Perhaps the SSA, Race Committee and contest organizers are missing an even larger and more powerful argument. Public policy and legal liability. The law tries to do the right thing and public policy always comes down on making things safer within readily available technological and economic bounds.. We with fly state of the art gliders made of carbon fiber and Kevlar costing upwards of a quarter million dollars. They have computers that manage the flight regime from navigation to how far they can glide to telling us what the air outside the glider is doing in real time. These gliders have Flarm which is a powerful situational awareness tool and safety feature. Now we seek to limit the situational awareness provided, not because of any empirical data and not because of overwhelming opinion of the pilots whose safety is directly effected.

Continuing the argument, Nephi has conducted a well attended no accident contest (yes, I know it is OLC but try to explain that to a jury) for the last two years, setting tasks and posting the results and requiring Flarm. For the 2016 Nationals in Nephi the SSA has mandated Flarm, but intentional and with forethought, decreased the safety and situational awareness provided by the available and mandated technology. If there is an accident with mandated Stealth mode, the SSA, RC and contest organizers will face severe damages and possibly punitive damages for intentional negligence. A prosecutor wanting to make a name for (him/her)self could even bring criminal charges for depraved indifference to the policy makers that limited the effectiveness of the required safety equipment. Kind of difficult to successfully defend.
Just saying and hope a little more thought goes into this decision. Mandating stealth coupled with a tragic accident might very well change the face of this sport and would certainly bankrupt the policy makers on a corporate and personal level.

On Monday, November 30, 2015 at 7:49:27 PM UTC-8, John Cochrane wrote:
they already did it to the 15M, Open and Std Nationals. The contest asked for a waver to make Flarm mandatory and the rules committee told them it would allow that if stealth mode was required as well. ...

This has left the contest organizers between a rock and a hard place. They can either not require Flarm or must use stealth mode.

Tim (and others in the same boat):

In my past experience at RC, waivers are a negotiation, not a hard answer.. If Nephi organizers want mandatory flarm and no stealth mode, write back and say this is unacceptable. If the RC says no, and you remain unhappy, appeal to the SSA board, which is the ultimate arbiter.

Nephi is in a strong position, as the bid for the contest was made and accepted, and pilots signed up (me) with no mention of stealth mode.

It's also in a strong position, as your fallback is the heck with nationals, we'll just run a camp again. Have fun finding someone else to run three nationals.

You could also survey your pilots and see how they feel about it.

If the organizers do not want to shoulder responsibility for what they regard as compromises on safety, it is strange for the RC to force them otherwise.

When there is a midair, if any deliberate degradation of a safety device is on, be sure that whoever commanded that fact will be sued. (Leaving aside the more important tragedies of such an event.) This isn't alarmism. The Uvalde midair resulted in a suit against organizers, and the Tonopah takeoff accident did as well.

Down the pike, in the end, rule 9.0 allows the CD to make safety decisions. And the CD decides how to enforce rules, if you get my drift.

I will be interested to see what decisions the RC has made regarding stealth. The minutes should be out on the ssa website soon, which ought to put some fact behind these rumors.

John Cochrane BB (Signed up for Nephi, stealth off.)