Is FLARM helpful?

Yes, it significantly enhances situational awareness of conflicting or potentially conflicting Flarm equipped glider traffic.

Yes, it gives you a way to stay connected with your friends, if that is what you want to do.

But, often there is too much traffic information, especially in thermal gaggles.

But, it can enhance leeching in the contest environment, which means more gaggles.

But, interpreting Flarm traffic information requires significant head-in-the-cockpit time.

My Experience:

I was involved in a mid-air at Parowan in 2010. Most certainly, had the two gliders been Flarm equipped, the mid-air would not have happened.

Flarm is extremely helpful in identifying potential traffic conflicts, especially head-on traffic that if difficult to see. It has helped me comfortably avoid head-on traffic a number of times.

In thermals, I find the Flarm alarms to be quite an overload and quite unusable. I revert to my eyeballs for traffic avoidance.

Interpreting Flarm traffic information on in-cockpit devices is very difficult without diverting undue attention inside. The audio alarms on the ClearNav ("Traffic, one o'clock low") help this situation significantly.

Flarm enhances situational awareness; it does not replace visual see and avoid.

Stealth mode is entirely adequate as Flarm threats are not inhibited. Stealth worked fine at Elmira. It seemed to reduce the information overload significantly and de-cluttered the traffic situational awareness picture.. Stealth does not eliminate leeching which will always occur in weak conditions, but I believe it does reduce gaggling to some degree. I think this is in the best interest of the sport.

My personal conclusion and recommendation:

Make Flarm mandatory in US soaring contests
Make stealth mode mandatory in National contests
If a site has specific reasons where stealth may not be advisable (ridge and convergence lines, for example), deal with that by waiver

Tim Welles W3