Flarm in 2011 USA Contests

Am 18.11.2010 11:45, Don Johnstone wrote:
At 01:05 18 November 2010, PCool wrote:

"Don Johnstone" ha scritto nel messaggio
...
At 03:18 17 November 2010, Paul Remde wrote:
Well done.

The first is that the use of STEALTH mode degrades the performance of
an
instrument which is designed to enhance flight safety. While it is
fine
for an individual pilot to make a decision to do that I am extremely
uncomfortable with requiring someone to degrade a unit and therefore
safety. I am pretty sure that even a British court would take a very
dim
view of that were there to be an accident. Whether a court would find
me
personally liable I have no way of knowing and given the only way of
finding out I prefer to remain ignorant.

No, FLARM units are always transmitting correct position each other. Only

the PDA output is degraded.
But if you are close each other, output is no more degraded concerning
nearby traffic. It is well thought.


See http://www.flarm.com/support/Flarm_Competitions.pdf

The warnings you may receive, and the data transmitted giving others
warning are degraded, maybe not by much but they are degraded. The
document above talks about 2 seconds. Would a jury understand this? The
documentation accepts that the warnings that might be transmitted and
received are degraded with some information unavailable. While we as
glider pilots might understand that the effect is small a non glider
pilot, especially a lawyer, might argue that any degredation is
unacceptable. While individual pilots might make the decision by
themselves, mandating a requirement puts the responsibility on the
organisation/directors of competitions. Having a unit designed as a safety
aid and then deliberately restricting it is any way is not likely to win
favour in legal circles. Who is going to get sued if it all goes wrong?


Don,
there is a difference between "Competition Mode" and "Stealth Mode". I
guess the wording could be better, but fact is that only Stealth Mode
was in question to be mandatory in competitions. Stealth mode has in
fact effects not only on your FLARM unit but also on others in
obfuscating your height and climb rate, except for warnings.

Competition Mode on the other hand is a setting that only affects the
FLARM unit where it is set, resulting in less (and/or later) alarms. It
only affects the pilot that choose to set that mode, either via
FLARM-Tool Software or via the config file on th SD-Card. Alternativly
you could turn the sound off or down if you get annoyed by too many
alarm signals.

I tried this mode during some days in a competition, but then turned it
off again in favour of reducing the warning level when a gaggle
situation lead to too many signals that were not a real threat.

I can assure you that much of the confusion will go away once you have
flown with FLARM for several days in different situation. In fact I am
sure most of you will love it. It is a great enhancement for security.
--
Peter Scholz
ASW24 JE