PowerFlarm BRICK range issues - are we alone????

On Oct 3, 3:47*am, Robert Fidler wrote:
I am not buying the Flarm until all these issues are resolved. I refused shipment of my ordered unit because all of these issues are not resolved. I think if people refused to purchase the unit until these issues are resolved, the factory would have the issues resolved. All I hear is the factory saying yeah we have fixed the problems and the customers coming back and stating, no, all of the problems are not fixed. Rest my case.

Come on now, this is a ridiculous attitude to have. How do you go
through life? Do you refuse to buy a car model if *any* one ever sold
has broken down? Do you refuse to buy *any* computer or software, if
it has ever had a single bug? Do you refuse to go into *any*
restaurant that's ever had even one bad review or complaint online?

The PowerFLARM system isn't perfect, and I (like many) are still
waiting for the IGC logging capability and some of the other tweaks).
But the system works perfectly fine as it is right now! Here are some
things to keep in mind:

1) FLARM is based on two-way radio signals. So the range and
performance is strongly affected by both _your_ installation _and_
your buddies' installation. In this thread here, we've heard some
details about one person's installation, but we haven't gotten
complete details on the people he's been flying with. His
installation could be _great_ but if his buddies haven't done a good
job then they'll all have "poor" performance.

Making judgements about the PowerFLARM when you only know details of
one unit/installation is like complaining about someone driving past
you at double your speed, while failing to mention that you're driving
a 3-cylinder Yugo at 45mph on a 70mph freeway. You're making
judgements while leaving out key parts of the context of the
situation!

2) FLARM IS ***NOT*** A RADAR SYSTEM. IT IS AN __ANTI-COLLISION__
SYSTEM. Sorry for shouting, but I think people's expectations here
have gotten wayyyy out of whack. You need to remember that first and
foremost, the mission of a FLARM is to protect you against a midair.
If it is performing well-enough to prevent a midair, then it is doing
its job. Yes, I'll admit that its really cool when you _can_ see
every piece of traffic at 6-8nm and make tactical decisions or find
your friends from a long ways off. But that is *not* the device's
intended function - that is a "bonus".

Now, what is acceptable mid-air collision avoidance? Your opinion may
be different from mine, but let's run the numbers on the "bad" 1.5nm
range. Let's take a worst-case-scenario of two gliders approaching
each other head-on just under cloudbase (so its realllly hard to
visually spot the other glider, and closing speed is maximized).
Let's say they're bombing along under a cloudstreet at 100mph, so the
closing-speed is 200mph. 200mph is 1 mile every 18 seconds. So at
1.5nm range you have over 25 seconds to react to a threat. STOP
reading this right now, stare at a wall, and count out 25 seconds.
I'll wait. Wow, when you count it out that's a pretty good chunk of
time, isn't it? Even IF you spend the first 5-10 seconds looking
around for the oncoming glider before you make a decision to change
your course, you'd still have enough time to make that evasive
maneuver.

Since most people are seeing traffic at least twice that distance
(~3-4nm), I'd argue the system is working acceptably and DOING ITS
JOB.

If you visually pick up on a glider before the FLARM does,
congratulations on your visual scan! This does not mean the FLARM has
failed you. FLARM is there to protect you against the gliders you
*don't* see - not the ones you do. Accident records show us that
gliders come close to one another a lot, without either pilot seeing
the other aircraft. THAT is the fundamental safety issue that FLARM
addresses.

And lastly: Not to be critical of the original poster, but why do you
need FLARM to tell you where your buddies are? Can't you call them on
the radio and ask them to report their location & altitude? Glider
pilots have been doing that for decades! Again, I'm not trying to
give the original poster a hard time; but for those who see this as a
"failure" of the FLARM system, I want to point out the fallacy of that
line of thinking.

FLARM *can* do some pretty cool things. But don't judge the system by
its "bonus" capabilities, judge it by its core mission and whether it
is succeeding at that. And from everything I've seen (including the
Standard Class Nationals that I flew in this year), it is delivering
on the promise of collision detection and alerting.

--Noel