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Old October 28th 12, 11:40 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Evan Ludeman[_4_]
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Default PowerFLARM leeching comments

On Sunday, October 28, 2012 4:45:03 AM UTC-4, Don Johnstone wrote:
At 23:35 21 October 2012, wrote:

On Saturday, October 20, 2012 5:52:55 PM UTC-4, Dave Nadler wrote:


On Saturday, October 20, 2012 5:30:05 PM UTC-4, Don Johnstone wrote:




I was very uncomfortable with the concept of instructing pilots to lessen


the efficiency of an anti-colision assistance device.




Stealth mode in no way lessens the efficacy of FLARM anti-collision. It

gives you warnings when there is a collision hazard regardless.

Hope that is clear,





Dave,




it is clear, and while your statement is probably technically accurate,


it

isn't entirely correct. Any mode that reduces the pilot's situational

awareness also degrades safety to some extent. Stealth mode by definition

does exactly that. The OC fatality scenario is a case where stealth mode

might

not provide enough warning to assess the situation and take appropriate



action, whereas the 'full' mode probably would. Just my $0.02



Frank (TA)




From the FLARM manual



"Stealth mode inherently reduces some of the benefits of situation

awareness for yourself and surrounding aircraft. We do not recommend the

use of Stealth mode, but it is better than turning FLARMŽ off for tactical

reasons."

There is no way that the above can be interpreted in any way other than the

safety benefits are reduced. Do you really want to be seen being

responsible for telling pilots to reduce safety?



http://www.flarm.com/support/Flarm_Competitions.pdf


It's a matter of how much warning and of what type is useful and actionable..

You have not actually flown with PowerFlarm "radar", have you?

The amount of head down time required to develop any actionable information from present flarm radar screens is scary large. In fact I would argue that given only flarm/butterfly panel mount displays currently available we'll be safer with everyone in stealth mode simply because there will be less to look at on the panel and eyes may stay outside a little more. 3rd parties will solve the display problem even if Flarm doesn't, but the fact remains that radar in open mode shows you mostly targets that are not and will never become collision threats.

Read (I tire of saying this) the dataport spec. Page 19. It describes in detail what stealth mode actually does. Among other things, you'll find that it still displays all radar targets that might become a collision threat.. I can make the argument that this enhances safety because it does not so clutter the display with non-threats.

Evan Ludeman / T8