If You've Flown a FLARM Stealth Contest, Vote Here

On Saturday, December 5, 2015 at 6:29:43 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Actually, sane pilots have been afraid of midairs, west and east, for a long time. In my time on the rules committee, concern over midairs has been most pilots' number one safety worry. The owens valley pilots developed a whole protocol about high speed oncoming traffic.

Then flarm came along, offering some - -not perfect -- help on this topic.. Wise pilots should still be very "afraid" of midairs.

Now it is proposed to force all pilots to intentionally degrade flarm. You can't argue that this does not have some safety implications. The question is simple: how much safety degradation it has, how much you care about that, how much loss of enjoyment it has (knowing where your buddies are, etc..) vs. how much doing so improves (or not) the quality of contest soaring. Once everyone has gotten used to the technology (see the GPS wars)

John cochrane BB

The pilot doth protest too much - mewonders?

From http://www.ssa.org/files/member/2011FlarmUSA.pdf - authored primarily by BB:

"We are not in a crisis.

Each midair is a tragedy, but overall midairs are not very high on the list of statistical causes of damage, injury or fatality.

No change in the contest environment has made midairs more likely in the next year than they have been in the past.

Flarm is an improvement on a system that has worked reasonably well
for many years, not a response to a suddenly greater danger.

The pilot community has not embraced similarly draconian steps to address the statistically much larger dangers of landouts, crashes into terrain, and low energy final glides.

Safety issues should be handled on a consistent and objective basis."

It is distressing that the pilots who ADAMANTKY want all FLARM data to be available to them to leverage for competitive advantage actively stoke the fires of "we are all going to die if we don't get this" to achieve their end..

The issue of the safety implications of using FLARM in "son of stealth" mode and the issue of whether electronic tactical information should be part of the sport are separate issues. Obfuscating is a disservice to the dialog.