looking for advice on lead n follow flights

On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 10:09:47 PM UTC-4, JS wrote:
On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 6:15:04 PM UTC-7, Roy Garden wrote:
I'm an averagely useless XC pilot living in a visitor intensive place and
get asked to do Lead n Follow flights with some regularity.
I've tried, on quite a few occasions and short of herding cats, I can't
think of anything less likely to succeed.

The main issue is, keeping track of where people are and them knowing
where I am.
Flarm is great (no, it's not, it's fekkin useless) and the fallback Spot
the
gliders only works with any regularity up to about 8000' and gets a bit
spotty above that.

I don't want to have the guys right on my tail as I want to go check that
the "Next" bar is actually working before they follow me over. so that
leads to 10 (ish) mile separation frequently.

(The point of "Lead n follow", I think, is that it's a relatively safe, if
slow
way to go exploring.?)
If I say "Follow me chaps!" then head off, I could (and do, with some
regularity) **** it up. Fine when it's just me but the responsibility of
having people who don't quite "get" how nasty it can be, following me
stymies the whole thing.

Is there a way, to keep 10-15km separation and have people be able to
find me when I know it's good?
That we can do with kit that is "out there" ? (almost everyone has an
Oudie / flarm / phone with them)

I know this is urasB, but frankly, I could do without "Nigel" in his best
Essex Nasal, quoting that I should call out grid references from my map
. . (Which I use frequently, to block the sun, from the primary nav
display)

Ideas chap (s/eses)?

I'm kind of at the stage where I really really don't want to as it's
always

a cluster through loosing people now, but I do have the time and
inclination, if there was some kind of semi reliable way to track / be
tracked.

Ben Hirashima has developed an app to work with GoTenna Mesh. This would be excellent in keeping track of each other.
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=...ng/BbzC-7kp3CM

One technique I've seen used in lead and follow is:
Leader keeps the landing gear down for the whole flight.

Perhaps talk to G. Dale for further advice?
Jim

Roy didn't say which country he's in, although a few bits in his posting hint that it's probably not the USA. Gliderlink (at least the map part) only works in the USA at the moment AFAIK, although Ben says that'll be fixed. In Europe the hardware and software developed by Linar may be useful for this, see the thread about "do it yourself collision avoidance".

I hope to use Gliderlink for "lead and follow", so if anybody has tried that I'd love to hear how it went. Around here there are enough ground features to specify where one is fairly well, but despite that it's proven difficult to rendezvous after getting out of sight of each other. As for the leaving the gear down, mine is down-and-epoxied, so I am hoping that anybody who follows me in a higher performance glider is reasonably safe.