Dan, I think you don't completely understand what a PowerFlarm provides: It allows you to pick up other PF-equipped gliders, and provides collision warning if necessary (had a couple of those at R9 myself). But it also detects and displays transponder-equipped traffic, and Mode-S/ADS-b traffic. I saw several of those, including other gliders who had their PF in Stealth mode later in the contest.

A transponder is nice if you are in a situation where you can talk to center and they are talking to other traffic. But in some areas, everybody is VFR and not everybody is talking to center - how does center tell that VFR 1200 Bonanza to look for the glider squawking 1202? In your situation, you will have NO warning until he hopefully sees you and misses you. With a PF, I will get a non-directional PCAS warning with his altitude and approximate distance. Similar, but not as good (yet) as PCAS, but otherwise workable.

I agree the best is to have both PF and a Mode S transponder. But to say that the transponder alone gives you better protection from ALL traffic than a PF is wrong.

And really, you don't think you can maneuver away from an airliners flightpath with 2 - 3 miles warning? Funny, I haven't had that problem even with visual pickups of airliners.

Personally, I would like Flarm to be mandatory for ALL contests next year, just like a parachute. And encourage Stealt mode be turned off during regional contests - I found it a lot of fun to be aware of all the gliders around me. For nationals, OK, stealth up, but I've got a feeling that again (like team flying) we will be setting ourselves up for a beat-down at the World's!

Like Mike said earlier - this year at Moriarty we had one real close near-midair (7 ft separation), and at least one of those gliders didn't have a Flarm installed. Meanwhile, those of us with Flarm installed had several collision warnings that we resolved after being cued by the Flarm where to look.

I'm convinced. It works. And if really isn't that tough to install - plus it's easy to check the detection range online after a few flights with other Flarm-equipped gliders.

Kirk
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