FLARM in Stealth Mode at US 15M/Standard Nationals - Loved It!

In the spirit of out of the box thinking...

A radically simpler and non-technical arms race approach to this is simply to apply a "leech tax".

Since we are all scored on GPS traces it would be straightforward and operationally 100% automated to simply add 5-10 seconds to each pilot's time on course for every minute they spend climbing in a thermal that another glider found before them. You get no tax if you arrive within 20 seconds of pilots in the thermal ahead of you and a thermal remains "hot" from a tax perspective until 2 minutes after all the gliders arriving in front of you have left. You can set an upper limit of 5 or 10 minutes of added time or leave it unlimited. Scoring programs could also report leeching statistics for each pilot which would be interesting to see regardless.

That would certainly cut down on visual and electronic leeching and would encourage more pilots to lead out on course, reduced time spent scouting Flarm targets.

Depends on whether leeching is the main concern.

9B

No, but as a leader in the US Rules Committee one would have thought you would be open-minded enough to at least consider the potential long term impacts of new technologies and at least be prepared for the consequences.

It's obvious at this point that you're not, so I'll bow out of this one..


Message loud and clear, and fear not there will be poll questions and lots of discussion. I apologize if my tone indicated a closed mind, it absolutely is not. I'm just trying to sort through what we're hearing -- is the argument that we should impose stealth because there is a problem now? Or is the argument about potential future technology that must be nipped in the bud?

John Cochrane

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 3:21:06 PM UTC-4, Andy Blackburn wrote:
In the spirit of out of the box thinking...

A radically simpler and non-technical arms race approach to this is simply to apply a "leech tax".

That's the spirit, 9B! But that problem isn't using a thermal that another pilot found. If I spot someone a few miles away banked up at 60 degrees going up like smoke over Hillary Clinton's email servers, I shouldn't be penalized if I abandon 1 kt. at 1,200 feet and run for it.

On the other hand, if the well-known post-start-gate "towing" pattern is detected where the trailing pilot enters thermal a few wingspans directly behind the leader, levy the tax. Since this is all automated, set a threshold value between two gliders, say 1 to 2 minutes, after which it's assumed the second pilot did enough decision making that it's not leeching. And since this is all automated, if the software detects that the trailing pilot closed the gap during the previous run by a more skillful/lucky path, no penalty.

I remember reading the term for the first time in a Charlie Spratt Sailplane Racing News from the late 80s or early 90s. It was definitely the little blood-sucking parasite variety. A quick check of the Soaring magazine archive turns up this quite amusing article by George Moffat in 1979:

http://www.ssa.org/Archive/ViewIssue...nth=12&page=48

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 2:45:23 PM UTC-6, Papa3 wrote:
I remember reading the term for the first time in a Charlie Spratt Sailplane Racing News from the late 80s or early 90s. It was definitely the little blood-sucking parasite variety. A quick check of the Soaring magazine archive turns up this quite amusing article by George Moffat in 1979:

http://www.ssa.org/Archive/ViewIssue...nth=12&page=48

Check out the old leeching technology from the Oct 1980 Soaring Mag, pg 2.

http://www.ssa.org/Archive/ViewIssue...onth=10&page=2

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 12:51:17 PM UTC-4, Ron Gleason wrote:
On Saturday, 8 August 2015 10:28:15 UTC-6, Andy Blackburn wrote:
Seems like many of the procedures to enforce turning Flarm on and off or adjusting range are the same or similar to enforcing stealth mode, the primary difference being in one case you are ensuring they don't have too much range and in the other you are ensuring they don't have too little - log files, Flarm ground stations, etc have been proposed for both.

Also worth pondering - in a world with ADS-B we will ultimately end up in a world were stealth mode is effectively voluntary - like today only more so.

9B
If the SSA Competition Rules Committee or Competition Committee decides that stealth mode is required at some level of contests and a rule is implemented the enforcement of the rule *MUST* be automated, just like airspace violations are checked within WINSCORE or SeeYou Competition.

Please do not put yet another level of burden on contest organizers.

This was contemplated several years ago. In discussing what I called "US Stealth", I asked Urs at Flarm if the Flarm device could be put into Stealth and locked for a predetermined time so that a single verification, presumably during the practice period, could be done. He indicated that this was quite feasible. If Stealth in competition takes off, obviously scorers all over will want this quickly. This also avoids the problem of not being able to supply a complying log because of a failure.
UH

This is how I see it.
People are talking about situational awareness, and being able to look at your flarm scope and see where other gliders are (without climb rates etc). Okay so, think about all the years that contests had a waiting list because they filled up, so there were a ton of gliders all flying in close proximity without flarm and they didn't have an overwhelming amount of mid-airs, pretty much because everyone was looking out the window. Now if every one has flarm with just gliders no climb rates, altitudes, or contest ids. Now people are going to be looking at their flarm scope for traffic and not looking out the window, where that guy who's flarm antenna got obstructed is, or that power traffic who doesn't use flarm is . . .

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 4:43:49 PM UTC-7, wrote:
This is how I see it.
People are talking about situational awareness, and being able to look at your flarm scope and see where other gliders are (without climb rates etc).. Okay so, think about all the years that contests had a waiting list because they filled up, so there were a ton of gliders all flying in close proximity without flarm and they didn't have an overwhelming amount of mid-airs, pretty much because everyone was looking out the window. Now if every one has flarm with just gliders no climb rates, altitudes, or contest ids. Now people are going to be looking at their flarm scope for traffic and not looking out the window, where that guy who's flarm antenna got obstructed is, or that power traffic who doesn't use flarm is . . .


That's been hypothesized a lot, but so far the statistics don't bear it out - nor does the science.

The problem is that the human central vision that has detail and allows you to pick out a target is only 2 degrees wide - that's about two thumb widths at arms length. Even if you are looking diligently, scientific studies by NASA, the USAF and the Australian Trasport Safety Bureau (these are just the ones I've read) indicate that your odds of picking up a target that's on a collision course are less than 50/50, possibly as low as 1 in 4, depending on the scenario.

It's easy to pick up targets that AREN'T going to hit you because your peripheral vision is quite broad and designed to pick up movement (collision threats don't move until the wingtips spread apart in your field of vision in the last 2-4 seconds). Because we see a lot of non-threat targets out there, we think that our scan is pretty good. It's not - at least on when it matters the most.

Ask Ramy Yanetz about his near miss over the Sierras. Both pilots had detected the other's Flarm target. Both knew where to look. Neither ever saw the other until they were already passing (angular movement). Only a radio call between a known set of contest IDs - "TG is turning right" - kept them apart. This fact, by the way, is a reason to mandate Flarm (even in Stealth) having contest ID's available rather than hiding them - a radio call "everybody turn right!" is not so useful in in response to an urgent head-to-head alarm at your altitude. Under stealth mode (at least at western TASs) you'll have about 10 seconds to figure out who should zig and who should zag - assuming the alarm happens at max stealth range, rather than because somebody you never saw coming made a turn in your direction.

So, despite the fact that most people are trained on the 1920s doctrine of see-and-avoid, and based on that assert that looking at your Flarm display puts you at greater risk, it is quite likely that in any scenario outside thermalling with other gliders, staring at your Flarm display may be the best thing you can do to avoid running into someone. With ASD-B equipage coming in 2020, it will likely also hold true for power traffic.

No - I am not advocating everyone put their head in the cockpit 100% of the time. A healthy scan certainly is always a good idea - and especially with targets in close. Plus hawks don't carry ADS-B - yet.

9B

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 7:43:49 PM UTC-4, wrote:
This is how I see it.
People are talking about situational awareness, and being able to look at your flarm scope and see where other gliders are (without climb rates etc).. Okay so, think about all the years that contests had a waiting list because they filled up, so there were a ton of gliders all flying in close proximity without flarm and they didn't have an overwhelming amount of mid-airs, pretty much because everyone was looking out the window. Now if every one has flarm with just gliders no climb rates, altitudes, or contest ids. Now people are going to be looking at their flarm scope for traffic and not looking out the window, where that guy who's flarm antenna got obstructed is, or that power traffic who doesn't use flarm is . . .

----

Hmmm. If one owns POWERFLARM and is moderately experienced at flying contests with it...one would know that a pilot very rarely looks at the FLARM display. When a pilot does get an unexpected warning the first thing you do is redo your visual scan. If that scan fails, you "might" quickly glance at the display in an effort to better ID the conflict location.

That said, glancing at the FLARM display is almost always unnecessary as FLARM also gives the pilot an audio call for the traffic immediately following the beep warning (Example: traffic, 3 O'Clock, Above). If you do decide to look at the display (once you have checked visually and heard the audio prompt) it only takes a small fraction of a second to glance down at the display and see where the traffic is (relative to your current position) and then get eyes back out again continue trying to find it.

All of this happens in a few seconds, max. The warning, the audio prompt, the scan which began immediately upon the initial beep, the glance, the continued scan, etc. Remember, without FLARM you would not know anything was wrong at all at this point.

A competent competition pilot is constantly scanning (visually, not Flarm). Flarm is your traffic co-pilot, helping you scan with audio cues primarily. When you do get a warning on the Flarm (perhaps the glider in a thermal ahead tightens up the turn) and you hear the initial conflict warning beeps, you almost always expect it and knew it was coming based on what you see visually. The timing of this FLARM warning is incredibly accurate and virtually instantaneous. You actually learn what maneuvers will set off a warning and what won't. As a courtesy to other pilots I try not to set the warning off for them if at all possible (it can be irritating).

Back on the other hand, if you get a FLARM warning that you are not expecting (you see no gliders nearby)...its quite startling (and also, unfortunately, just as accurate). You know there is a problem.

One of the most frightening warnings is when a glider that is following you pulls in close behind you on a pull up. You usually cannot see them and the FLARM audio might say...6 o'clock, below and the display shows a glider right on top of you. One just has to deal with those and have a bit of trust.

I must say that I feel the constant stream of statements about FLARM taking pilots eyes off their visual scan out the window is a VERY large misconception. It simply is not true. At least in my experience.

The audio beeps (and synthesized speech guidance) is 99% of what FLARM is to me. I listen to FLARM....and rarely need to look at anything inside the cockpit from a safety perspective. The main reason I have the FlarmView is to download flights more easily.

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 8:33:06 PM UTC-4, Sean Fidler wrote:
That said, glancing at the FLARM display is almost always unnecessary
as FLARM also gives the pilot an audio call for the traffic immediately
following the beep warning (Example: traffic, 3 O'Clock, Above).

Sorry, the audio output is provided by downstream display devices.
For example Triadis voice product for FLARM, LX9000, ClearNAV, IIRC Oudie, etc.
Voice (audio other than beeps) is not part of FLARM (PowerFLARM core or portable).

A good audio ennuciator is an extremely helpful addition to FLARM!

Hope that helps,
Best Regards, Dave