I would actually like to see a 3rd mode here (on as default) to
suppress the altitude of all aircraft not in conflict from being sent
down the serial dataport.
The rational is quite simple in that it will kill the new trend to
displaying climb rates which has absolutely nothing to do with
colission avoidence and will only ecourage eyes to be pulled into the
cockpit which is surely counter to the raison d'etre of FLARM.

One of the primary skills (and possibly the most important) in our
sport is the location and centering of the strongest available
thermals. The new displays will errode the advantage that the more
skillfull pilots have over the average joes and that is wrong. Yes I
know we have already adopted a lot of other technology in the cockpit
but most of that has been out of necessity or evolution of existing
technology. For example it is now almost impossibel to fly in south
england withpout a moving map display due to the complexity of the
airspace (some of the coridors being on 5-10k wide and the large no of
parachute drop zones matz etc. That aside none of these aids leach off
other pilots in the way that the new climb rate displays do .

Thus my plea for you to stop providing the information that these
devices depend on to show this information. Another alternative would
be to blank the altitude of anything 1k and not in conflict although
that does nothing to stop people looking at these displays in the same
thermal to compare climb rates and thus not looking out the window.

If you created a 3rd mode that had to be actively turned on by pilots
to share their climb rates then I wonder how many pilots would choose
to turn it on...

I know this will be contentious but I truly feel that this is a step
too far even if it is affordable due to the skill errosion of one of
the most fundamental aspects of our sport. This apart from the fact
that pilots eyes will be ecouraged into the cockpit potentially while
in close proximity to other gliders.

rgds
Stephen






On Feb 8, 3:15 am, " wrote:
To prevent abuse of the received data in competitions (which is an IGC
requirement) FLARM has since 2004 included a "Privacy" mode where not
all the received information is forwarded to the serial dataport and
therefore is never available to external, graphical displays or PDA's.
The *internal* threat calculations always use the full dataset.

For the mandatory 2008 update, "Privacy" mode is further refined with
the following goals:
- Discourage temporary turning off of FLARM during competitions
- Discourage use of "Privacy" mode outside competitions

Modification for the mandatory, scheduled 2008 update:
The guiding principle is that the pilot will not receive more
information than what is visually available anyway.

1) Rename to "Stealth mode" as this better describes the purpose and
operation. Heavily promote its non-usage and explain it to key
users.

2) The status and any changes of the "Stealth mode" is recorded in the
IGC file as an L-record (LFLA STEALTH [ON / OFF]) and is therefore
protected by the G-record. Consequently a competition authority can
easily
enforce the use (or non use) if desired.

3) Changes to "Stealth mode" during flight are delayed by five
minutes.

4) Full reciprocity: A pilot that enables "Stealth mode" will get the
information
as if all other aircraft had enabled "Stealth mode", independent of
their actual setting.

5) If FLARM is power cycled during flight, other aircraft are treated
as if in
"Stealth mode" for the first five minutes, independent of their
actual setting.

6) Targets with enabled "Stealth Mode" are only displayed in NEAREST
and
are available on the Dataport as a PFLAA message if they meet at
least
ONE of the following requirements:
- Target is a threat
- Target is within 100m horizontal / 50m vertical
- Target is within 1000m horizontal / 200m vertical and within
+-45° of own flight direction

7) If a PFLAA message is issued according to the rules above, all
fields in Italic are empty:

PFLAA,AlarmLevel,RelativeNorth,RelativeEast, RelativeVertical,IDType,ID,Track,
TurnRate,GroundSpeed,ClimbRate,AcftType

8) RelativeVertical degraded with (distance / 50) white noise when
other aircraft is not a threat.

Please comment.

THE FINAL V4.0 VERSION MAY BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY (based on your
comments).
CHECK RELEASE NOTES AND MANUAL!

Urs - FLARM