Good question. Someone can leech more easily with FLARM in non-stealth mode.. Someone else who's making their own decisions can also use gaggles/markers more easily. Periodically we have to address the role we want technology to play in changing the nature of soaring competition. Anything that makes soaring easier--from GPS to longer-range FLARM to onboard satellite maps to remote thermal sensing--will provoke discussion. I don't think there's a magic answer or rule that can be applied universally.

In this case, unrestricted FLARM makes it easier to leech without adding much in the way of safety over stealth-mode FLARM. So my view is why let technology encourage behavior that we've thought less than desirable for decades? But it is just my view.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
U.S.A.