PowerFLARM leeching comments

On Friday, November 2, 2012 6:13:27 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Thursday, November 1, 2012 10:57:01 PM UTC-4, Tim Taylor wrote:

Yes Mike (and Richard too), There is no question that Flarm is a great tool for soaring. The issue here is should we use full range and information during contests. Are we willing to change the sport so much and at what price? I have flown two nationals with Flarm and it was interesting. But, I personally feel it changes the sport too much in the full mode. It will spark an arms race of additional information and software analysis. It allows easy leaching and changes the tactical flying style. You can see what gliders up to nearly ten miles away are doing. At the nationals level I feel we should have Flarm in stealth mode. This provides the safety it was developed for, but allows pilots to focus on their own decision making and not on what pilots two to three miles away are doing. I look forward to all the information that Flarm and new software will provide in flight, just also want to preserve the essence of competition soaring which is pilot against pilot. Tim



This states the case very well. It will be interesting to see how many will agree with your view. Personally, I do, but know we need to get enough experience to allow the group to guide the long term situation.

UH

I'm not sure I appreciate the "arms race" concern. Flarm costs a bit more than a regular logger and upgrades to the software we all use aren't typically that expensive. I think it would be good to have some additional incentive to adopt Flarm for contest flying in particular and if a belief in a modest tactical advantage encourages some more pilots to adopt I think that's a good thing.

I am yet to be convinced that Flarm does much to alter competition dynamics since it has only slightly greater range than the human eyeball and is not (yet) as good at picking up details like climb rates. The European experience has not surfaced big changes in the character of racing to my knowledge and the Europeans have rejected use of Stealth mode. What little change I have picked up from my own experience was modestly positive - it made racing feel a bit more "head to head". If world championships will have no-stealth Flarm allowed then the arguments about how differences in the US rules hinder the competitiveness of US team pilots would also apply to Flarm usage - particularly at Nationals.

In general I am leery of efforts to retard the adoption of technology as the fears are typically overstated and the enforcement can be cumbersome. The exception for me would be cases where there is a potential for reduced safety from use of a technology - artificial horizons and the temptation to fly in clouds for instance - not the case for Flarm.

9B

Bravo 9B.