On Wednesday, August 5, 2015 at 6:49:23 PM UTC-7, Papa3 wrote:
Wow - I would have thought it completely self-evident that having this information via a screen was/is "bad" relative to what we (I) traditionally think of as "the sport of soaring".

The "sport" often involves highly tactical decisions of followng other gliders. Is it necessarily better that this is limited by the mark IV eybeball, so gliders have to follow very closely to stay with gaggles? Is it not possibly better to have a wider view, a chance to go off on your own and still keep track of others?

Yes, people do use flarm for tactical advantage. Right now, really, the display of where other glders are within 4 miles is the main use. The climb rates, as others have pointed out, are next to useless.

Cost is a non-issue. Advantage is a non-issue. We have the flarms anyway. We either artificially disable their capabilities or we use them at no extra cost for their full ability, and everyone has them. If you're worried about cost, $160,000 new gliders are orders of magniutde more than any electronics we are contemplating.

Let's worry about hypothetical new 100k instruments if and when they arrive.. For now the issue is, do we use the full capabilities of an instrument everyone has anyway or not?

So just how terrible is it to have a slightly better situalational awareness of where the gliders are within 4 miles -- and especially behind where you can't see?

One thing I like about full flarm is it actually breaks up gaggles. people can go off on their own for a bit and not worry about being alone all day.

Yes it's different. Yes it's new. But our job is not historic preservation. Our job is to have fun and enjoy soaring and advance the sport.

What I have not seen in the case for stealth mode is a clear statement of just what is the awful problem that we're trying to fix. Not hypotheticals, what have you actually observed in flarm contests that is a terrible problem requiring banning this interesting new technology?

Yes, you can see start gaggles that you otherwise might have missed unless you sat off the back of KS tail all day. Yes, you can see some other gaggles forming that you might have missed if you weren't looking very hard. So can everyone else. Just how terrible is this?

Personally I find the greater situational awareness of what others are doing makes the contest more enjoyable. The big complaint, especially when we moved from AST to time limited tasks is that nobody knew what anyone else was doing, you went and flew and waited for an 8 pm scoresheet. Well, now you know a lot more about what others are doing.

But that's my view. All I've heard is grumbling about how terrible it is that the sport is changing. That's not a problem. I've heard hypotheticals about new instruments someone might make someday. That's not a problem today. Just what is the real problem we're trying to fix here?

John Cochrane BB