On 8/8/11 7:01 AM, Dave Hoppe wrote:
I find it odd that there's no posts regarding the first-time use of
PowerFlarm in a US contest. Surely they're all flying with them.


Frank Paynter mentioned PowerFLARM in his Uvalde Day 1 report at
http://soaringcafe.com/2011/08/uvalde-day-1/

Here is what he said

"And another big change here at Uvalde. For the very first time in
history, U.S. pilots are flying in a U.S. contest with FLARM! The FLARM
folks came through with a shipment of the ‘portable’ FLARM devices, and
they were hand-delivered to Uvalde by Lee Kulke. Pilots who were on the
FLARM order list for the ‘brick’ (remote display) unit were offered the
chance to get a portable unit instead (the ‘brick’ unit hasn’t made it
through FCC approval yet). So, about 40 of the 60 pilots here have
FLARM units now; I had ordered a ‘brick’ unit, but took delivery of a
portable unit for this contest. Today was my first day flying with one,
and I have already fallen in love with it. I was running with the 15m
crowd when I got an alert that another glider was close aboard on my
left side. I looked out and saw that John Cochrane (BB) had pulled up
next to me from behind. before FLARM, I might never have seen this
until too late, but with FLARM it’s a piece of cake. The indications
on the screen are very intuitive, and when it wants to let you know
about a possible collision threat, you have no doubt about its
intention. Also, it wasn’t anywhere near as obtrusive in gaggles as I
thought it might be – it only alarms when its calculations determine
there is a potential collision threat in the next few seconds. All in
all I’m very happy to have my FLARM unit, and hope it won’t be long
before they are in the hands of at least every competition pilot."

Those contest reports are great reading - keep them up Frank!

Darryl