Remde has argued that there would be a safety advantage in allowing
normal mode so that thermals in the vicinity could be located and
assessed. I think it sounds like fun to be able to do that but I am
skeptical about any net safety advantage. The problem that I see is
that normal mode will dictate a significant amount of face down
time. This would be especially true during the prestart gaggle time
when it would be critical to see when other pilots are leaving on
course and whether they are hitting decent lift. It is exactly the
congested prestart period which is by far the most dangerous part of
racing now even without that added distraction. Of course, Flarm
itself helps to reduce the hazard but I doubt that setting ourselves
up for maybe 10% or 20% face down time during the prestart interval is
a really smart idea.

Perhaps we can ask for a software feature that automatically forces
competition mode until the glider has traveled say 15 miles from the
launch point.