"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)