The truth about Flarm Stealth and Competition definition...

On Monday, January 4, 2016 at 7:02:55 PM UTC-6, Andrew Ainslie wrote:
"The ongoing overstatements about degraded safety are folks who want to use open FLARM tactically (or, for the fun/learning of watching what others are doing.) Let's talk about that if you want to but let's not continue turn that into a safety argument.

XC "

Sean, this is just complete crap. This is ONE folk that doesn't want this for tactical advantage, this is a folk who wants to maximize safety.

You are, in essence, calling me and others liars. Based on what evidence?

What evidence do you have that I want farm to leach?

Just stop this bull****, Sean. On the offside that uppercase gets your attention, WE DON'T WANT TO DIE. Simple. One of the scariest and most off putting aspects of competitive flying is the continuous proximity of other pilots. I and many others think it asinine, foolish and cavalier to compromise safety to make the sport more manly.

Not speaking for XC, but I'll take you at your word that you are sincerely interested in Flarm for the safety aspects. So am I. And, I'll say again, for me, I do not care about leeching, regardless of whether it's good 'ol visual leeching or Flarm enabled. As hard as I have tried, I can't making leeching work for me, and god help anyone who follows me. However, it is known, or at least strongly suspected, that pilots are turning off or suppressing Flarm output to deny tactical information to competitors. Imagine someone being just out of reach of the podium on the last day by just a point or two. Inbound to the last turn, that pilot sees a chance to break from the pack and maybe grab a win. However, our pilot knows everyone and his brother will see him on their Flarms and rush in to exploit our intrepid pilot's good fortune. How tempting to just turn off the Flarm and zoom away for the win, but putting fellow competitors are risk. You and I, holding safety paramount, would never do such a thing. However, there will always be those who will (or are already doing it) for the sake of a win.

Limiting the tactical use of Flarm is at least worth exploring IF it will contribute to safety.