Confessions of a Flarm Follower

On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at 10:35:32 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
I second that claim. The only way you can observe someone climbing in Flarm is by observing the altitude difference through at least a minute or two.. The climb rate shown is indeed complete fantasy, and often showing 9.9 knots. I learned quickly the hard way to ignore the climb rate which Flarm shows and only look at altitude difference. Also the circling symbol is not a reliable indicator.
Sure Flam can be used tactically, and those of us not flying contest enjoy it immensely. But it is still far from providing accurate and reliable strategic information.

Ramy

Does anyone know if the rate of climb transmitted is barometric of GPS derived? In either case, it is highly inaccurate, by design. It is one second snapshots of either a jittery GPS altitude, or cockpit pressure, unfiltered and uncompensated. Try running your variometer on cockpit pressure sometime and see how accurate it is. When we get ADS-B, at least it'll be hooked to the static system. For proof, look at the B records in the IGC file. Between 2 second records, it is not uncommon to see 10 meter jitters up and down.. There's your 9.9 knot thermal right there. Head for it if you want, but it is a figment of the Flarm's imagination. This is why when I hear the claim that climb rates should be suppressed as strategic, I know that pilot hasn't actually tried to use it.

Try running your variometer on cockpit pressure sometime and see how accurate it is.
I did. It is as accurate and fast as an uncompensated winter variometer. There is an effect caused by varying dynamic pressure, but if you fly reasonably constant speeds it cancels out in the differential calculation.

At 08:15 30 December 2015, wrote:
Try running your variometer on cockpit pressure sometime and see how
accurate it is.
I did. It is as accurate and fast as an uncompensated winter variometer.
There is an effect caused by varying dynamic pressure, but if you fly
reasonably constant speeds it cancels out in the differential calculation.



Hmm, hadn't thought of that. Open the vents and fly fast when near an
airspace ceiling...close them when approaching the minimum height finish.
Good idea.

Jim

On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at 6:09:21 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
So, it's time to fess up. I have used flarm tactically in contests. I enjoyed it. And I think it increases, not decreases, the "spirit" of the sport..

How: One soupy, incredibly hard blue day at Perry, I had (as usual) screwed up my determination that this time, I was not going to foolishly go out on my own. I was going to stick with the gaggle as you're supposed to do on such days. That determination lasted about half way down the first leg, when I spied a bird over the town to the right. The bird started flapping, and here I am all alone again.

After a long slog at about 1000 feet and rounding the second turn, I saw two gliders circling on my flarm. Out of ideas, I headed that way. Eventually I saw a flash of wings a few miles ahead and 2000' up. Usually coming in that much under other gliders does not work, but I was out of ideas. I lost them visually, but flew right to where the Flarm said they were. Bingo, the thermal had another bubble in it, and up we go. Day saved, and, it turned out, eventually won.

Another, much stronger day, I was flying with a group of gliders. Two lines suggested themselves. Everyone else went right, but I went left. Over the rest of the leg, I was able to watch how they did vs. how I did. Eventually, my line ended -- it proved they were right. Oh well, I was able to head over and meet up again, and the group went together through the big blue hole. I would have lost them visually, but knowing what was going on was a lot of fun.

I tend to be impatient, often leading out. At minden nationals the glides are very long. After leading out on a blue day, one often wonders, did the others follow, or are they staying behind? It was very useful strategically to know that the gaggle had indeed followed me, so I would have help if things got tough up ahead. Also, it means I could go a bit deeper in the cylinder and reestablish myself. It was also good to know on my disastrous last day, that I had led out once too often, and now was completely on my own to dig out of this mess. Knowing there is nobody there is useful too!

At Nephi, a group of us used flarm radar to coordinate a team of 4 without a lot of radio contact. Did your team mate find a thermal? Boy, it is a lot easier to look quickly at the flarm radar than radio calls.

Ok, I'm out of that closet. Yes, this is a useful technology. Is this kind of behavior a disaster to the "spirit" of soaring?

Sailplane racing has always been tactical. Following other gliders, using their lift, is the heart of the tactical game, especially in world contests and especially in weaker conditions. The issue is not flarm following vs. no following. The issue is looser flarm following vs. much tighter visual following.

As my stories suggest, one of the biggest tactical uses of flarm is that you can spread out. If you want to keep contact with the gaggle in case things get tough, you do not have to slavishly stay a few hundred feet away; you do not have to slavishly stare at them to not lose sight of them. You can go try something else, you can lead out, you can stop for a better thermal, all knowing that it will be easier to keep in contact if you need it.

"Leeching" is not the same as "following." Leeching is the art of staying very close, in visual range. Flarm eliminates leeching because it makes it possible to follow and work together at much bigger distances. Flarm encourages thinking for yourself, leading out, trying a different cloud. To my mind, this is a much better "spirit" than the intensely tactical and concentration-absorbing visual tracking that you have to do without flarm.

I also flat out enjoy the greater situational awareness. Since when is flying around in the soup, unaware what everyone else is doing, only to find out at 9 pm once the scores are in, such a great spirit? I look forward to the day that ADS-B shows us where everyone is, and I know how I'm doing throughout the race.

So, as I see the controversy, this is just about who wins and who loses.

Winners: people who can imaginatively adapt tactics to use new technology, which mostly involves flying at a greater distance from markers.

Losers: people who have invested a lot of time and effort learning the skills of visually-coordinated tactical flying, whether finding targets in the start area, following specific gliders, learning the discipline to stick with the gaggle when needed, escaping others who attempt to follow, knowing where others might go, intercepting radio calls to team captains, and so forth.

No wonder the IGC is up in arms -- a generation of hard-won skills is about to go out the window.

Say I, good riddance. I freely admit this is blatant self-interest. I'm in the first category. I just can't bring myself to spend a whole soaring day looking at and following other gliders, so I never got good at visually-coordinated tactical skills that will now go out the window.

But I also claim that the spirit of the sport is much better if we can fly much more loosely, and Flarm allows that, without throwing away the chance of winning the contest.

John Cochrane BB

My friend John has finally come out of the closet. I've been waiting for this because, knowing John, we would eventually hear about why he thinks Flarm radar is a good thing for our competitions. He hasn't resorted to the safety panic mongering of many and makes an interesting case.
I'll provide some other insights and opinions with the hope that the personal shots about age, paranoia, or protecting my status can be skipped by those that don't agree with me.
I've used radar in the same ways as John, except for the team flying he describes. As a result of the experiences with this it is my opinion that Flarm radar can be a very powerful and useful tool with the potential to have a meaningful affect on individual performance and result scores. John well describes some of those cases.
The reality is that radar is most useful tactically as a following tool, either by direct following or, by using the information from the leading pilot(s) to decide to follow, or diverge. There is very little, if any, benefit to the leading pilot. The effect of this is that following becomes more useful and important in tactics.
The ability to break away by the leading pilot(Jerzy excepted) is meaningfully reduced. No longer does he have to get out of visual range, he must get out or radar range. 2-3 miles becomes 6 or more. This will only become more as the value of this too gets better understood and the tools get better with longer range.
Radar also makes team flying hugely easier. John likes this because he really enjoys this. Some others will also. Many, will not.
There is one unstated assumption in the scenarios John describes. That is that we all give information via Flarm and get it back.
As a demonstrated useful tactic, one can play what I would call "hide and seek".
This involves selectively blanking the A antenna while using the B for reception. This allows the pilot to receive at somewhat reduced effectiveness while providing no tactical information out. Unfortunately this has a profound affect on the safety benefits we all bought the tool for. There are lots of ways to do this, such as the old antenna in the side pocket next to the foil wrapped snack bar trick, and others that some of us that have thought about this, and maybe already used, have come up with.
I know this is happening now to a small degree, but predict it will become more prevalent in the future. It is reported to be much more common in Europe than the US, but they are ahead of us on adoption and tactics.
A well specified Competition mode could, in my view, reduce the motivation to disable the safety benefits we want. I would, for purposes of discussion, suggest the following characteristics understanding that the Flarm folks would need to do a lot of rethinking:
Mode effective radius of 5km vs. current 2km. This would provide much enhanced warning range. It is also sort of matches the useful visual range for ID and climb rate of competitors. There seems to me to be little benefit to choking the range below useful visual, and, I suspect most will agree, some strong negatives.
Retain the no ID and climb rate concept with one exception. Provide the ID if the glider that Flarm has determined is a conflict.
Limit information in only. This would allow other users not in Competition mode the full level of protection. This has meaningful issues with respect to ensuring effectiveness of the mode, because it relies on only on the receiving glider to be properly configured.
Yes I know you can hide another Flarm, but the antenna has to go somewhere and I would be willing to risk an occasional(likely very rare) cheater.
Provide ID of all gliders that Flarm sees in a head on situation(10 degrees L&R?)at full range.
What I am describing could give us close to full safety benefit, while keeping the tactical benefits to what I think are a tolerable trade off, and reducing the motivations toward greater levels of cockpit technology to leverage this tool.
Flame suit on.
Happy New Year to all.
UH

Seems to me that most forms of racing have always been about who can tweak/manipulate/out think/out engineer, the competition. That's why racing breeds technological improvements.

Racing that freezes improvements is usually called "one design" and encourages an absolute level field.

I suppose we must decide what path the sanctioned classes are choosing.

Lane

John,

I also like to know where my competition is. FLARM-wise, i'm happy to let them use me as long as i get to use them. Fair's fair.

I also would like to be able to talk to my crew during the race, and see what the weather is doing. Imagine a NASCAR race where the driver couldn't talk to his crew chief.

On Wednesday, December 30, 2015 at 11:44:56 AM UTC-6, Tony wrote:
John,

I also like to know where my competition is. FLARM-wise, i'm happy to let them use me as long as i get to use them. Fair's fair.

I also would like to be able to talk to my crew during the race, and see what the weather is doing. Imagine a NASCAR race where the driver couldn't talk to his crew chief.

NASCAR drivers/teams even have "spotters" that communicate info about other cars .. even which "line" on the track that is working better for the competition. Maybe a good analogy for using FLARM info to find best "line" under a cloud street
Curt - 95

On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at 5:09:21 PM UTC-6, John Cochrane wrote:
So, it's time to fess up. I have used flarm tactically in contests. I enjoyed it. And I think it increases, not decreases, the "spirit" of the sport..

I totally agree.

We need better Flarm/ADS-B coverage (situational awareness), not less. Glider racing has gotten so lonely it's boring. A lot of rules but not racing - which explains the popularity of OLC.

When I race, I want to RACE (see definition in another excellent post).
And IMO, in the perfect race, everyone would use the same thermals, on the same task, and finish within seconds of each other. That would be a test of soaring skill, not of luck, weather guessing, and local knowledge.

Of course, hardware would count. It does now, so what.

And gaggles would be a problem if everybody started at once - so split up the pack into groups of 3 -5 gliders and give them a short start interval, and have multiple winners each day...

We used to have fun races in AZ where the first guy out of the start called the first turnpoint, and the last guy there called the next - the point being to keep the pack together (regardless of handicap) and have fun racing each other all the way to the final glide. Not sure how you would score it for real, but it beat the hell out of boring area tasks!

Kirk
66

.... the safety benefits we all bought the tool for.


Hah, you're just being diplomatic with that one UH.

Does anyone really doubt that the hard core Flarm pushers have been using "safety" as a cover? I think most of the Flarm advocates have never really cared about collision avoidance as the PRIMARY function of Flarm. "Safety" is mostly just a bludgeon to be used against the debate opposition.

My belief is that tactics to gain advantage through Flarm and to deny competitors information, or perhaps even to broadcast misinformation, will severely degrade the safety function of Flarm far more than any "stealth/competition" mode does.

On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at 6:40:49 PM UTC-6, XC wrote:
Thank you, John. Someone finally is admitting that FLARM is being used tactically.

I don't think I have ever used the word leeching in any of my posts. Rather, I believe this business of being able to see contest numbers and their established climb rates is bad for sailplane racing.

The losers in all this are those who are confident enough in their abilities to lead out, who have honed their skills at looking at the sky and finding the best thermals available and those who can best convert that rising air into altitude. In other words, the losers are those who could best navigate a given sky if they were the only ones flying that day. The losers are those who are the best at soaring.

The winners are those who use a heads down FLARM display to drive hard to catch up to gaggles or gliders outside of visual range, who then use the choicest thermals marked by others to enhance their score. This is not necessarily the leeching scenario described by many. Instead they can jump from best thermal to best thermal without find their own. They may not win, although this is quite possible, but they can consistently do well, even though they would do much worse were they to attempt the same flight without markers.

Biggest loser, though, is the sport of soaring. We lose our heros. These are the great personalities that make this sport attractive young pilots. This sport was built by bold pilots who did great things, who consistently demonstrated an uncanny knack for finding thermals when no one else could. It makes me sick that people want to replace or replicate this kind skill with a FLARM display and then expect us to clap for them at the end of the contest.

XC


Well said.

WB