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



 
 
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  #1  
Old August 22nd 15, 05:21 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
jfitch
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Default FLARM in Stealth Mode at US 15M/Standard Nationals - Loved It!

On Friday, August 21, 2015 at 9:34:28 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Time for a bit of tough love:

Anyone that knowingly or willingly disables or permits to be disabled, diminishes or otherwise attenuates the function of a Flarm device should be tarred, feathered and excommunicated from the sport. I don't want to be in the same sky as you and your greedy, self-centred use of an aid to collision avoidance. As leeching doesn't impede the sports worst nor best (performance wise), I view you as being in the middle of the pack. Frustrated by your own inadequacies you jealously guard your position under the misguided notion that the world wants to steal your performance from you. Newsflash: you aren't as good as you think you are and your performance isn't a magic bullet for your competitors. As it takes two hands to clap (two gliders to splinter?) your selfishness could have very morbid consequences. How about we intermittently fiddle with your ripcord?

I compete for fun so I'm not going to pretend I'm as performance-orientated as some of the other posters within this topic. I reconcile my performance at the end of the day with one person - me. I can't do that if I've followed someone else around the sky.

CJ

And for the record, I'm:
Anti leaching
Anti team flying (unless specifically permitted)
Pro Flarm


'I compete for fun' - That right there is your problem.

When winning becomes more important than competing, all kinds of weird things happen. I will note that I just discussed this with three recent national champions, none of them were particularly concerned about Flarm or leeching.
  #2  
Old August 22nd 15, 06:10 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
kirk.stant
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Default FLARM in Stealth Mode at US 15M/Standard Nationals - Loved It!

On Saturday, August 22, 2015 at 11:21:41 AM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:

When winning becomes more important than competing, all kinds of weird things happen. I will note that I just discussed this with three recent national champions, none of them were particularly concerned about Flarm or leeching.


Exactly.

But back to the technology.

Sorry, I don't buy the "keep the cost down and it will grow" argument. Name ONE sport where that is happening. Look at the evolution of sailboats, windsurfers, race cars, gliders, bicycles (!), even track and field (priced a pair of running shoes lately?). Unless you intentionally freeze the technology, you are going to get an "arms race".

Now I have nothing against strict single-class rules - I used to race Lasers and they are about as identical as can be - but even there the serious competitors spend all sorts of cash on every possible legal tweak and high tech gizmo.

Sorry guys, the technology horse has bolted - you will see (at the upper levels of the sport) all sorts of fancy (and at first, expensive) technology. Which is exactly what happened when varios were invented, then when composite technology was introduced, then when nav/glide computers were introduced, then when GPS was introduced...PF, and by extension, remote tracking/enhanced situational awareness, is just the latest innovation that will be embraced by the sport and, IMO, make it more fun and appealing to the new generation of pilots. And since it's mainly electronics, the cost will invariably come down (Moore's law, etc.); just as how the once expensive state of the art racing gliders of the past eventually become the club ships and sports class racers of the "common man".

You hear pilots complaining that all these "aids" take away from what we are "measuring" in a glider race. I disagree. What a glider race is all about is speed: How fast can you make it around a task. And anything that allows you to go faster in a glider is progress.

Otherwise, we would all be floating around in Weihes staring at our pellet varios and trying to figure our where we are on our sectional charts, while preparing to land out in some horrible place...

So I say "Bring it on! Pump all the data into my cockpit that technology can access, and let me figure out how to use it to go faster!

And as an aside, my wife/crew, who used to love working start and finish gates, said that she would love to be involved in passing real time info to me inflight during a race - I really think real time involvement would be a way to expose more people to racing.

Oh, and, at least for me, a top of the line new open class glider is just as unattainable as an F-1 seat or the helm of an America's cup racer - so the comparison, while a bit of a tongue-in-cheek one, is valid for me!

Great thread,

Cheers,

Kirk
66
  #3  
Old August 22nd 15, 06:51 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
XC
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Default FLARM in Stealth Mode at US 15M/Standard Nationals - Loved It!

Please remember this threat started out by saying P3 he competed at the 15m Nat's with stealth mode and really enjoyed it. It really did work fine as an anti-collision device.

I'd make sure that folks understand that FLARM sends two different messages to the display devices.

The $PFLAU sentence has priority and contains info about intruder alerts and obstacles. The contest ID is removed in stealth mode. Alerts are unaffected no matter the range. It really works quite well with the algorithm the FLARM people have developed.

The $PFLAA sentence is info about proximate aircraft displayed on your device. In stealth mode this info limited to aircraft within 2 km and +/- 300 meters vertically. Stealth or competition mode also removes ID, climb rate, track and speed from the display output for these proximate aircraft. It continues to use these variables to calculate the collision avoidance algorithm in $PFLAU.

Folks should read FLARM release notes for FLARM 6.02 Firmware, FLARM data port specification TFD-12 and FTD-14 FLARM Configuration Specification for full understanding. Anyway, we found it worked well and the contest was definitely still fun for all.

On another note, has anyone noticed the big divide on opinions on this topic for eastern pilots versus western pilots? I suspect the different kind of contest flying has something to do with this perception. Eastern contests have their lower working bands with land-outs being more common and more of a deciding in the results. Western contests have higher heights, faster speeds and better visibility. In the west land outs will definitely sink you but are more rare. They can also be quite remote and potentially scary.

XC


 




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