Experience with Flarm "Stealth" and Competition modes

On Wednesday, May 29, 2013 5:53:34 AM UTC-4, wrote:
Steve,



The holy grail of glider technology is the ability to read the strength of thermals at a distance. So far, accomplishing that has evaded all those who have tried. PowerFlarm offers the best hope for doing just that on a limited scale when there are other gliders in a cooperating network. If you want to view that as a leeching tool, so be it. Glider racing is inherently a cooperating process.



This holy grail has been working for decades already: Look

out and see how fast the others climb. If they're up faster than yourself,

join them.



Works for me (well, on a moderate scale proportional to my training level).



Having my eyes inside the cockpit and trying to match little dots

with associated numbers on a display with gliders out there does not help

particularly. Neither does it improve safety.





WRT Stealth mode: I reiterate, we do *not* recommend it. Neither does it

make you intrackable. What it does: It removes some information: Ground

speed, track and in particular, vertical speed. It also 'obfuscates' altitude

by adding some random numbers.



Best

--Gerhard (FLARM dev mgr)

Thanks for clearing this up Gerhard. I was under the impression that the position reporting (or lack of) was a bit more symmetric in stealth mode... and I would strongly encourage you to make it so.

It may seem silly in Europe, but US racing puts a premium on independent action. (Speaking to Steve' point) The day that Pez D. Spencer can plot thermal strength and location via flarm data at 6 miles or more is not one I personally look forward to. That's no more "holy grail" to competition soaring than "Guitar Hero" is to performance music.

The hope here is that "lone wolf" US competitors will see enough value in stealth mode used *voluntarily* that we won't see either a drop in racing participation or a push for mandatory stealth mode.

Best,

Evan Ludeman / T8