On Sunday, August 9, 2015 at 1:57:41 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Excerpt from the BGA on this issue (July 2015)

See https://members.gliding.co.uk/2015/0...-stealth-mode/

"Following the Standard and 15m Nationals, the chairmen of the BGA comps, airspace and safety committees have consulted the relevant technical experts and as a consequence consider that the current 'Stealth' settings designed in by FLARM need to be changed so that the competition issues are resolved in a way that does not compromise non-gliding or external traffic awareness benefits. Therefore having considered the available advice, the Executive Committee has agreed to stop the trial for the remainder of this season's National competitions. The next National competition starts on 11th July. Pilots are free to make their own choices about use of FLARM.

The competitions committee and others will engage with the FLARM manufacturer with the aim of addressing all the identified issues in time for the next competition season.

Pilots are reminded that whilst electronic collision warning equipment can enhance pilots' awareness by providing most useful warnings, such equipment cannot and must not replace a good systematic visual lookout scan, and that it is necessary to avoid any in-cockpit equipment from distracting from the visual lookout scan."

Seems BGA is looking into changing Stealth mode settings to reduce contest advantage without affecting situational awareness. This seems a sensible approach to me. Perhaps we can also hook in with the BGA discussions with FLARM, since the compromise approach already has momentum and seems to address concerns about current stealth mode configuration?

Peter Deane

This in a message this morning form Russell Cheetham in the UK.
Hi Hank



As you say we revisited the mandating of stealth for Nationals after one event. The principle was widely accepted and applauded by most pilots but our Executive committee cancelled it due to pressure from outside stakeholders.. I have to say, when we designed the new stealth mode, we didn't think much about the outside stakeholders but it seems that there is some fitting of Powerflarm in the small jet sector so they can see gliders in the choke points around some of the busy airfields with no controlled airspace. Also the airfield controllers at these small airports have been installing Powerflarm tracking to help them to identify targets in and around their airspace. I am not sure in the end whether this improved conspicuousy will be used as an excuse to grab more controlled airspace once they see how much traffic there really is or as hoped to keep the airspace available for all GA users???

Anyway, the BGA decided that it was prudent to reputation to cancel the trail that from an outsiders perspective reduced the range of a great safety device from 10-15km to 2km.

Where do we go from from here?

The BGA has a commitment to come back and mandate an improved mode that will only influence those pilots that are required to set the mode. In other words, the competition pilots will only see a limited distance and get limited data whilst those not involved in the competition can have full range on all completion targets. Unfortunately, the benefit of cheating will be greater because at present a cheater only sees in full on mode non-competition gliders and any other cheaters so there is little incentive.

We hope, with the assistance of IGC to get Flarm to replace stealth mode with an IGC competition mode.(Stealth by name sends all the wrong messages to the outside stakeholders too) and have already started this dialogue.

Due to the issues identified and a "bug" the IGC did not mandate stealth for European Championship in Hungary as they intended.

The bug is that currently Naviter, LX Nav and LX Navigation devices display stealth targets with an incorrect directional icon. This is confusing for situation awareness. The problem is that once tracking direction data is not provided, the software handles the problem incorrectly and so displays a North up icon rather than resorting to interpolation of fixes as was supposed to happen. I understand Flarm have a fix in testing so that the computer software developers don't need to make changes - however, I expect by the time it is released and uploaded it will be too late for this season and am hoping we will be well on the way to a NEW mode by then.

We would be VERY interested in feedback from your trials so that this feedback can be used to develop the specification of any revised mode.

Cheers

Russell