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

Surely, you guys who want to impose stealth mode can come up with some real, serious, documented problem that real flarms today are causing, not just hypothetical problems of hypothetical future software?

John Cochrane

John,

The problem is here. FLARM is a great help in finding the best competitors pre-start, following them out the start gate, and good way down the course line. For a short task in weak conditions folks can follow the top guy all the way around. XG never had a chance of hiding out and sneaking away.

This results in artificially similar flights and scores, not reflective of the variety of ability in the race, and make for a duller contest.

Here is a video replay of PAGC Day 3. Let me say that I and my partner would have gladly helped wear a groove around the course line. Those were the rules at this contest and it was clearly the fastest way to get around. 5E had a late start and got stuck low so I waited for him. It cost us.

https://youtu.be/Oti1iLPcTKg

On Friday, August 7, 2015 at 10:49:31 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
So we should impose stealth mode now because somebody might some day write some killer software that might let people know where thermals are and this might turn out to be a bad thing? I've "written specs" for lots of stuff too, like thermal detectors. No reality yet.

John Cochrane

No, but as a leader in the US Rules Committee one would have thought you would be open-minded enough to at least consider the potential long term impacts of new technologies and at least be prepared for the consequences.

It's obvious at this point that you're not, so I'll bow out of this one.

As far as the software is concerned, that's the easy part. The Flarm folks did the difficult part by solving the hardware/firmware/collision algorithm problems. Good on them. Some of us are worried about the second order impacts already today (even with limited capability Flarm leeching has started), and it's easy to see it advancing rapidly from here for anyone with 25+ years in software development.

Out.
P3

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 6:47:43 AM UTC-4, Papa3 wrote:
On Friday, August 7, 2015 at 10:49:31 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
So we should impose stealth mode now because somebody might some day write some killer software that might let people know where thermals are and this might turn out to be a bad thing? I've "written specs" for lots of stuff too, like thermal detectors. No reality yet.

John Cochrane

No, but as a leader in the US Rules Committee one would have thought you would be open-minded enough to at least consider the potential long term impacts of new technologies and at least be prepared for the consequences.

It's obvious at this point that you're not, so I'll bow out of this one.

As far as the software is concerned, that's the easy part. The Flarm folks did the difficult part by solving the hardware/firmware/collision algorithm problems. Good on them. Some of us are worried about the second order impacts already today (even with limited capability Flarm leeching has started), and it's easy to see it advancing rapidly from here for anyone with 25+ years in software development.

Out.
P3

Don't like my tone in this post, so I'll edit it. First cut was early a.m. and BC (before coffee). So, Take 2:

No, but as a leader in the US Rules Committee I think you need to be open-minded enough to at least consider the potential long term impacts of new technologies and be prepared for the consequences. It's obvious that a number of competitor are concerned and feel strongly on this topic, so hopefully that message is getting through .

As far as the software is concerned, that's the easy part. The Flarm folks did the difficult part by solving the hardware/firmware/collision algorithm problems. Good on them. Some of us are worried about the second order impacts already today (even with limited capability Flarm leeching has started), and it's easy to see it advancing rapidly from here.

Out.
P3

On Friday, August 7, 2015 at 10:49:31 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
So we should impose stealth mode now because somebody might some day write some killer software that might let people know where thermals are and this might turn out to be a bad thing? I've "written specs" for lots of stuff too, like thermal detectors. No reality yet.

I think we need to get back to a simple principle: Let's see if something is really a problem before we start passing rules against it.

Surely, you guys who want to impose stealth mode can come up with some real, serious, documented problem that real flarms today are causing, not just hypothetical problems of hypothetical future software?

By then we'll all have FAA mandated ADSB displays of all traffic, super cheap drone anti-collision technology showing us where the thermaling birds are, and so on.

John Cochrane

I'll provide here a portion of a report written by one of the major rules thinkers without attribution as I do not have his OK to do so.
What's the problem
Range of Flarm now gives competitors the opportunity of identifying, locating and assessing the climb rate of competitors over 20km away. This has evolved with the production of better Flarm electronics (Powerflarm) and a better understanding of influence and importance of antenna location and design. Whilst the improved performance is most welcome as it now ensures that all installations are seeing and being seen at the important 2km range with much reduced blind spots(2km required for effective collision avoidance head to head), it has dramatically increased the tactical use by competition pilots.
Tactical benefits on task include being able to assess climb rate of others and identify where important pilots are in order to make improved strategic decisions. Even if the targets in view are not "tagged" they give important information for gliders behind to optimise routing and to ensure that if required a follower may ensure they fly the same route. Tactical benefit prior to start is even greater as it allows a full view of the start line area so it is clear where all the start gaggles are located, where key competitors are, whether they have started and sometimes what rate of climb is achieved in the first thermal on task.
It is arguable whether this sort of tactical assistance diminishes the art of racing gliders. I believe it does but this is not the main thrust of this paper. Flarm in isolation is a great safety device that has rightly been encouraged to the position we find ourselves today where it is mandatory in all FAI Cat 1 events. However, it is now very clear from feedback from International competition pilots that the workload in gleaning the "necessary" tactical data from the Flarm device is diminishing or eliminating the apparent added safety that the underlying Flarm provides.
What are pilots doing:-
1 Spending way too much time scanning moving maps for tactical contact detail instead of look out
2 Spending way too much time "tagging" competitors instead of look out to improve tactical content
3 Turning their Flarm units on and off at will to avoid tactical benefit accruing to others
4 Blanking antennas to reduce or eliminate range to avoid tactical benefit accruing to others
5 Installing amplifiers to increase range even further
6 Utilising two port Flarm units with one send/receive and one receive only antenna to maximise the range received but eliminate or restrict transmit range.
7 Changing backwards and forwards from "stealth" to full ON mode to minimize tactical benefit accruing to others but maximising own benefit as required.
Whats the effect
1 Safety is significantly diminished due to significant head in cockpit time inputting and viewing the Flarm for maximum tactical benefit.
2 Following or "leaching" is much easier so the eternal problem of gaggling is further encouraged at the possible cost of safety.
3 It is much easier for pilots of lower skill level to fly at the same XC speed as the best pilots.
What's the solution

Please read and consider with an open mind.
UH

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 5:55:24 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Friday, August 7, 2015 at 10:49:31 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
So we should impose stealth mode now because somebody might some day write some killer software that might let people know where thermals are and this might turn out to be a bad thing? I've "written specs" for lots of stuff too, like thermal detectors. No reality yet.

I think we need to get back to a simple principle: Let's see if something is really a problem before we start passing rules against it.

Surely, you guys who want to impose stealth mode can come up with some real, serious, documented problem that real flarms today are causing, not just hypothetical problems of hypothetical future software?

By then we'll all have FAA mandated ADSB displays of all traffic, super cheap drone anti-collision technology showing us where the thermaling birds are, and so on.

John Cochrane

I'll provide here a portion of a report written by one of the major rules thinkers without attribution as I do not have his OK to do so.
What's the problem
Range of Flarm now gives competitors the opportunity of identifying, locating and assessing the climb rate of competitors over 20km away. This has evolved with the production of better Flarm electronics (Powerflarm) and a better understanding of influence and importance of antenna location and design. Whilst the improved performance is most welcome as it now ensures that all installations are seeing and being seen at the important 2km range with much reduced blind spots(2km required for effective collision avoidance head to head), it has dramatically increased the tactical use by competition pilots.
Tactical benefits on task include being able to assess climb rate of others and identify where important pilots are in order to make improved strategic decisions. Even if the targets in view are not "tagged" they give important information for gliders behind to optimise routing and to ensure that if required a follower may ensure they fly the same route. Tactical benefit prior to start is even greater as it allows a full view of the start line area so it is clear where all the start gaggles are located, where key competitors are, whether they have started and sometimes what rate of climb is achieved in the first thermal on task.
It is arguable whether this sort of tactical assistance diminishes the art of racing gliders. I believe it does but this is not the main thrust of this paper. Flarm in isolation is a great safety device that has rightly been encouraged to the position we find ourselves today where it is mandatory in all FAI Cat 1 events. However, it is now very clear from feedback from International competition pilots that the workload in gleaning the "necessary" tactical data from the Flarm device is diminishing or eliminating the apparent added safety that the underlying Flarm provides.
What are pilots doing:-
1 Spending way too much time scanning moving maps for tactical contact detail instead of look out
2 Spending way too much time "tagging" competitors instead of look out to improve tactical content
3 Turning their Flarm units on and off at will to avoid tactical benefit accruing to others
4 Blanking antennas to reduce or eliminate range to avoid tactical benefit accruing to others
5 Installing amplifiers to increase range even further
6 Utilising two port Flarm units with one send/receive and one receive only antenna to maximise the range received but eliminate or restrict transmit range.
7 Changing backwards and forwards from "stealth" to full ON mode to minimize tactical benefit accruing to others but maximising own benefit as required.
Whats the effect
1 Safety is significantly diminished due to significant head in cockpit time inputting and viewing the Flarm for maximum tactical benefit.
2 Following or "leaching" is much easier so the eternal problem of gaggling is further encouraged at the possible cost of safety.
3 It is much easier for pilots of lower skill level to fly at the same XC speed as the best pilots.
What's the solution

Please read and consider with an open mind.
UH

What would concern me more is the "win and all costs" mentality associated with actions such as covering your Flarm antenna as is alleged. In a mandatory Flarm contest, should that not result in disqualification and ejection? The leechers are at least, flying within the rules.

Some years ago I gave up sailboat racing (as did many others - there has been a precipitous drop in participation) in part because for some competitors the sport became all about winning, and little about sailing. For these people, if they cannot win they would not sail which led to an entirely different feel to regattas. Secrecy, cheating, and backbiting replaced comaradarie and egalitarianism. I hope there is no parallel here.

Following on P3's post, this isn't hypothetical in the sense of depending upon some new technology. Thanks to the FLARM folks, the data on glider altitude and position are already available. Everything else is number crunching.

Forget crude displays of climb rate by blip. The first task is to write the code that creates a lift strength vs. height band profile for a thermal (already done for the SN10 years ago) based on the gliders who have been climbing in it. It's not just a snapshot; the software can keep track of anyone in a thermal as long as they're in range.

Then project the future thermal position for wind drift (already available in some nav software). Then project the arrival height at each thermal based on the MC setting (same as arrival height over a waypoint, adjusted for fact that this waypoint moves in the wind). Presto, a display of all the thermals within X miles (X depending on antenna design and placement) with lift profiles and arrival heights.

The next, only slightly more difficult, step is to add an indication of thermal life cycle: i.e., how long has it been there and are climb rates increasing or dying.

So as I top out in my thermal, I'm presented with a handful of alternatives, for each of which I know how far away it is, how high I'll be when I get there, where that arrival height is within the thermal lift band, and the likely lift strength, with an indication of whether I'll arrive before the thermal dies. And all of that will be updated while I'm on the way, of course.

The next step is to offer a recommendation on when to leave the current thermal (which has its own lift-height band and life cycle profiles) in order to reach the next thermal.

The next step is to automatically adjust the MC setting for the projected lift strength for each target thermal, because that's what MacCready theory needs to work well. Yes, for the first time (except for team flying), we'll have a good idea of what the strength of that next thermal is so we don't have to guess. And so what if the gliders marking the next thermal depart before you arrive? The nav system will direct you into the best part of the thermal.

The next step is to optimize the recommended path along the next five or so miles of the course line. Some thermals will justify a larger off course excursion than others. Let the computer calculate when. A little more difficult but it's still just number crunching.

And thanks to the software we'll all have, there will tend to be more gliders in each good thermal so the profile info on those desirable "destinations" will be better, although I can adjust my course to bump the weak thermals, as well. It's not too much of a stretch to think about deriving some airmass movement information by comparing the actual glide tracks of cruising gliders with what they should be given the average performance at a given speed. Exploiting lift streets--the holy grail of fast flying--will become a lot easier when they're painted on the nav screen, on which more and more of my attention will be focused.

This isn't science fiction. The software guys who jump on the FLARM bandwagon will soon have an "amoeba" of reachable thermals to go with their amoeba of reachable landing sites. I'd be shocked if most or all of these features aren't available by next contest season.

Full disclosu although I'm sold on the safety benefits of FLARM after one contest, I resisted the transition to GPS loggers for years because I believed it would eliminate the need for an important soaring skill (navigation). So I guess I'm hardly in a position to be critical now, at another critical juncture. But somehow I think there's more philosophical opposition to making it significantly easier to leech--as FLARM does--than to making it easier to fly without being able to use a map. We've decried leeching since the arrival of large numbers of composite sailplanes in the 1970s equalized the fields and made it possible for less skilled pilots to blindly follow [and I mean that literally; there are some funny stories about leeches who grimly trailed leading pilots who wandered off course accidentally] more skillful pilots all the way around a task.

Various solutions have been proposed over the years to address leeching. In this case, stealth mode offers an easy way to blunt most of the impact. Will we have another challenge in a future era of ADS-B? Probably. But that shouldn't stop us from addressing this thorny situation now.

Just my opinion based strictly on the competitive aspects. UH's post provocatively addresses the safety angle.

I agree this is a good discussion.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
U.S.A.

Is it "leach" - the removal of minerals from a solid by dissolving in a liquid, or "leech" - a blood-sucking worm?

I always thought it was the second one, but people seem to disagree. Very important to get this right because the solution could be very different depending on the precise definition of the problem.

Pondering Hank.

It's really important to fully exercise the logic, fact base and implications of all these concerns - which is why the discussion and back and forth is critical. What are the real drivers of change (technology, scoring systems, task types)? What are the potential implications (midair collisions, undeserving winners of contests, pilot enjoyment, cost of participation and being competitive)? What's real vs speculated/extrapolated? What to do about it (bans/inspections, changes in race format, changes in scoring formulae)?

As Hank knows from his years of service on the RC, all of these issues are investigated, discussed, debated and the implications of potential solutions also discussed and debated in the context of formal and informal input from the pilot community and the communities of people who put on contests, support the U.S. Team, etc.

It's about getting to the best possible answer in consideration of all the implications.

9B

Thanks Hank. That is a pretty solid paper.

After reading the paper and hearing of the sophistication with which certain teams are trying to maximize their signal reception and minimize their transmition (covering antennas, custom antennas, powering on/off, amplifiers, turning on and off stealth mode, etc...) I have changed my position.

That is just ridiculous! Im surprised that this was not penalized when discovered. Some of these act are fairly shameful. Reminds me of a guy in sailing using an illegal carbon fibre deck (saving 50 lbs) in a one design class that required fiberglass. Pure cheating. Completely unsportsmanlike.

Either we need to all use the EXACT SAME equipment (a nightmare to enforce) or we should level the playing field and limit the data to the minimum needed to ensure safety (STEALTH v2, more later).

I would suggest "3 km", no ID, altitude only. No climb rate, no heading, no speed, etc. I think 2 km (1.2x miles, suggested in article) is not enough for a head on situation at 120 kts. Maybe even 5 km. But that exact window distance is for others to decide and a fairly minor point as long as it is at least 3km.

Overall, based on the article, I think taking advantage and manipulating FLARM data has already gone out of control.

- Ill formally support the newly recommended, next generation (V2) Stealth mode configuration (not the current configuration that may slightly limit situation awareness of close in gliders that are not currently a collision threat).

I think that confuguration change is quite easy to do and very important.

I hope the IGC -AND- SSA (and other countries) make this rule change quickly and together.

Sean
7T

On Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 8:55:24 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Friday, August 7, 2015 at 10:49:31 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
So we should impose stealth mode now because somebody might some day write some killer software that might let people know where thermals are and this might turn out to be a bad thing? I've "written specs" for lots of stuff too, like thermal detectors. No reality yet.

I think we need to get back to a simple principle: Let's see if something is really a problem before we start passing rules against it.

Surely, you guys who want to impose stealth mode can come up with some real, serious, documented problem that real flarms today are causing, not just hypothetical problems of hypothetical future software?

By then we'll all have FAA mandated ADSB displays of all traffic, super cheap drone anti-collision technology showing us where the thermaling birds are, and so on.

John Cochrane

I'll provide here a portion of a report written by one of the major rules thinkers without attribution as I do not have his OK to do so.
What's the problem
Range of Flarm now gives competitors the opportunity of identifying, locating and assessing the climb rate of competitors over 20km away. This has evolved with the production of better Flarm electronics (Powerflarm) and a better understanding of influence and importance of antenna location and design. Whilst the improved performance is most welcome as it now ensures that all installations are seeing and being seen at the important 2km range with much reduced blind spots(2km required for effective collision avoidance head to head), it has dramatically increased the tactical use by competition pilots.
Tactical benefits on task include being able to assess climb rate of others and identify where important pilots are in order to make improved strategic decisions. Even if the targets in view are not "tagged" they give important information for gliders behind to optimise routing and to ensure that if required a follower may ensure they fly the same route. Tactical benefit prior to start is even greater as it allows a full view of the start line area so it is clear where all the start gaggles are located, where key competitors are, whether they have started and sometimes what rate of climb is achieved in the first thermal on task.
It is arguable whether this sort of tactical assistance diminishes the art of racing gliders. I believe it does but this is not the main thrust of this paper. Flarm in isolation is a great safety device that has rightly been encouraged to the position we find ourselves today where it is mandatory in all FAI Cat 1 events. However, it is now very clear from feedback from International competition pilots that the workload in gleaning the "necessary" tactical data from the Flarm device is diminishing or eliminating the apparent added safety that the underlying Flarm provides.
What are pilots doing:-
1 Spending way too much time scanning moving maps for tactical contact detail instead of look out
2 Spending way too much time "tagging" competitors instead of look out to improve tactical content
3 Turning their Flarm units on and off at will to avoid tactical benefit accruing to others
4 Blanking antennas to reduce or eliminate range to avoid tactical benefit accruing to others
5 Installing amplifiers to increase range even further
6 Utilising two port Flarm units with one send/receive and one receive only antenna to maximise the range received but eliminate or restrict transmit range.
7 Changing backwards and forwards from "stealth" to full ON mode to minimize tactical benefit accruing to others but maximising own benefit as required.
Whats the effect
1 Safety is significantly diminished due to significant head in cockpit time inputting and viewing the Flarm for maximum tactical benefit.
2 Following or "leaching" is much easier so the eternal problem of gaggling is further encouraged at the possible cost of safety.
3 It is much easier for pilots of lower skill level to fly at the same XC speed as the best pilots.
What's the solution

Please read and consider with an open mind.
UH

2 cents from a Rookie so take it for what it's worth.

I put my FlARM on Stealth for the Nationals - worked just as good to find people I could not see quickly and were close enough that is was comforting to find them.

I bought Flarm originally to see power traffic coming down out of a cloud on IFR when I get a little too close to cloud base - it still does that nicely.

When I am at home if I want to know where other gliders are I just call them on the radio and they tell me location, height and if they have "great lift" - so I am not sure if/why I will change the FLARM config file.

I have competed in pretty high level sports and have no disire to gain tactical advantage by seeing other gliders outside on eyesight range - true sport is about the inner game, which is where satisfaction really lives Some winners are never satisfied with their performance.

Stealth worked well makes sense for contests.

WH