On Wednesday, May 23, 2012 7:52:00 PM UTC-5, noel.wade wrote:
On May 23, 7:20*am, Mike Schumann wrote:

That's exactly what I read. *The hardware supports TIS-B, but they have no plans to support it unless they are forced into it. *Not a very encouraging sign that the PowerFLARM people see the big picture and are interested in solving the broader GA collision avoidance problem.

It's pretty obvious that this is going to be a niche product focused totally on the soaring world. *That's great if you are flying in a contest in the middle of nowhere. *Not so great if you are flying near a Class B airspace.

Mike - YES, IT IS A NICHE PRODUCT. But why do you think this is a bad
thing? The focus on gliders is why its relatively low-cost, low-power-
draw, and has a nice broad range of features focused around those of
us who fly gliders. This is a GOOD THING.

Your hypothetical "Mass Market" systems are likely to be powered-
airplane-focused and thus will not necessarily have things like low
power-consumption or have as sophisticated predictive logic, so glider
users will likely receive too many false alarms or other problems
(which many people in this thread have already gone over).

And I'm pretty sure you've never developed a product in your life -
otherwise you'd understand the fallacy behind trying to launch a 100%
"it does it all" item on Day 1 (as you seem to criticize PF for not
doing this). Starting simple and building up features through
software revisions over time is a perfectly acceptable and logical
development path. They have started with some of the most important
features that directly address some of the biggest dangers, along with
providing a veritable toolbox full of ways to see and avoid all kinds
of air traffic.

Bottom-line: They don't *need* to show you "a copy of ATC's radar
picture" in order to have a good and meaningful product. PowerFLARM's
features right now provide a great value for the money, and give
glider pilots a lot more collision-avoidance capability than they've
ever had at any point in the history of aviation. Period.

For everyone else besides Mike: This is getting to the point where I
feel like we're all just feeding the troll... Can we all agree to stop
feeding the troll? Let him sit under his bridge and wait for the day
he can equip his ship with his dream system. In the meantime we can
all be practical - and safer - with PF.

--Noel

I have worked on quite a few product development efforts over the years. I totally understand time to market, and have no problem getting a product out early and adding features as you go along.

That's not the situation with PowerFLARM. When it comes to TIS-B, they don't appear to have any serious interest in adding the functionality to the product at all. If the PowerFLARM guys had this in their product plan, but haven't been able to get to it yet due to higher priority issues, I would be very sympathetic and would probably recommend that everyone take a serious look at this product.

As it stands, it appears to me that the development team has total tunnel vision on the needs of contest pilots, and are pretty much ignoring the recreational soaring pilot who is primarily concerned about conflicts with GA aircraft.

I also don't disagree with your assessment that ADS-B systems designed for the GA market won't necessarily meet the needs of the glider market, particularly competition flyers. However, that does not imply that PowerFLARM couldn't be a super product for the GA market if it supported TIS-B. One of the biggest problems we have in the soaring world are the limited production volumes for our gadgets. Marketing products developed for the glider market, to the much larger power market is a very effective way to spread development costs over significantly larger production volumes, permitting lower product costs for everyone.

Finally, what's with the continuous insults? People have different perspectives and have the right to express their views. RAS is not a marketing vehicle for any single vendor. Are my comments maybe hitting a raw nerve?