Attitudes & Reality

We have the same problem in medicine, its called Alarm Fatigue. During sedation there are alarms for just about every parameter that we monitor: absolute blood pressure, mean blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen concentration in the blood, carbon dioxide concentration in the breath, body temperature, and more. You can commonly have two or three alarms just on the border of triggering on and off and on and off and on and off throughout a many hour case. The brain can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

Think of the audio vario - that quiet drone in the subconscious - till you 300m above the ground and it's all you focussed on and every little warble has your full attention.

Clinton

Recall hearing that combat pilots in Vietnam would shut off all of their enemy radar/SAM missile warnings. relying on their eyes and radio calls from fellow pilots the electronic warnings being a distraction from staying alive. Any jet pilots from that era that can confirm or correct?

On Monday, May 7, 2018 at 9:50:41 AM UTC-4, wrote:
Recall hearing that combat pilots in Vietnam would shut off all of their enemy radar/SAM missile warnings. relying on their eyes and radio calls from fellow pilots the electronic warnings being a distraction from staying alive. Any jet pilots from that era that can confirm or correct?

Be sure to consult the dead ones, too. You want a fair and representative sample that includes the guys that might want a mulligan.

What's going on in this thread is the construction of edge cases and straw men. Edge cases might be real, but not representative of 95% of reality. The reality w.r.t. Flarm is that the bugs crawl around on the map where you might, or might not look at them and if one manages to get on an intersecting course with predicted close approach of around 25 seconds, the first stage alarm goes off, in my cockpit that's a clear male voice that announces "Traffic, 3 o'clock low" or whatever. There is also a display of relative bearing, relative altitude & distance (which I almost never look at). Alarm fatigue is not a factor.

It's like having a back seater with 4 pi steriradian xray vision, provided the other glider has flarm. It works -really- well. Can it fail? Sure. Would I trust it enough to alter my decision making or lookout in any way? Of course not. Is it worth having in a contest environment or other densely populated airspace (e.g. the Alps)? Yes, indeed.

If flarm is only 90% effective (choose another number if you like, but it appears to be pretty good) at reducing collisions, does this reduce it's value to zero? Of course not. You only need one pilot to take action to avoid a collision. Even if you can't cope, if you have flarm, I can avoid you.

Power flarm adds collision alerts for ADSB traffic transmitting on 1090es. That's a lot of small, fast jets, turbo props and such, in addition to slower GA and airliners. I see this traffic routinely (enough that I filter for relative altitude and distance so as not to clutter the display). I have yet to have a conflict alert for an ADSB contact, but that might come in handy for someone, some day.

Don't want to buy it? Statistically, you'll probably (there's that word) be okay, but please stop making fun of the guys that decided to throw down the money and solve that problem.

The only glider mid air I know of involving a flarm equipped glider in the US was the poor guy who got clobbered by a non-flarm equipped glider. No one died, which is why you haven't heard about it.

Evan Ludeman / T8

On Monday, May 7, 2018 at 8:50:41 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Recall hearing that combat pilots in Vietnam would shut off all of their enemy radar/SAM missile warnings. relying on their eyes and radio calls from fellow pilots the electronic warnings being a distraction from staying alive. Any jet pilots from that era that can confirm or correct?

Yeah, I was a WSO close to that timeframe and had experience with the same early RWR equipment that the "war story" is referring to. That early gear was useful but somewhat limited and when you were deep in the middle of a bunch of threats could get overwhelmed - but it also had a nice little volume knob so you could turn it down and just glance at the scope to see who was lining up to shoot you next. So I have my doubts about that story other than it makes for a great "No **** there I was, flat on my back over Hanoi, out of airspeed and ideas" war story.

Current fighters have a multitude of systems that pretty much show you everything that is flying around you, and if the pilot is wearing one of the newer helmets, all he does is turn his head and any nearby traffic is highlighted on his visor. 5 years from now I hope to have the same thing in my glider... :^)

Kirk
66

Kirk
66

On Monday, May 7, 2018 at 6:50:41 AM UTC-7, wrote:
Recall hearing that combat pilots in Vietnam would shut off all of their enemy radar/SAM missile warnings. relying on their eyes and radio calls from fellow pilots the electronic warnings being a distraction from staying alive. Any jet pilots from that era that can confirm or correct?

Gregg,
Back in my day (WW2, the BIG one) we didn't have those pussy detection systems, SAMs, or Radars, but we did have Flak so thick you could walk on it. I knew, by the virtue of my eagle vision and quick reflexes I would made it home but I always wore my flak jacket. Just sayin...

Ya know, sometimes I agree with you, sometimes I really don't.

In this case seems like an OK to throw some thoughts out there, not really agreeing/disagreeing with you.

I have a few decades in facilities/plant maintenance.
This includes building system management as well as alarms (HVAC, water pressure, compressed air, etc.).
It also includes 15+ years with UPS battery management systems and alarms.

While an engineer may want tight limits, too tight may trigger many alarms. This gets the users into, "it's a stupid alarm, ignore it". Worse if they either don't understand the data or the negative impact of the data.

More than once with UPS batteries, I and a sales guy would be called into a site. The question was, "we spent all this money on battery monitoring, why did we drop the data floor?!?!".

I could look at data and say, "well, for 6 months our system was saying you had issues. They were ignored, then you had a major power event and the system and redundant systems fell....".

OK, take this post out of a niche discussion, make it more "normal".

You buy some cars, they have some warning lights. You likely have a battery light, a brake light (could be low fluid, could be the E-brake is on), an oil light and a temp light.
For those of us that may money working on cars, these are called idiot lights. By the time the light comes on, something bad has already happened. No real forewarning.
Why? They only tell the mechanic what system failed and stopped the car.
On the other hand, maybe your model had gauges or you added your own.
Now you can see a trend to a bad outcome.
Now, you can still choose to ignore the impending bad outcome, but it is a choice.

How does this relate to the discussion?
Well, with proper training and use, eyeballs do a fair job, but not perfect. Likely a bit better than "idiot lights", but not perfect.
Flarm, transponder, whatever.....is more like gauges, still not perfect, but better than eyeballs alone. If you choose to ignore the info, it may still be a bad outcome.

Kirk seemed to think I was against any type of collision avoidance (in another thread), I am not.
Your location can raise or lower the need, but it is better to have if possible.
As I stated in the other thread, most private gliders I fly have some system. I like having more info. Flarm is good as it is more specific to close quarters flying like a thermal.
Asking our club to equip all club aircraft is another matter. If I could afford to just buy it for each club ship, but I can't afford that.
What we have done is try to impart on pilots the potential dangers and push for looking as well as maintaining FAA cloud clearances. This is about on par with idiot lights.

Lots of passion on this topic, Lot's more knowledge out there than I have.
Does anyone have a reasonable guess as to the percentage of U.S. gliders that have flarm? transponders? or both? For that matter, Radio's, oxygen, etc?

Is there anyone willing to admit the adoption of flarm in the U.S. 'could' be considered a failure, (at least compared to Europe), and in the future represent a waste of money by the pilots that bought in? and, maybe some negative emotion towards those who didn't?

Will the 2020 change in
the transponder/ADSB situation prove to be the system to install?

On a lighter note this reminds me a lot of some discussions I remember about VHS vs BETA tape formats. I'll remind everyone that the technically superior format lost out to the cheaper and inferior technology.

Not meaning to step on toes, Just wondering?

Scott W.

On Monday, May 7, 2018 at 3:47:44 PM UTC-5, Scott Williams wrote:
Lots of passion on this topic, Lot's more knowledge out there than I have..
Does anyone have a reasonable guess as to the percentage of U.S. gliders that have flarm? transponders? or both? For that matter, Radio's, oxygen, etc?

Is there anyone willing to admit the adoption of flarm in the U.S. 'could' be considered a failure, (at least compared to Europe), and in the future represent a waste of money by the pilots that bought in? and, maybe some negative emotion towards those who didn't?

Will the 2020 change in
the transponder/ADSB situation prove to be the system to install?

On a lighter note this reminds me a lot of some discussions I remember about VHS vs BETA tape formats. I'll remind everyone that the technically superior format lost out to the cheaper and inferior technology.

Not meaning to step on toes, Just wondering?

Scott W.

Passion? Yeah, kinda!

IMO, Flarm and ADS-B are not really competitors, they broadly complement each other, with a lot of overlap, and a lot of unique features. Best solution (cost no object) is ADS-B OUT (using Mode S to get up high out West) and dual mode IN (to get the freebies: WX, etc) plus PowerFLARM for racing and serious XC with your buddies. PF freebies are an IGC logger and GPS for your gliding nav stuff.

But all that ain't cheap! And right now, the problem is that it's hard to integrate the two systems, so you end up with multiple displays and little data correlation/fusion. That should be changing with ADS-B (mode S) being mandatory in Europe.

As far as 2020: If you don't have a transponder now and don't plan to get one, the ADS-B mandate doesn't really affect you - you don't HAVE to get it. But in many places it sure is smart to have a transponder; so those gliders will probably upgrade to ADS-B out (pretty cheap for Experimental).

Then there is always the problem of where to put the darn Bluray player in the cockpit...

Kirk
66

On Monday, May 7, 2018 at 6:48:38 AM UTC-5, wrote:
We have the same problem in medicine, its called Alarm Fatigue. During sedation there are alarms for just about every parameter that we monitor: absolute blood pressure, mean blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen concentration in the blood, carbon dioxide concentration in the breath, body temperature, and more. You can commonly have two or three alarms just on the border of triggering on and off and on and off and on and off throughout a many hour case. The brain can only concentrate on one thing at a time.

And that is why "see and avoid" doesn't work - it is physiologically impossible to maintain a continuous effective scan of a blank sky for very long. Sure, you can look around all day long, fat, dumb, and happy that there is no-one sharing the sky with you, and your eyes are focused on your dusty canopy and won't see the AN225 that is about to run you over.

Effective scanning takes practice, good technique, and is a lot of work. It is NOT just looking out the window! And knowing where and when to look somewhere, cued by whatever technology you have, makes a huge difference in you motivation and ability to look for and actually see traffic.

Kirk
66

Kirk
66