FLARM in Stealth Mode at US 15M/Standard Nationals - Loved It!

I've been lucky to fly several different sites and events with PFlarm, including Mifflin, Nephi Olc '14, PanAm, and most recent Harris Hill in stealth.. I'd like to underscore the glitches we had getting stealth mode to stick at elmira; one noble contestant landed and relit when he saw his unit had reverted to non-stealth. And enforcement is tricky.

The other point I'd make is that we were blessed at elmira with superb visibility, few narrow converging legs at turnpoints, and a relatively small number of gliders. I nearly always had the other glider visually before the flarm alert. I'm heartened to hear UH say the head-on alerts were unaffected on the ridge; for me, this is the biggest gain with pf, especially at uvalde, Hobbs, and Minden, where the speeds are high and visibility can get hard in the flat afternoon light.

Tactically, I missed the big-picture awareness I've come to use in non-stealth, which hints at an unhealthy dependence and heads-down habit. When life is good, you can see yourself pulling away from the pack or gauge progress on a parallel tack; when the doo hits the fan, having a group of targets to aim at is a nice option. My core feeds an Oudie, so I don't have the same level of tactical info others have realized with FlarmView, etc. Climb rates are fiction and I ignore them. But IDs work when folks have registered or shared on the ground (my PanAm teammate). This makes getting hooked up pre-start vastly easier. But it also led to some obvious follow-the-leader at PanAm and Minden. Some people enjoy racing that way. I'd vote for hiding IDs except for sanctioned team flying.

I'd second P3--we can control how our sport changes. Just because we can't stop someone from breaking a rule is a poor reason for abandoning the rule.

Thanks to XC and co. for putting on a fabulous contest and giving us the chance to gain some experience with stealth.