PowerFlarm at Region 9 Contest

Here's a brief review of my experience with PowerFlarm at last week's Region 9 contest in Moriarty.

As some of you know, I've been a bit annoyed with some of my PowerFlarm experience - setup isn't really intuitive and it's hard to find all the info you need in the manual. The antennas are cheesy and mounting them effectively is tough - I ended up with a setup that looked like a bomb sight from Dambusters!

Having said all that, I got it up and running and had my first flights during the contest. It works extremely well and in four contest days I got three alarms of imminent conflict that I took action to avoid. One of them really caught my attention as my cockpit view was filled with a glider crossing my path! I'm now an enthusiast!

A second major value was the information about gliders in your vicinity. It really, really, helps a pilot with situational awareness of where everyone is and this definitely helps to avoid conflict.

The Butterfly display works well and with Flarmnet data gives you the contest numbers of the gliders located (hence its value as a leeching tool). Its audio, however, is totally inadequate - especially for a half-deaf old geezer in a noisy cockpit. Some PDAs and PNAs also give you better presentation of the data.

During the contest, we had one very close mid-air (6 feet) with two gliders that were not Flarm equipped and that would likely have been avoided if they were. I hate making proprietary equipment compulsory, but I have to say that I am leaning that way for PowerFlarm for contests in the USA.

Some pilots whined that being able to see other gliders and their climb rates would forever change the way we fly contests and this may be true. This will not be the last we hear of this topic!

Mike (WA)

"Compulsory" for contests - fine with me since I don't fly in contests, but
you'll never get me to install one.

I'd much rather have ATC keeping power traffic, e.g., airliners, away from
me than seeing other gliders in my vicinity. My Mode-S Trig TT-22 does a
fine job of that; I haven't seen an airliner up close in over 200 hours of
flying since installing it. I saw plenty of them before that. Flim-Flarm
won't do that.

Dan


"Mike the Strike" wrote in message
...
Here's a brief review of my experience with PowerFlarm at last week's Region
9 contest in Moriarty.

As some of you know, I've been a bit annoyed with some of my PowerFlarm
experience - setup isn't really intuitive and it's hard to find all the info
you need in the manual. The antennas are cheesy and mounting them
effectively is tough - I ended up with a setup that looked like a bomb sight
from Dambusters!

Having said all that, I got it up and running and had my first flights
during the contest. It works extremely well and in four contest days I got
three alarms of imminent conflict that I took action to avoid. One of them
really caught my attention as my cockpit view was filled with a glider
crossing my path! I'm now an enthusiast!

A second major value was the information about gliders in your vicinity. It
really, really, helps a pilot with situational awareness of where everyone
is and this definitely helps to avoid conflict.

The Butterfly display works well and with Flarmnet data gives you the
contest numbers of the gliders located (hence its value as a leeching tool).
Its audio, however, is totally inadequate - especially for a half-deaf old
geezer in a noisy cockpit. Some PDAs and PNAs also give you better
presentation of the data.

During the contest, we had one very close mid-air (6 feet) with two gliders
that were not Flarm equipped and that would likely have been avoided if they
were. I hate making proprietary equipment compulsory, but I have to say
that I am leaning that way for PowerFlarm for contests in the USA.

Some pilots whined that being able to see other gliders and their climb
rates would forever change the way we fly contests and this may be true.
This will not be the last we hear of this topic!

Mike (WA)

On Monday, June 10, 2013 8:57:16 AM UTC-6, Dan Marotta wrote:
"Compulsory" for contests - fine with me since I don't fly in contests, but

you'll never get me to install one.



I'd much rather have ATC keeping power traffic, e.g., airliners, away from

me than seeing other gliders in my vicinity.
Dan

Dan,
Why the hard-on toward PF? Because of my abrasive personality around the gliderport I fly alone most of the time myself (Kidding, My job keeps me busy most weekends so I fly gliders mostly weekdays). I was out midweek at CV (Next to SLC) about 100 miles South of any metropolitan area and came across a glider out of Parawan right at cloudbase. At the time Parawan didn't have a regular or full time operation and the guy was on a different freq.(He never saw me and I had a hard time seeing him because I was looking up at cloudbase and I climbed right up at him). I never took flying alone for granted again.
I purchased one of the first portables sold in the US and transitioned to a Core on my new ship and I would not fly without it for several reasons. Especially at a contest. For those of you who believe airliners make "course diversions" for you do not understand how TCAS works. The best practice would be to study the STARs and DPs and stay clear of these areas.
Dan, Try this; borrow someones PF portable and try it for a couple of flights and then come back here and rant about your freedoms. Chances are you will be amazed at all the traffic that you did not see before. Hatches just blow, condoms break, and occasionally PF might miss an alert, but the technology is valid.

On Wednesday, June 12, 2013 11:36:50 AM UTC-4, K wrote:
Hatches just blow, condoms break, and occasionally PF might miss an alert, but the technology is valid.

Enjoying the discussion...

About PF... it's worth breaking down the package a bit for discussion of merits (and not-so-merits), especially for benefit of newcomers and skeptics. It's two very well integrated technologies with a third total lashup (barely) along for the ride. I'm speaking of flarm and ADSB on the one hand and PCAS transponder alerts on the other. For those of you with power flarm and a third party display capable of plotting ADSB traffic (e.g. ClearNav), you've probably already seen as I have just how much commercial and biz jet turbo traffic has adopted ADSB and it's great. Range is tens of miles, I now filter this in the interest of clutter removal to delta altitudes and ranges that I care about. It works *really* well. And if you get close, powerflarm will call out the traffic just as it does for flarm targets. Flarm, as already covered at length, works well too (given proper installation).

PCAS on the other hand is just a bad joke, especially if you are flying in proximity to gliders with transponders. The "alerts" in that case are continuous and therefore completely useless. PCAS may have some utility in a really empty sky, but being non-directional, it's a pretty limited sort of utility. It would be enhanced somewhat if we could differentiate 1200 from 1202 from everything else, which I am told we cannot due to technical limitations in what is still largely 1950s technology. With any density of "friendly" transponder traffic (for example at a contest), you'll want to turn PCAS off.

My $0.02

Evan Ludeman / T8

On Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:03:26 PM UTC-4, Evan Ludeman wrote:

PCAS on the other hand is just a bad joke, especially if you are flying in proximity to gliders with transponders. The "alerts" in that case are continuous and therefore completely useless.

I'll buy that it is a bad joke if you're close to a number of transponder equipped gliders.

PCAS may have some utility in a really empty sky, but being non-directional, it's a pretty limited sort of utility.

A lot of ZAON owners would strenuously disagree that PCAS is a bad joke. Plus I was under the impression that the early problems with PF PCAS missing alerts that ZAON would catch had largely been resolved.

For a non-racer starting with the bare minimum of gadgets, a selling point of PF is that it incorporates PCAS, approved logger, and provides high quality NEMA GPS to other instruments (like a V7 vario or a PNA) that might need it.


With any density of "friendly" transponder traffic (for example at a contest), you'll want to turn PCAS off.


But turn it back ON when you're in the vicinity of random GA traffic, right? Do you really think that PCAS is of marginal utility?

On Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:43:49 PM UTC-4, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:03:26 PM UTC-4, Evan Ludeman wrote:



PCAS on the other hand is just a bad joke, especially if you are flying in proximity to gliders with transponders. The "alerts" in that case are continuous and therefore completely useless.



I'll buy that it is a bad joke if you're close to a number of transponder equipped gliders.



PCAS may have some utility in a really empty sky, but being non-directional, it's a pretty limited sort of utility.



A lot of ZAON owners would strenuously disagree that PCAS is a bad joke. Plus I was under the impression that the early problems with PF PCAS missing alerts that ZAON would catch had largely been resolved.



For a non-racer starting with the bare minimum of gadgets, a selling point of PF is that it incorporates PCAS, approved logger, and provides high quality NEMA GPS to other instruments (like a V7 vario or a PNA) that might need it.





With any density of "friendly" transponder traffic (for example at a contest), you'll want to turn PCAS off.





But turn it back ON when you're in the vicinity of random GA traffic, right? Do you really think that PCAS is of marginal utility?

PowerFlarm PCAS "works" now (v 3.0), at least so far as I can tell. It (and Zaon) have some marginal utility if you are not flying in the company of other transponder equipped gliders. All you need to make it worse than useless is one mode C, or one mode S (and no powerflarm) equipped glider within 6 miles.

"Worse than useless" in this case means a cockpit distraction with no utility.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Might be too little information too late since you already have spent the money on the Butterfly, but the LXNav Flarmview is really quite good. I have it connected to a portable unit for my primary display in the front seat.

The audio is not lacking in any way shape or form. It's almost too loud. I haven't actually tried to adjust the volume, I think that may be an option, but you could hear it just fine in a 2-33 at 60knots.

It's a bit cheaper than the Butterfly displays and it works great with polarized glasses. I'm really happy with it so far. A few usability quirks, but for the job it is supposed to do it works great. The configuration and manual leave a little to be desired as well, but like most things it is all firmware so I am confident those idiosyncrasies will get worked out in time..

I second Dan's opinion that a transponder is really the preferred safety device if you fly in airspace with big metal. For me it isn't an either/or for Flarm/Transponder. Both is the right choice.


Morgan


On Monday, June 10, 2013 7:30:54 AM UTC-7, Mike the Strike wrote:
Here's a brief review of my experience with PowerFlarm at last week's Region 9 contest in Moriarty.



As some of you know, I've been a bit annoyed with some of my PowerFlarm experience - setup isn't really intuitive and it's hard to find all the info you need in the manual. The antennas are cheesy and mounting them effectively is tough - I ended up with a setup that looked like a bomb sight from Dambusters!



Having said all that, I got it up and running and had my first flights during the contest. It works extremely well and in four contest days I got three alarms of imminent conflict that I took action to avoid. One of them really caught my attention as my cockpit view was filled with a glider crossing my path! I'm now an enthusiast!



A second major value was the information about gliders in your vicinity. It really, really, helps a pilot with situational awareness of where everyone is and this definitely helps to avoid conflict.



The Butterfly display works well and with Flarmnet data gives you the contest numbers of the gliders located (hence its value as a leeching tool). Its audio, however, is totally inadequate - especially for a half-deaf old geezer in a noisy cockpit. Some PDAs and PNAs also give you better presentation of the data.



During the contest, we had one very close mid-air (6 feet) with two gliders that were not Flarm equipped and that would likely have been avoided if they were. I hate making proprietary equipment compulsory, but I have to say that I am leaning that way for PowerFlarm for contests in the USA.



Some pilots whined that being able to see other gliders and their climb rates would forever change the way we fly contests and this may be true. This will not be the last we hear of this topic!



Mike (WA)

I've had a transponder for eight years. What it doesn't do is keep away general aviation and some military - I have had close-up views of a few light twins in the past couple of years. Some sort of PCAS device will help with this.

If you are flying with more than a handful of gliders, Flarm is very useful. For fun flying, perhaps not so much, but for team flying and contests it's a great tool.

I've already heard about the superiority of LX Flarmview, but the Butterfly display came with my core unit.

Mike

I can see that if you fly with a bunch of gliders Flarm can be a big help.
I'm mystified about about the close encounters with military and GA aircraft
unless you're operating in an area with little to no radar coverage, VFR
fliers, MOAs, oil burner routes, etc. I used to have to make position
reports while flying IFR in the Albuquerque to Cortez, CO area since there
was no radar coverage (this was several years back), but I haven't done that
in some time and I don't know about coverage there now.

Since installing my transponder I've seen it replying on the ground at
Moriarty and in the air many miles east and down low.

As they may have briefed at the pilot's meetings, we have an arrival
corridor pretty much overhead and sometimes airliners come over at 12,000'
MSL (6,000 AGL), and, I understand that ATC held them above 18,000' MSL for
the duration of the contest. Before installing my transponder, I saw many
airliners, C-130s, big twins, etc. closer than I would have liked. I even
heard a few engines. A Flarm would have provided no warning against those.
Since installing the transponder, I never see military or airline aircraft
closer than 5 miles or a couple thousand feet vertically. Neither Flarm nor
transponder will protect against VFR aircraft not in contact with ATC. PCAS
might work for that, however.


"Mike the Strike" wrote in message
...
I've had a transponder for eight years. What it doesn't do is keep away
general aviation and some military - I have had close-up views of a few
light twins in the past couple of years. Some sort of PCAS device will
help with this.

If you are flying with more than a handful of gliders, Flarm is very
useful. For fun flying, perhaps not so much, but for team flying and
contests it's a great tool.

I've already heard about the superiority of LX Flarmview, but the
Butterfly display came with my core unit.

Mike

On Monday, June 10, 2013 8:53:21 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Neither Flarm nor

transponder will protect against VFR aircraft not in contact with ATC. PCAS

might work for that, however.




I was under the impression that PowerFlarm (not Flarm) did that since it receives Mode C replies. Is that not the case?