTC-8, Andrzej Kobus wrote:
From Rules Committee:

"This is where we are as of today for 2016 FLARM-related rules that will be recommended to the SSA BOD (note that rules are proposed by the RC and approved by the SSA BOD - this year at the Greenville convention):

1. For National Contests:
* Organizers may request a waiver to require the use of FLARM, otherwise carrying a FLARM is at the pilots' option
* Regardless of whether a FLARM is mandatory or optional in a National Contest, if a FLARM is used it must be operated in Competition (i.e. the expected derivative of the current Stealth mode)"


I simply can not believe that RC would propose to use technology that does not exist. You have no clue what it takes to create and test software.

You guys would not survive in a corporate world a month.

Thank God, there is SSA BOD to stop this madness. It would have been a different story if the technology already existed and it was proven and field tested.

Have a Marry Christmas, Andrzej

Oh it's going to get interesting if the FAA mandates TABS devices for gliders (which means those equipped with TABS will be transmitting 1090ES Out position data). Even if the airspace involved in the contest may not require TABS carriage (we'll see what happens above 10,000') I'd expect "if installed must use" regulations similar to transponder regulations today. And PowerFLARM will be able to see them at further distances than just FLARM signals. So does PowerFLARM get modified to degrade inbound ADS-B signals? Require removal of the PowerFLARM ADS-B receiver antenna? Gliders inspected for hidden antennas? Going to strip search glider pilots for a USB stick size 1090ES receiver? Who wants to assume the liability risk there with a collision with a non-glider?

I suspect the cat is out the bag and shoving it back in is not so easy.

On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:31:33 AM UTC-8, Papa3 wrote:
Andy,

I'd argue that you simply don't have enough data points to make factual statements like the above. The majority of racing pilots in the US have between 1 and 2 years of experience using FLARM and are "hamstrung" by current user-interfaces that are optimized for the original purpose of FLARM - collision avoidance.

Perhaps not - but as far as I know I am the only one who bothered to generate several hundred datapoint from actual contests to test several of the theories that were presented for how Flarm leeching benefits competitors: 1) that competitors following by "Flarm non-stealth distances" (i.e. 2km) can follow the leader and core the thermal faster Data - the opposite is true across multiple contests looked at including dozens of pilots and hundreds of thermals - later to the thermal generates poorer climbs and pilots who with a higher percentage of thermals they found themselves have statistically significant average climb rates over the entire task. 2) That pilots use Flarm to deviate to better course lines or saving thermals that help them speed up (data - dozens of flight traces over several contests show only a handful of cases where pilots changed course within 7 miles (maximum reliable non-Stealth range) to reach a thermal that they would not have come across with stealth on (that is, a course deviation that generates more than 2 km displacement from the closest approach to the thermal without the deviation). Data - only a couple of times per race does this happen - pilots tend not to make big deviations for very far so the stealth range gets you visibility to most thermals anyway, just slightly later and most of the time for very little distance penalty. Additional data - these deviations adhere to the data from 1), above - the climbs make the deviation not worthwhile almost all the time - in one memorable case a pilot deviated 45 degrees for three miles and made a nice clover leaf search pattern exactly where the other gliders had been and found nothing.

Feel free to look at logs and provide your own analysis. Also look up Bayes theory. Based on the results from my (laborious) analysis of flight logs from actual contests I would say we have sufficient data to conclude that there are not big advantages conferred by Flarm leeching.


It's absolutely foreseeable that one or more of the instrument manufacturers (or more likely the Open Source crew) will put some real thought into "Tactical Information Pages" (TIPS) for 2016. As discussed many times, the main purpose of those pages will be to apply "smart filters" for the raw data which is hard (though not impossible) to interpret on today's screens. Whether it's competitor location data, historical track data, location of the "lead gaggle", whatever, that information WILL be used, and the pilots will be able to configure that information to their liking. So, instead of a single "blip" or two from a target, the screen will show the average top-to-bottom climb rates, number of samples, etc. Another might show you only selected "targets" that you want to keep track of in the start cylinder. Will it drastically alter outcomes at the top? Not likely. Will it further compress the middle? Probably.

I dunno Erik - the information is so perishable when you are trying to make time typically by only taking top quartile to top decile thermals and I'm yet to find a race where thermals are continuous columns of lift with no cycling or variation. Not all processing of data yields useful information - and if it is bad more often than it is good information you are better off ignoring it.


If you want an interesting read, have a look at the post from Tom Arscott winner of the Junior Worlds Club Class. In a competition where the start was absolutely paramount, the ability to find (and hide from) competitors was make or break.

Read it - it was a classic gaggle day. I'm not sure it is a superior situation to have winners based on who is able to deploy team spies to find the German team (or hide from theirs). This all happened apparently with Flarm voluntarily in stealth mode - or so they say. The amount of "pickup" team flying that goes on out of the start is considerable - particularly where you don't allow starts out the top and finding a good initial climb is paramount. Pre-start jetting around the start cylinder to find the good pilots and stick with them has always existed if it's going to be a gaggle day - adding stealth makes your ability to do a search for the good gaggle all the more important determinant of the outcome - is cylinder search technique the skill we want to test in contests? I'm not convinced - but clearly people went to some effort to do it at the JWGC.


Now back to sanding primer...

Yo - good luck with that Mr. White! (Erik is in full "Breaking Bad' attire for his refinish project)

Erik Mann (P3)
Flarm fan
Stealth fan

Once again, Andy brings the sane and rationale thought to this appropriately titled thread!

I really can't believe that an untested and not even yet in Beta mode software would be mandated in the rules. Let someone else be the guinea pig.

On top of all this, there is no overwhelming majority of contest pilots that want this. Andy shows with the data he studied that flarm leeching is not the problem that it is being made out to be.

This is a solution looking for a problem.

As John (BB) said in the other post, let pilots make the choice!

On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 1:12:42 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:

Typos fixed for clarity - sorry for the long post.

On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:31:33 AM UTC-8, Papa3 wrote:
Andy,

I'd argue that you simply don't have enough data points to make factual statements like the above. The majority of racing pilots in the US have between 1 and 2 years of experience using FLARM and are "hamstrung" by current user-interfaces that are optimized for the original purpose of FLARM - collision avoidance.


Perhaps not - but as far as I know I am the only one who bothered to generate several hundred datapoints from actual contests to test several of the theories that were presented for how Flarm leeching benefits competitors, specifically:

1) that competitors following by "Flarm non-stealth distances" (i.e. 2km) can follow the leader and core the thermal faster. Data - the opposite is true across multiple contests looked at including dozens of pilots and hundreds of thermals - later to the thermal generates poorer climbs and pilots who with a higher percentage of thermals they found themselves have statistically significant higher average climb rates over the entire task.

2) That pilots use Flarm to deviate to better course lines or saving thermals that help them speed up. Data - dozens of flight traces and hundreds of thermals over several contests show only a handful of cases where pilots changed course within 7 miles (maximum reliable non-Stealth range) to reach a thermal that they would not have come across with stealth on (that is, a course deviation that generates more than 2 km displacement from the closest approach to the thermal without the deviation). Pilots tend not to make big deviations for very far so the stealth range gets you visibility to most thermals anyway, just slightly later and most of the time for very little additional distance penalty. Additional Data - these deviations adhere to the data from 1), above - the below-average climbs make the deviation not worthwhile almost all the time - in one memorable case a pilot deviated 45 degrees for three miles and made a nice clover leaf search pattern exactly where the other gliders had been and found nothing.

Feel free to look at logs and provide your own analysis. Also look up Bayes Theorem. Based on the results from my (laborious - ugh!) analysis of flight logs from actual contests I would say we have sufficient data to conclude that there are not big advantages conferred by Flarm leeching.



It's absolutely foreseeable that one or more of the instrument manufacturers (or more likely the Open Source crew) will put some real thought into "Tactical Information Pages" (TIPS) for 2016. As discussed many times, the main purpose of those pages will be to apply "smart filters" for the raw data which is hard (though not impossible) to interpret on today's screens. Whether it's competitor location data, historical track data, location of the "lead gaggle", whatever, that information WILL be used, and the pilots will be able to configure that information to their liking. So, instead of a single "blip" or two from a target, the screen will show the average top-to-bottom climb rates, number of samples, etc. Another might show you only selected "targets" that you want to keep track of in the start cylinder. Will it drastically alter outcomes at the top? Not likely. Will it further compress the middle? Probably.


I dunno Erik - the information is so perishable when you are trying to make time typically by only taking top quartile to top decile thermals and I'm yet to find a race where thermals are continuous columns of lift with no cycling or variation. Not all processing of data yields useful information - and if it is bad more often than it is good information you are better off ignoring it.



If you want an interesting read, have a look at the post from Tom Arscott winner of the Junior Worlds Club Class. In a competition where the start was absolutely paramount, the ability to find (and hide from) competitors was make or break.


Read it - it was a classic gaggle day. I'm not sure it is a superior situation to have winners based on who is able to deploy team spies to find the German team (or hide from theirs). This all happened apparently with Flarm voluntarily in stealth mode - or so they say. The amount of "pickup" team flying that goes on out of the start is considerable - particularly where you don't allow starts out the top and finding a good initial climb is paramount. Pre-start jetting around the start cylinder to find the good pilots and stick with them has always existed if it's going to be a gaggle day - adding stealth makes your ability to do a systematic search for the good gaggle all the more an important determinant of the outcome. Is cylinder search technique the skill we want to test in contests? I'm not convinced - but clearly people went to some effort to do it at the JWGC.



Now back to sanding primer...


Yo - good luck with that Mr. White! (Erik is in full "Breaking Bad' attire for his refinish project)

9B

On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:31:33 AM UTC-8, Papa3 wrote:
SNIP
Andy,

I'd argue that you simply don't have enough data points to make factual statements like the above. The majority of racing pilots in the US have between 1 and 2 years of experience using FLARM and are "hamstrung" by current user-interfaces that are optimized for the original purpose of FLARM - collision avoidance.


I'd argue that it is incumbent upon those proposing a rule change, to come up with data points to support their case, and the silence has been deafening. Andy has presented data that on its face destroys the case for FLARM leeching, and therefore stealth mode. No one has refuted it with anything other than rumor and feelings.

On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 4:12:42 PM UTC-5, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:31:33 AM UTC-8, Papa3 wrote:

Not all processing of data yields useful information - and if it is bad more often than it is good information you are better off ignoring it.


Sorry - couldn't resist. I honestly haven't had the time to dissect your results at the level of granularity it would take to form a counter-model I remember thinking that I disagreed with it on first-principles; i.e. the way the model was set up using comparative climb rates in circling flight. I tend to agree that thermals are "perishable" but knowing what others are doing is valuable and may not actually result in a pilot doing the same thing as the others. I'm not sure how you would use the statistics you gathered to model some of those decisions (like the two I mentioned up thread).

P3