FLARM

Don Johnstone wrote:
Currently in the UK there is little or no interest
in FLARM, I know of no glider that has it fitted and
long may it remain so.
The cockpit area in gliders is cluttered enough and
battery life with current units is unacceptable.

As reasons for not adopting FLARM, I have to disagree with you on both
counts - and then add some additional food for thought.

I have been flying with FLARM in my glider since Nov last year (when it
was introduced at the New South Wales State comps). My observations are

1) Cockpit clutter

It is very easy to fit and does not clutter up the cockpit. Mine sits on
the sloping side of the instrument panel (compete with a black
polystyrene 'hat' that shades it from the very strong Aussie sun and
also shades its front display, making that more visible in strong sunlight).

In terms of cockpit workload and 'noise' clutter, it was very easy to
include the FLARM in my standard lookout scan and as the alarm tone
sounds as part of the power on self test, so learning that came quickly.


2) Battery life

This is not adversely affected by FLARM (provided your glider has well
charged and well cared for batteries). It consumes 50ma so that is
hardly a huge drain on a battery.


3) Usage

At the NSW state comps in Nov 2005 (the first major usage of FLARM in
Australia), almost every pilot (there were over 60 gliders competing)
admitted that FLARM alerted him/her at least once to nearby glider
traffic BEFORE it was seen. FLARM was seen as a very useful supplement
to a good lookout. The pilots' meeting voted overwhelmingly in favour of
a motion requesting the GFA to mandate FLARM for all gliding
competitions in Australia.

Since that comp, I have been flying at a club where all the gliders
(club and private) and tugs are now FLARM equipped. Conscious that we
cannot allow our members to relax their lookout habits, the Instructor
Panel has introduced a small training package for pilots new to FLARM,
that provides basic operation info and guidelines for using it.

(See http://www.ddsc.org.au/documents/man...ng%20FLARM.pdf for this
document).

As it is fitted in all our two seat trainers, new pilots are starting
off with FLARM.

4) Other FLARM benefits

It is worth noting that FLARM is an IGC type logger (although _NOT_ IGC
approved, so it cannot be used for badge/record claims) and produces
NMEA sentences on a serial output. Last week I wired up a friend's
glider to use the FLARM NMEA output as input to an iPAQ running mobile
SeeYou (which supports FLARM).

With FLARMs in all club gliders and desktop SeeYou on the club
computers, we are making it very easy for pilots to start using modern
analysis tools to help improve their cross country soaring skills.
There's the side benefit that all their flights can be uploaded to the
Online Comp (the GFA runs it's decentralised competition online at this
site).


Finally, it is worth remembering that the major collision risk to
gliders is other gliders (and glider tugs). In Australia, there has
never been a collision between a glider and a non gliding involved
aircraft (I don't know about the rest of the world, but I suspect the
stats to be similar) and so FLARM certainly addresses the major
collision risk we face here.

We had a mid air collision with one fatality last year in Victoria. At
the Qld State comps (immediately prior to the NSW comps mentioned
above), there were five reported air miss incidents (and bar talk
suggested there were at least another 6). At the NSW state comps were
FLARM was introduced, there were no such reports.

We pay about AU$2,000 for a parachute to use _if_ we are alive and
conscious after a mid air collision. Paying about AU$700 for a gadget
that warns you of impending collisions in time to avoid them is a "no
brainer".

I would dearly love to see GA, ultra/micro lights and hang gliders
adopts FLARM. There is an active hang gliding club near my gliding club
and I know from experience how hard these can be to see! The ozFLARM
manufacturer is working on an ADS-B (in/out) add-on that would provide
FLARM capability to ADS-B units - and also an ADS-B (in only) to FLARM.
Once ADS-B is more widespread, I will certainly look to add that to my
FLARM.