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

I'm a bit late to this interesting discussion, but here goes anyway:

I've only flown one contest with Flarm - Moriarty in 2013. Stealth not used, and I REALLY liked the situational awareness that Flarm provided - especially in head-on situations under cloud streets.

Not having flown at contests where leeching was a problem, I personally don't see the need for stealth at the local or regional level. At the national level, we should be doing whatever the rest of the world does (if we are serious about racing).

But here is a thought: Those of you who are so hard-on about limiting the range of Flarm displays, what about the advantage of young, 20-15 eyes vs old, not so perfect eyes looking through corrective lenses? Right there you have the potential for a significant difference in detection range of other gliders of interest. So, in the pursuit of "fairness", should we artificially limit all contestants to the same visual acuity?

Binoculars in the cockpit, anybody? I can see pilots wearing flip-down goggles, using them to scan for someone to leech... 8^)

So, I would be OK with a "Racing" mode ("Stealth" is a poor name, IMO) that would limit the display range to something useful for situational awareness and strip out altitude and callsign. At the risk of complexity, the display range could be either selectable (by the CD) or based on closure rate/direction of approach - more in head-on situations, less in side or rear situations, for example.

But really, I think this will all become moot when cheap ADS-B is available and common...

PS: Leaching is the loss or extraction of certain materials from a carrier into a liquid (usually, but not always a solvent) (Wikipedia). I sincerely hope it hasn't gotten that bad in contests!

Cheers,

Kirk
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