Good report from the view of a team captain in this unfortunate incident. I am very interested to hear from the side of the jury and of the Australian team, in how they experienced and see this.

Lessons should be learned, and the IGC will need to make some very clear decisions and rules.

I do disagree however with John on his conclusion: instead of allowing everything, we should go to even less groundbased support, and stricter enforcement.

Most pilots I know, hate gaggles and (startline) tactics. Most pilots want to simply fly and race head to head. FLARM and ground-based involvement including tracking-data, increase those gaggles and tactical games. And that makes gliding competitions more boring. It also makes competitions unsafer due to increased collision risk. I know a vice-world champion who has stopped competing for those reasons.

The IGC also agrees with that point of view. They reinforced this position in the 2019 general meeting.

But I also hear a lot of people saying, that "the cat is out of the bag" with tracking/internet-technology, "it's impossible to check if people are cheating, and you can't regulate and penalize what you can't check", and thus we should thus "we should allow everything, so it remains a level playing field".

All three arguments are wrong in my opinion.

First of all, regarding tracking, it's extremely easy and possible right at this moment to stop even a private "hacked" FLARM receiver network to track your FLARM-equipped glider. You don't even need "stealth mode" or "no-track mode" (although they help).

- In your Flarm, set your ICAO 24-bit code to "0". Each time you power up your Flarm, your Flarm-Radio ID will be newly randomly generated.

- With an LX9000 connected Flarm, whenever you feel you are tracked or followed, change your FLARM Radio ID manually in the Flarm-setup screen.

In this way, if someone has "locked on" to you (matched your FLARM-Radio ID to your Competition Number), you will magically "disappear" when the ID changes.

This makes all that effort of private OGN networks almost useless in practice.

On the second note ("you can't regulate, what you can't measure"), that's also not true. For instance, there are many products on the doping list that can't be screened for yet. Should we thus just allow those products? Surely not.

Similarly, turn-and-banks are prohibited in gliders to stop cloud flying. But now turn-and-banks are available in many cell-phones. Should we now thus just re-allow turn-and-banks? Of course not.


And the same is true with private "hacked" OGN networks, internet in the cockpit, ...

It's hard to enforce, certainly. But make it extremely clear that whoever caught breaking the rules, gets punished severely. That will stop the vast majority of cheating. Very few of the top pilots will risk it at all. And those extremely few who do, will be heavily punished if caught.

For instance, ban ground-based FLARM receivers from competitions. A team that gets caught is disqualified, except for the pilot who gives up their own cheating team partners. Very very few teams would still risk it, even if the chance of getting caught is low.

So, that leads me to conclude that we shouldn't go to "level the playing field" towards a situation which none of the pilots enjoy, and which increases collision risk.

We should go the opposite direction: broadcast the vision of the IGC more loudly (gliding competitions are meant to be pilots competitions, and not technology-arms-race or support crew competitions), make clear rules and penalties of what is allowed and what isn't, and then enforce them.