Is FLARM helpful?

On Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 8:27:58 AM UTC-8, Dan Marotta wrote:
I'd like to know how not identifying a glider by call sign or climb
rate (if I understand stealth mode) degrades safety.* C'mon, people,
you sound like a bunch of evangelists.




On 12/1/2015 2:40 AM, krasw wrote:



On Tuesday, 1 December 2015 05:49:27 UTC+2, John Cochrane wrote:


The Uvalde midair resulted in a suit against organizers, and the Tonopah takeoff accident did as well.

John Cochrane BB (Signed up for Nephi, stealth off.)


What? Seriously?





--

Dan, 5J


Hey Dan,

Some context and explanation.

I can't imagine a scenario where the Flarm climb data (which is mostly hash anyway) would be helpful - but of course you never can totally predict what happens when you turn things off.

The Flarm ID (or preferably FlarmNet Contest ID which is easier and faster for pilots to remember and call) is useful in head-to-head situations - and especially head-to-head agains multiple glider "bomber formations" that happen frequently in contests where you have lift lines that concentrate traffic. It also happens ridge flying (how many times have I gone between two gliders flying ridge tasks - multiple times per day in a big contest). It's a pretty significant scenario for which there is no consistent procedure to de-conflict every variation on the theme. A radio call to something specific helps a lot: "9B will pass between 5J and XC" or "9B will pass below 5J and above XC". This is a specific and common scenario. Ask Ramy - being able to ID and call the other guy helps a lot - better than making a "roll the dice" maneuver and crossing your fingers.

No one would seriously suggest we take the flight numbers off an ATC display. "Hey everybody this is Salt Lake Center - it looks like two aircraft are about to collide on the Victor 6, ten miles east of the Ogden VOR" Yes, ATC in the national airspace typically works quite differently than Flarm in glider contests, but there is an ATC-like scenario in this case.

Normally, and with enough lead time, you can sort things out without needing to make a call - multiple converging gliders in spread formation require more lead time and an ability to coordinate in case one of the other guys does something unexpected ('cuz _I_ always do exactly what I expected me to do and _I_ never panic). ;-)

9B

Perhaps the SSA, Race Committee and contest organizers are missing an even larger and more powerful argument. Public policy and legal liability. The law tries to do the right thing and public policy always comes down on making things safer within readily available technological and economic bounds.. We with fly state of the art gliders made of carbon fiber and Kevlar costing upwards of a quarter million dollars. They have computers that manage the flight regime from navigation to how far they can glide to telling us what the air outside the glider is doing in real time. These gliders have Flarm which is a powerful situational awareness tool and safety feature. Now we seek to limit the situational awareness provided, not because of any empirical data and not because of overwhelming opinion of the pilots whose safety is directly effected.

Continuing the argument, Nephi has conducted a well attended no accident contest (yes, I know it is OLC but try to explain that to a jury) for the last two years, setting tasks and posting the results and requiring Flarm. For the 2016 Nationals in Nephi the SSA has mandated Flarm, but intentional and with forethought, decreased the safety and situational awareness provided by the available and mandated technology. If there is an accident with mandated Stealth mode, the SSA, RC and contest organizers will face severe damages and possibly punitive damages for intentional negligence. A prosecutor wanting to make a name for (him/her)self could even bring criminal charges for depraved indifference to the policy makers that limited the effectiveness of the required safety equipment. Kind of difficult to successfully defend.
Just saying and hope a little more thought goes into this decision. Mandating stealth coupled with a tragic accident might very well change the face of this sport and would certainly bankrupt the policy makers on a corporate and personal level.

On Monday, November 30, 2015 at 7:49:27 PM UTC-8, John Cochrane wrote:
they already did it to the 15M, Open and Std Nationals. The contest asked for a waver to make Flarm mandatory and the rules committee told them it would allow that if stealth mode was required as well. ...

This has left the contest organizers between a rock and a hard place. They can either not require Flarm or must use stealth mode.

Tim (and others in the same boat):

In my past experience at RC, waivers are a negotiation, not a hard answer.. If Nephi organizers want mandatory flarm and no stealth mode, write back and say this is unacceptable. If the RC says no, and you remain unhappy, appeal to the SSA board, which is the ultimate arbiter.

Nephi is in a strong position, as the bid for the contest was made and accepted, and pilots signed up (me) with no mention of stealth mode.

It's also in a strong position, as your fallback is the heck with nationals, we'll just run a camp again. Have fun finding someone else to run three nationals.

You could also survey your pilots and see how they feel about it.

If the organizers do not want to shoulder responsibility for what they regard as compromises on safety, it is strange for the RC to force them otherwise.

When there is a midair, if any deliberate degradation of a safety device is on, be sure that whoever commanded that fact will be sued. (Leaving aside the more important tragedies of such an event.) This isn't alarmism. The Uvalde midair resulted in a suit against organizers, and the Tonopah takeoff accident did as well.

Down the pike, in the end, rule 9.0 allows the CD to make safety decisions. And the CD decides how to enforce rules, if you get my drift.

I will be interested to see what decisions the RC has made regarding stealth. The minutes should be out on the ssa website soon, which ought to put some fact behind these rumors.

John Cochrane BB (Signed up for Nephi, stealth off.)

On Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 8:00:23 AM UTC-8, wrote:

Saw FLARM leeching at PAGC. Poor XG couldn't get away to do his own brilliant thing. He expressed his frustrations in passing and very politely at one of the meetings.

I looked at the traces from this race - a couple of days every thermal for every pilot on course. The only guys I could see following XG were his teammates - I assume this was team flying, but maybe that was prohibited? In any case they fell off his trail after a few climbs.


It is not just plain leeching either. Two thermals are ahead on the first leg and marked by other competitors. The guy trailing gets to pick which has a better value and save the time of centering it. Using FLARM, the guy coming from behind uses the talents of the other two and potentially does better than either.

The data just doesn't support the reality of this claim - the VAST majority of the time the climbs achieved by later arrivals decline materially. I'm sure there are occasional cases where it takes you 4, 5, 6 turns to catch the core and annoying to have someone come in right below you and climb with you, but generally using someone else's thermals is a losing proposition - and you can't really pick the ones where the other guy "just found the core after a struggle and will safe you some effort". It's far, far more likely that the strong part of the thermal has passed you buy if you ar trailing by more than a mile or two.

I'll go grind through more contest traces, but I was startled at what a poor proposition "borrowing" thermals is from a long trail position.

Looking forward to flying with you at Nephi - hope you come. You know it'll be fun. We can discuss the various merits of Flarm over beers (I'll be hiding mine though - ;-) )

9B

At 00:07 30 November 2015, jfitch wrote:
It seemed as though (2) was being offered as an explanation for
(1). If not because of the difference between track and heading,
then why? I am still curious why you get these and I don't (nor
anyone else I know), and never
have, aren't you? Perhaps we can learn something here. My
experience is all with PowerFlarm, different algorithm? Better GPS?
All the warnings I have
ever gotten in thermals where someone right ahead or right
behind, or turning the other direction.

Perhaps it is a difference between Flarm and Powerflarm, although
I would be surprised if they were using different algorithms. As for
my curiosity, I had not (until your comments) come across a view
different from my own (about the incessant false collision alerts
while thermalling). Note the recent coincidental post at
http://uras.gliderpilot.net/?op=s2&id=50680&vt=
(BTW the poster is unknown to me!)
J.

At 16:27 01 December 2015, Dan Marotta wrote:
I'd like to know how not identifying a glider by call sign or climb rate
(if I understand stealth mode) degrades safety. C'mon, people, you
sound like a bunch of evangelists.

It doesn't. As I understand from the documentation Stealth mode does not
change what is transmitted, only how the receiver displays it. Alarms are
fully functional at all times.

Why must people persist the myth that it cripples alarms?

BTW it would be possible to prove that a glider equipped with mandatory
Flarm was preventing it from transmitting data with tin foil by examining
the Flarm igc files or simply seeing them disappear on the Flarm tracker.

Jim

On Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 12:10:53 PM UTC-5, Craig Reinholt wrote:
On Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 8:24:19 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 10:31:47 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Has there been a single documented case of a pilot in us competition putting a tinfoil hat over flarm? Yes this has happened at worlds, where classes, assigned tasks and leeching are big. Let's not pass rules over imaginary problems.

Ps if you're a little worried about legal system mplications of stealth, those of the tinfoil hat are much larger

John cochrane bb

The answer is yes.
I won't out the individual.
It is known that this tactic is becoming more common in europe, including one world champion.
There are also other quite easy ways to kill the out signal while getting the in on antenna 2.
UH

UH,
This pilot has been banded from future sanctioned SSA events under 12.2.5.1 (unsafe operation) or 12.2.5.3(unsportsmanlike conduct) rules. Correct?
Craig

I'm doubtful that the person you refer to did this.
UH

There is too much rumor going on here. I think it's time for the RC to post its minutes, or at least a public statement of what the proposed stealth policy is going to be for 2016.

The standard procedure is: RC posts minutes, then posts proposed rules changes. Pilots are invited to comment to RC and to SSA. Rules are official when voted on by SSA at BOD. And not before.

I just cannot fathom what is going on by the statement reported here that RC has imposed stealth on Nephi 2016. Stealth is not part of the current 2015 rules. The proposed stealth rule has not been made public, commented on, or voted on by SSA. So RC simply has no right to impose a new rule on Nephi. If Nephi asked for a waiver for mandatory flarm, RC can say yes or no, but not add new made up rules.

Perhaps RC issued a warning, hey, we're recommending stealth for 2016? That would make sense at least.

Normally timing of such things is RC's business, but the number of leaks and rumors spreading around here suggests it's time to go public.

John Cochrane BB

On Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-8, Jim White wrote:
At 16:27 01 December 2015, Dan Marotta wrote:
I'd like to know how not identifying a glider by call sign or climb rate
(if I understand stealth mode) degrades safety. C'mon, people, you
sound like a bunch of evangelists.

It doesn't. As I understand from the documentation Stealth mode does not
change what is transmitted, only how the receiver displays it. Alarms are
fully functional at all times.

Not 100% correct (and it matters a bit for head-to-head, especially in multi-ship scenarios). The Flarm Configuration manual 1.02 dated August 4, 2015 states that even with alarms active you won't get a FlarmID or FlarmNet ID - so you won't be able to call the other glider(s) to make sure that they don't "zig" when you "zag". You won't have any information before 2 km unless they are headed more or less right at you - so no way to avoid them UNTIL they become a collision threat, which can surprise you with as little as 10-12 second to go. Needs to be addressed.

Reference:

http://flarm.com/wp-content/uploads/...ation-1.02.pdf

Flarm is not TCAS, which gives Resolution Advisories to orchestrate between the targets which way to go to avoid each other. Flarm doesn't do this. The pilots have to assess and work cooperatively to ensure this - sometimes you can do that at a distance by taking a decidedly different track and hoping the other guy observes this and doesn't null out your adjustment (zig-zag-bang), sometimes a radio call can (and has) helped. These are scenarios that happen with some regularity.

9B

On Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 9:10:53 AM UTC-8, Craig Reinholt wrote:
UH,
This pilot has been banded from future sanctioned SSA events under 12.2.5..1 (unsafe operation) or 12.2.5.3(unsportsmanlike conduct) rules. Correct?
Craig

The question is - is it enforceable? Flarm range is variable enough as it is - egregious use with other gliders in close proximity where range isn't an issue might be demonstrated.

Beyond the safety implications - I think it is of limited tactical use and I suspect pilots who expend energy on this are distracting themselves from more important issues of racing. Constantly looking over you shoulder is hardly a winning mindset. There's a lot of paranoia in racing about the effectiveness of leeching and tactics to escape leeching (specifically, 15% of pilots in the poll).

Maybe the foil hats should go on people's heads so they don't steal your thoughts? ;-)

9B

On Friday, November 20, 2015 at 8:35:10 PM UTC-5, Casey Cox wrote:
Has anyone been thankful that they have had FLARM?

And do the same people have a transponder?

How many people fly with FLARM or Transponder?

Let's hear about the close calls, or potential close calls, or even the peace of mind of awareness.

I have flown in the European Alps for the last 14 years and in the New Zealand Alps for about the same duration. I am a USA citizen who has flown gliders for 40 years. FLARM has been a definite advantage in alerting me to traffic not seen.

Glider pilots in the USA who negate the positive aspects of FLARM assume that there are few glider pilots and thus not helpful, statistically. However, unlike powered aircraft, glider pilots seek the corridors of best lift, as are other glider pilots, making converging flight paths inevitable. It is dangerous that one can assume that their situational awareness is infallible.

I would feel much safer if more glider pilots and tow pilots in the USA would adopt the FLARM technology.

Just another point. When another glider pilot radios that he has a six knot thermal, I can visualize him on FLARM and determine if indeed he has a genuine six not thermal! :-) I do not consider that "leeching", rather, simply an evolution of our beloved sport!