No FLARM log equals Unsafe Operation? (USA)

On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:11:09 -0700, Chris Nicholas wrote:

I have not heard of any problem of interference arising from the other
aerial, the Flarm-Flarm radio transmit/receive – only the partial
masking by carbon fibre that I mentioned. But these are very weak
signals – I expect it would not take much to disturb them.

Chris,

Can you put numbers on the required separation?

I assume that if I put a FLARM in my panel it would not be upset by the
Garmin GPS II+ mounted on my battery box to feed my EW Model D, but what
about the following scenario:

Install a Redbox IGC on the equipment tray of my Libelle panel with the
antennae in a bridge over the well toward the forward end of the tray. I
have a Binatone satnav running LK8000 on a fleximount about 100 mm away
from the panel, so it would be around 500mm from the Redbox antennae. Is
that likely to be enough separation to avoid interference?


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On Oct 11, 7:58*am, John Cochrane
wrote:
On Oct 10, 8:41*pm, "John Godfrey (QT)"
wrote:



On Oct 10, 9:09*pm, Andy wrote:

On Oct 10, 4:39*pm, Paul Cordell wrote:

The rule as discussed is to address proof of the mode the unit was
operating in during the flight. *It must be in Competition mode so as
to not provide an unfair advantage to the pilot.

Yes Paul that's clear. *What is not clear is the consequence of not
being able to prove that FLARM was operating during the flight.

Do you believe that a competitor should be disqualified from a contest
because his FLARM failed to produce a log?

Do you believe that a contestant should be disqualified from a contest
because his FLARM failed?

No other US contest rule so harshly penalizes a contestant for an
event outside his control.

Andy

I am strongly in favor of mandatory use of flarms in contests -
ultimately (and soon). *And I am a strong believer that a pool of
rental units will speed the adoption.
That said, the devil (as usual) is in the details of how to get there
safely.

I don't think we can say "the only valid log for a contest flight is a
Flarm log" which is what the suggested rule effectively does. Even
though Flarm is a proven technology, the PowerFlarm is a new box and
needs a track record. I also don't want to see the workload of the
scorer increased by having to process two logs per flight. While
organizers can require impact activated ELTs, there is no requirement
for contestants to prove they are working correctly and I don't see
the clear necessity for this WRT Flarm.

There are also a couple of (to me) worrisome safety details to work
out related to the introduction of rental/loaner/borrowed units:

1. *The position of the transmitting antenna is important, especially
so in carbon ships. *If you don't get this right, you effectively
don't have the device on board making it useless to both you and
others. There will need to be a knowledge base of what works and what
doesn't developed (and adopted from European experience).

2. *I am not comfortable with the idea of pilot having a new piece of
equipment on the first contest day that they have never seen before
and are trying to learn and that is making noises/visual cues at
them. *This problem goes away over time, but it is a serious concern
to me in seeing the technology introduced without unintended negative
safety consequences. Any you can't just say "turn down the volume and
put it in the back out of sight because that creates the problem of
(1).

Keep the discussion going.
John Godfrey (QT)
US Rules Committee

My view of the right steps

1. Fall 2010. Allow flarms in contests (this year) *-- or at least
make it clear that they are allowed.

2. Summer 2011. (I hope). Flarms arrive. US pilots can see the
technology and learn the answers to all the many FAQs that come up.

Once (hopefully) they see how great it is, social pressure starts to
build. There are already 100 on order and only about 350 contest
pilots, so we're doing pretty well! One use for mandates is to "get
the ball rolling" so enough other gliders have one that each
individual buying one is worthwhile. We are clearly past that point in
the US based on voluntary adoption.

In considering rental/mandate, we get to see the power flarm, try it,
and evaluate if it will work simply strapped on the glareshield of
typical gliders, without extensive training, external antennas, etc.
as some fear. Based on my experience at Szeged, I think it will work
fine, but we need to evaluate this question as a community. (Even if
pilot X can't understand the display, at least the rest of us can see
him!)

3. The Flarm Fund *starts operating rental/demo units. New pilots or
slow adopters get to see how it works, and *the fund can fill out the
last 5-10 gliders and the towplanes at typical contests.

Flarm fund learns how to make the rental process work, a not
inconsequential fact. Mail to pilots a week ahead of time so they can
read instructions? How to store, track, maintain units? Who is in
charge at contests? All this has to work seamlessly once or twice
before we think about passing a rule that forces a contest to shut
down if there are glitches!

4. A mandate needs the consent of the contest community, which needs
1-3 to happen, another winter of discussion and a poll. I want flarm
to happen faster too, but especially with the production bottlenecks,
it can't.

And you only need a mandate if steps 1-3 are not giving us 100%
coverage already. Will it really happen that powerflarm if it is
provided at the contest for modest rental fee ($50), *the CD, CM, and
all the other pilots rather strongly suggest you put it in, *("Nice
glider you got there...."), some dope refuses, cites "there is no rule
saying you can make me do it" and ends up flying anyway? *Before
passing a MIRA rule, let us see it happen ONCE!

5. If we do have a mandate, turning in logs, complex procedures and
heavy penalties do not seem appropriate to me. *We don't require an
inspection of your *ELT, a test of your radio, an inspection of your
cockpit to be sure you have a parachute on, and so forth. * We don't
do cockpit inspections for banned equipment either -- FM radios,
satellite weather, gyros, etc.

Will it really happen that flarm is mandated, pilot X takes his rental
away from the meeting, but a) refuses to *put it in his glider or turn
the switch on, and b) is not caught by other means? In my view this
takes implausibility to the nth power. Let it happen once before
passing a lot of complex procedures!

Like QT, I say this completely in "ears on" mode. We'll have a fun
flarm discussion at the rules committee in november, and try to map
out a sensible path for *US evaluation and adoption.

John Cochrane

So far I know of one (regional) contest that is requesting approval
for "MIRA" in 2011. Are there any others who have made or are
considering it (especially nationals)?

John Godfrey (QT)
US Rules Committee

On Oct 11, 8:06*am, Martin Gregorie
wrote:
On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:11:09 -0700, Chris Nicholas wrote:
I have not heard of any problem of interference arising from the other
aerial, the Flarm-Flarm radio transmit/receive – only the partial
masking by carbon fibre that I mentioned. But these are very weak
signals – I expect it would not take much to disturb them.

Chris,

Can you put numbers on the required separation?

I assume that if I put a FLARM in my panel it would not be upset by the
Garmin GPS II+ mounted on my battery box to feed my EW Model D, but what
about the following scenario:

Install a Redbox IGC on the equipment tray of my Libelle panel with the
antennae in a bridge over the well toward the forward end of the tray. I
have a Binatone satnav running LK8000 on a fleximount about 100 mm away
from the panel, so it would be around 500mm from the Redbox antennae. Is
that likely to be enough separation to avoid interference?

--
martin@ * | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org * * * |

OK, I looked at the competition survey question again. It looks like
this:

"Though many pilots have suggested mandating Flarm, the RC believes
that this step is at best premature. We also recognize that the right
answer is different for different contests, i.e. 18 meter nationals
vs. small sports regionals.

We have no specific survey questions for this year. However, we
welcome your input on how aggressively to promote voluntary and
coordinated Flarm use, and what practical steps you would welcome.
Please comment below."

This is a long way from mandating use and penalizing FLARM failures.
The practice
in other countries where FLARM has been widely adopted, as noted
above, is
to check that "stealth mode" is used on the FLARM units in a contest
so that
the climb rate of distant competitors is not available in the
cockpit. For that matter,
I don't think that is universally enforced.

The state of FLARM in the US next year will be that it will be allowed
(the RC
needs to specifically allow it in the rules), and a number of people
will have it
in their planes. It would be great if some rental units were
available, but of course
the logistics of such are pretty high.

-- Matt

I would be more than happy to personally discuss with everyone
concerned, the proposed rule in individual email threads.

I would however ask that you first visit the site http://www.FlarmFund.com
.. Most of the items this thread has pointed out have been addressed
there.

My email address can be found on the site.

I do not believe that a thread like this can be productive with
everyone talking all at once with different agendas.

As to the thread topic my view is:

It is unlikely that a simple and isolated FLARM failure would result
in a penalty.

The unsafe operations category of penalties allow for the value of the
penalty to be anything from a 0 point warning all the way to a contest
disqualification.

In my experience CDs do not hand out discretionary penalties lightly
and certainly significant penalties in this category would be taken
very seriously by all.

Many areas in our rules simply can not be specifically written to
handle all events and we place an enormous amount of faith in the
integrity of the CD's we chose.

I would anticipate that with time, a guideline to FLARM penalty
application could be developed.

Flarm logs can show even inadvertent problems like bad antenna
position and bad battery charging/cells. The log requirement could
show these errors before a novice user could determine them.

Dale Kramer

On Oct 11, 11:58*am, mattm wrote:
On Oct 11, 8:06*am, Martin Gregorie
wrote:



On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:11:09 -0700, Chris Nicholas wrote:
I have not heard of any problem of interference arising from the other
aerial, the Flarm-Flarm radio transmit/receive – only the partial
masking by carbon fibre that I mentioned. But these are very weak
signals – I expect it would not take much to disturb them.

Chris,

Can you put numbers on the required separation?

I assume that if I put a FLARM in my panel it would not be upset by the
Garmin GPS II+ mounted on my battery box to feed my EW Model D, but what
about the following scenario:

Install a Redbox IGC on the equipment tray of my Libelle panel with the
antennae in a bridge over the well toward the forward end of the tray. I
have a Binatone satnav running LK8000 on a fleximount about 100 mm away
from the panel, so it would be around 500mm from the Redbox antennae. Is
that likely to be enough separation to avoid interference?

--
martin@ * | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org * * * |

OK, I looked at the competition survey question again. *It looks like
this:

"Though many pilots have suggested mandating Flarm, the RC believes
that this step is at best premature. We also recognize that the right
answer is different for different contests, i.e. 18 meter nationals
vs. small sports regionals.

We have no specific survey questions for this year. However, we
welcome your input on how aggressively to promote voluntary and
coordinated Flarm use, and what practical steps you would welcome.
Please comment below."

This is a long way from mandating use and penalizing FLARM failures.
The practice
in other countries where FLARM has been widely adopted, as noted
above, is
to check that "stealth mode" is used on the FLARM units in a contest
so that
the climb rate of distant competitors is not available in the
cockpit. *For that matter,
I don't think that is universally enforced.

The state of FLARM in the US next year will be that it will be allowed
(the RC
needs to specifically allow it in the rules), and a number of people
will have it
in their planes. *It would be great if some rental units were
available, but of course
the logistics of such are pretty high.

-- Matt

My take is that Flarms are currently permitted under the following
(6.6.3):
6.6 Restricted Equipment
6.6.1 Each sailplane is prohibited from carrying any
instrument which:
• Permits flight without reference to the ground.
• Is capable of measuring air motion or temperature at
a distance greater than one wingspan.
6.6.2 An external cleaning device is any device with moving
parts designed to clean the exterior of the sailplane during flight.
In certain classes (Rule 6.12), the use of such devices is prohibited.
6.6.3 ‡ Carrying any two-way communication device is
prohibited, with the following exceptions:
• ‡ A standard aircraft-band VHF radio
• ‡ A wireless telephone (which is not to be used
during flight)
• ‡ A position reporting device

John Godfrey (QT)
US Rules Committee

On Oct 11, 3:08*am, Andy wrote:
On Oct 10, 8:36*pm, Andy wrote:

On Oct 10, 7:16*pm, mattm wrote:

OK, I'd like to see this proposed rule. *I've flown contests recently
(although not this year). *I'm all enthusiastic about installing a
PowerFLARM soon, but I'm not at a point to do it for next season.

Proposed Rule 6.5.3 - When announced by contest organizers prior to
the Preferential Entry Deadline, a FLARM collision avoidance
instrument is mandatory in every sailplane if there are a sufficient
number of rental FLARM units available for a contest rental fee of
fifty dollars or less per unit. *At all times when this rule is in
effect, FLARM flight logs must be handed in daily that confirm that
the FLARM was operating correctly. *Failure to comply should generally
result in unsafe operations penalties (Rule 12.2.5.1).

Good discussion.

I think the first thing the RC should do is make PowerFlarm legal in
contests. *It's debatable whether requiring PowerFlarm, or a Flarm
log, is necessary - you could potentially allow Flarms to be used in
any mode tha pilot wanys, which would simplify things by a lot.

9B

All this becomes somewhat complicated if we want to retain long held
philosophy of limiting outside information available to the pilot.
If Flarm is not in "competition mode" , climb rate information of
other gliders can be available to that pilot. Current thinking is to
require this.
To verify this mode, a Flarm log would need to be submitted.
Flarm failure- no log- assumption device could be not in competition
mode- "unfair/unsafe" whatever condition - no flight points.
Option - allow "anything goes" mode. All info available to pilot. I
predict that within a VERY short period of time, air data computers
will be processing all Flarm inputs and giving "where the lift is
better" information to the pilot. Having this will be critical to
being competetive, so here we go on an expensive tech war which raises
costs for everybody.
Some might think this is cool- techies- I think it would be very bad
for the sport.
Option- Convince Flarm folks to create a way to put competition mode
in such that it can't be tampered with for some period of time.
Result of this possibility- Flarm benefits are realized, no tech war,
no lost flights if failure occurs(and they will).
I have asked that feasibilty of accomplishing this option be discussed
with Flarm folks.
FWIW
UH- RC Chair

On Oct 11, 9:05*am, DaleKramer wrote:
I would be more than happy to personally discuss with everyone
concerned, the proposed rule in individual email threads.

I would however ask that you first visit the sitehttp://www.FlarmFund.com
. *Most of the items this thread has pointed out have been addressed
there.

My email address can be found on the site.

I do not believe that a thread like this can be productive with
everyone talking all at once with different agendas.

As to the thread topic my view is:

It is unlikely that a simple and isolated FLARM failure would result
in a penalty.

The unsafe operations category of penalties allow for the value of the
penalty to be anything from a 0 point warning all the way to a contest
disqualification.

In my experience CDs do not hand out discretionary penalties lightly
and certainly significant penalties in this category would be taken
very seriously by all.

Many areas in our rules simply can not be specifically written to
handle all events and we place an enormous amount of faith in the
integrity of the CD's we chose.

I would anticipate that with time, a guideline to FLARM penalty
application could be developed.

Flarm logs can show even inadvertent problems like bad antenna
position and bad battery charging/cells. *The log requirement could
show these errors before a novice user could determine them.

Dale Kramer

Dale,

Thanks for your input. The problem with one-on-one email is that no
other pilot is aware of the exchange and may not even realize there
is a question to be answered. There is a lot of noise on RAS and
threads often diverge well away from the OP, however some interesting
information has already come out of this discussion.

One such interesting piece of information is that FLARM logs should be
reviewed to ensure the FLARM was in contest mode. Yet the proposed
MIRA rule does not require the FLARM to be in contest mode. Why
would logs need to be reviewed to verify something that is not
required by the rule?

I notice that your reply did not address the very important issue of
whether a competitor will be allowed to continue to participate after
a FLARM failure. What is the position of the MIRA proponents on that
issue?

I'm also curious to know who will be doing the detailed review of the
FLARM log that will reveal the errors you mention. I doubt anyone
will be more motivated than the user, and I also doubt that any
contest scorer will want this additional chore. Maybe Winscore will
be updated to read FLARM logs and produce a full FLARM status report?

I support the adoption of FLARM in US but I believe we should be very
careful about rushing into new rule making.


Andy (GY)

Andy,

If we could start a new thread on each issue coming to light, that
would be great but I find that RAS threads with multiple themes are
extremely hard to follow and difficult to make conclusions from.

As Hank mentioned, contest mode is an issue. I believe that it will
quickly sort it self out with initiatives like Hanks.

Also, I believe that the actual experience in Europe with contest mode
does not necessarily show any great competitive advantage (but perhaps
yes with team flying) and contest mode has not been enforced at the
Worlds as far as I know.

I would prefer to not have to address contest mode unless/until a
problem becomes apparent with time.

I believe issues like FLARM failure will be treated lightly by CDs and
I plan to have spare rental units available. This and other issues
that I have not strictly addressed will be evaluated as they come up
and I will be creating a log of these issues along with the CD
reaction as time goes on.

I plan to write the program to analyze all FLARM logs in a directory
that would quickly point out any issues that might concern the CD.

The FLARM logs can be quickly read from the FLARMs memory card into
the directory.

It would only take very little extra time for the scorer and this
extra work on the scorers part will be mentioned up front in the
solicitation of contest managers to have their contest be MIRA.

I should point out that an alternate solution to handling the FLARM
logs that I would support would be to only require them at the
discretion of the CD. This takes away the regular ability to check
for range and battery errors but still lets someone report another
pilot whose glider does not show up on his FLARM, thereby initiating
log checking by the CD.

Dale Kramer

On 10/11/2010 11:10 AM, John Godfrey (QT) wrote:
On Oct 11, 11:58 am, wrote:
On Oct 11, 8:06 am, Martin
wrote:



On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:11:09 -0700, Chris Nicholas wrote:
I have not heard of any problem of interference arising from the other
aerial, the Flarm-Flarm radio transmit/receive – only the partial
masking by carbon fibre that I mentioned. But these are very weak
signals – I expect it would not take much to disturb them.

Chris,

Can you put numbers on the required separation?

I assume that if I put a FLARM in my panel it would not be upset by the
Garmin GPS II+ mounted on my battery box to feed my EW Model D, but what
about the following scenario:

Install a Redbox IGC on the equipment tray of my Libelle panel with the
antennae in a bridge over the well toward the forward end of the tray. I
have a Binatone satnav running LK8000 on a fleximount about 100 mm away
from the panel, so it would be around 500mm from the Redbox antennae. Is
that likely to be enough separation to avoid interference?

--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

OK, I looked at the competition survey question again. It looks like
this:

"Though many pilots have suggested mandating Flarm, the RC believes
that this step is at best premature. We also recognize that the right
answer is different for different contests, i.e. 18 meter nationals
vs. small sports regionals.

We have no specific survey questions for this year. However, we
welcome your input on how aggressively to promote voluntary and
coordinated Flarm use, and what practical steps you would welcome.
Please comment below."

This is a long way from mandating use and penalizing FLARM failures.
The practice
in other countries where FLARM has been widely adopted, as noted
above, is
to check that "stealth mode" is used on the FLARM units in a contest
so that
the climb rate of distant competitors is not available in the
cockpit. For that matter,
I don't think that is universally enforced.

The state of FLARM in the US next year will be that it will be allowed
(the RC
needs to specifically allow it in the rules), and a number of people
will have it
in their planes. It would be great if some rental units were
available, but of course
the logistics of such are pretty high.

-- Matt

My take is that Flarms are currently permitted under the following
(6.6.3):
6.6 Restricted Equipment
6.6.1 Each sailplane is prohibited from carrying any
instrument which:
• Permits flight without reference to the ground.
• Is capable of measuring air motion or temperature at
a distance greater than one wingspan.
6.6.2 An external cleaning device is any device with moving
parts designed to clean the exterior of the sailplane during flight.
In certain classes (Rule 6.12), the use of such devices is prohibited.
6.6.3 ‡ Carrying any two-way communication device is
prohibited, with the following exceptions:
• ‡ A standard aircraft-band VHF radio
• ‡ A wireless telephone (which is not to be used
during flight)
• ‡ A position reporting device

John Godfrey (QT)
US Rules Committee
Is an artificial horizon prohibited? Most people would consider that a
safety item in the event you unexpectedly find yourself in IMC. Safety
items should not be prohibited by any contest rules.

--
Mike Schumann

On 10/10/2010 11:59 PM, Andy wrote:
On Oct 10, 10:29 pm, "Matt Herron wrote:


It's a transmitter. Is there any chance it
will interfere with PCAS, radios, bluetooth, or other equipment in my
cockpit?

IDK - I have not heard of issues in Europe.

To clarify: PowerFlarm contains a PCAS (transponder detector), so you
don't need to have another one on board; in any case, the transmitter is
a much different frequency (~900MHz) than used by the PCAS (1090 MHz) or
your radio.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl
- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz