[USA] What do you think of mandatory FLARM at Uvalde?

In article Andreas Maurer writes:
On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:42:02 +0000, Scott
wrote:


So, are you suggesting that laws
be broken just because they are perceived to be a safety device and to
just use them anyway?

No.

To repeat myself:
What I'm suggesting is that an organizer who is prohibiting the use of
effective safety equipment should not be allowed to run any
competition, especially not the most prestigious one.

Cancel the WGC at Uvalde if there is no way to use FLARM legally.



Have you ever heard of a Nascar or Formula 1 race where the rules
*prohibited* drivers from wearing their safety belts?


Andreas



If I show up in Germany and start transmitting radio signals on
cellular bands with something other than a cellphone, the German
government is going to be displeased with that action. The same is
true of any such activity on inappropriate frequencies.

Just because I like using radios on U.S. frequencies to coordinate
my activities, doesn't mean that they will be legal in another
country.

I don't get to fly in some types of airspace without permission,
either.

Do the contest organizers in Germany approve of breaking laws,
violating airspace, violating radio frequency space, and the like?


Alan

On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:30:42 -0800 (PST), Andy
wrote:


Where is exactly did you see anyone say that anything was being
prohibited by WGC organizers. Will you please quote what you think
was said. Otherwise please stop being so upset about an issue that
exists only in your imagination.


--- snip ---
If you mandate FLARM at Uvalde WGC what will you do about visiting
pilots that bring their own FLARM equipped gliders. With no FCC
certification they will not be legal for use in USA. IGC cannot, or
at least should not, mandate an illegal operation.
--- snip ---


Since the use of European Flarm units is illegal in the US, US laws
(and therefore WGC organizers) obviously prohibit their use at the
Uvalde WGC.
I'm curious what solution will be found to equip all 200 gliders at
the Uvalde WGC with US compliant PowerFlarm.

Looking at the midair history at recent WGC's and at US gliding
operations I regard Flarm as a necessity.


Andreas

On Jan 25, 6:20*pm, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:30:42 -0800 (PST), Andy
wrote:

Where is exactly did you see anyone say that anything was being
prohibited by WGC organizers. *Will you please quote what you think
was said. *Otherwise please stop being so upset about an issue that
exists only in your imagination.

--- snip ---
If you mandate FLARM at Uvalde WGC what will you do about visiting
pilots that bring their own FLARM equipped gliders. *With no FCC
certification they will not be legal for use in USA. *IGC cannot, or
at least should not, mandate an illegal operation.
--- snip ---

Since the use of European Flarm units is illegal in the US, US laws
(and therefore WGC organizers) obviously prohibit their use at the
Uvalde WGC.
I'm curious what solution will be found to equip all 200 gliders at
the Uvalde WGC with US compliant PowerFlarm.

Looking at the midair history at recent WGC's and at US gliding
operations I regard Flarm as a necessity.

Andreas

Nothing at all should be a suprise here. Lack of Flarm FCC approval
and prohibition by Flarm on use of existing devices it the USA have
been know about for years. The benefits and usage levels of Flarm
devices in world and other contests have been know about. PowerFLARM
coming to the USA market has been known about publicly for much of
2010 and seemingly privately by some others for longer.

So the original question was should this be mandated. Don't know - I'd
like to leave that mostly up to contestants and very few others (e.g.
organizers who are exposed to liability risks). But there is a
bleeding obvious need to at least allow/support/encourage (but not
necessarily mandate) use of PowerFLARM in this contest. Forget FLARM
classic etc. if they are not FCC approved and legal for use in the
USA. This is not somethign that anybody will/can change. So since none
of this should be a surprise at all I hope the FAI/IGC/SSA and local
contest organizers have a plan to ensure contestants can rent, loan,
or purchase PowerFLARM units. Or work to help them easily bring in
PowerFLARM units purchase overseas. Of course if I was actually a
contestant I'd like to hear more details on what that plan is. (and in
the remote change this is not actually been thought about/in plan then
yes I agree with Andreas that the USA should not be running this
contest).

Darryl

On 1-25-2011 23:06, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:42:02 +0000,
wrote:


So, are you suggesting that laws
be broken just because they are perceived to be a safety device and to
just use them anyway?

No.

To repeat myself:
What I'm suggesting is that an organizer who is prohibiting the use of
effective safety equipment should not be allowed to run any
competition, especially not the most prestigious one.

Cancel the WGC at Uvalde if there is no way to use FLARM legally.

I'm still not 100% sure I understand. Are you implying it is unsafe to
fly without FLARM and nobody should be able to host a "World" event if
FLARM is not allowed? I assume you are from outside the USA. When
Americans fly in competitions overseas, can we use stuff that is legal
in the USA but not legal in the hosting country? Why should the hosting
country have to allow a technology that is not legal there?




Have you ever heard of a Nascar or Formula 1 race where the rules
*prohibited* drivers from wearing their safety belts?

I don't know of any countries where safety belts are illegal. Safety
belts are not transmitters that could interfere with radio receivers
already installed in aircraft or interfere with other licensed radio
services.




Andreas

Badges are a great tool.

They give the pilot motivation and structure to set out on a planned
flight as opposed to heading off wherever the weather looks good.

Don't get me wrong - there are days when just following the good lift is
huge fun, and some long and impressive flights are made on OLC that way.
However, the discipline of having to plan a flight - predict where the
weather will be, declare the thing and fly it is invaluable.

When you move up to contests the task often gets set for the purpose of
challenging the pilots. Contests are generally won in the poor
conditions where the pilot who knows how to keep going makes points.
Getting there takes experience that badges give.

So - for me badges involve a lot more commitment, and deliberation and
skill development. They teach the pilot to have a clear idea of his/her
intentions for the day. Without that I see people drift around for a
while and then lose interest. These skills will all stand you in good
stead on the OLC, but I advocate starting with badges.

Log the flights on OLC by all means.
Now - if it jusr stops raining here before winter comes around

Cheers
Bruce

On 2011/01/25 9:12 PM, Tony wrote:
On Jan 25, 1:01 pm, wrote:
On Jan 25, 1:50 pm, John
wrote:


SNIP

Lane - +1! I love the badge program. Our pilots earned a lot of A,B,
and C badges at the club last year and hopefully we can do the same
next year. I also spent a fair amount of time working with our new XC
pilots and managed to get 100% first time approval on all of our badge
applications. We had a lot of fun!

--
Bruce Greeff
T59D #1771 & Std Cirrus #57

Is there any way to hijack this thread back to Rick's post? Mandatory
flarm vs 99% voluntary at Uvalde, how Flarm will make euro and us
flarms interoperable (of course they will), FCC legalities, how US
Uvalde organizers will handle flarm are non-issues that none of us
knows anything about.

Rick asked about the insane (my opinion) 13.5 meter class, including
the momentous issue of water ballast. I responded with, let's split
club in two instead. He asked about handicaps in Arcus class (sorry,
20 m double seat), wgc locations, various "safety" measures. All these
and more seem like far more important and contentious items on the IGC
agenda.

Can't we give him and other IGC delegates some more useful feedback
before the meeting?


John Cochrane

On Jan 26, 6:56*am, John Cochrane
wrote:
Is there any way to hijack this thread back to Rick's post? Mandatory
flarm vs 99% voluntary at Uvalde, how Flarm will make euro and us
flarms interoperable (of course they will), *FCC legalities, how US
Uvalde organizers will handle flarm are non-issues that *none of us
knows anything about.

Rick asked about the insane (my opinion) 13.5 meter class, including
the momentous issue of water ballast. I responded with, let's split
club in two instead. He asked about handicaps in Arcus class (sorry,
20 m double seat), wgc locations, various "safety" measures. All these
and more seem like far more important and contentious items on the IGC
agenda.

Can't we give him and other IGC delegates some more useful feedback
before the meeting?

John Cochrane

Is it surprising that the majority of posts relate to the question
that was posed in the thread title?

Maybe the way to promote discussion of the other issues would be to
start new threads with appropriate titles?

Andy

Flarm has a configuration file in which it is possible to specify the
frequency to be used. The current options a
Australia 921 MHz
New Zealand 869.2 MHz
North America 915 MHz
Rest of the World 868.0 - 868.6 MHz

No doubt if the FCC specified a different frequency in this part of the
spectrum additional config. file options would be made available.

On Jan 26, 7:56*am, John Cochrane
wrote:
Is there any way to hijack this thread back to Rick's post? Mandatory
flarm vs 99% voluntary at Uvalde, how Flarm will make euro and us
flarms interoperable (of course they will), *FCC legalities, how US
Uvalde organizers will handle flarm are non-issues that *none of us
knows anything about.

Rick asked about the insane (my opinion) 13.5 meter class, including
the momentous issue of water ballast. I responded with, let's split
club in two instead. He asked about handicaps in Arcus class (sorry,
20 m double seat), wgc locations, various "safety" measures. All these
and more seem like far more important and contentious items on the IGC
agenda.

Can't we give him and other IGC delegates some more useful feedback
before the meeting?

John Cochrane

13.5 meter - John your comments seem to make sense to me. The other
morning I was thinking about it and the answer seemed obvious. A 13.5
meter, ballasted Sparrowhawk. That is, if they allow ballast. I like
your suggestion of just making it the 13.5 meter handicapped class,
but the IGC already denied handicaps once. I guess they could change
their mind. Looking at the sailplane directory I picked out the
following likely contenders in a 13.5 meter race and their US
handicaps:

Russia - 1.145
L33 - 1.18
SZD-59 - 1.04
PW-5 - 1.18
Sparrowhawk - 1.17

So maybe, re-defining the class to be 13.5 meters or less with a (US)
handicap of 1.1 or greater would be the way to go. Or if you want to
be even more limiting run the handicap range from 1.1 to 1.2. But
then I wouldn't be able to fulfill my dream of flying my Cherokee II
in the Worlds...

20 meter 2 seat - I guess it depends on what the IGC wants the class
to be. You are basically talking about three types here, right? Duo
Discus, DG-1000, and Arcus? Handicap it and all three will show up
and you'll probably have a pretty popular class. It seems to me there
are a fair number of people who fly their Duo's and DG's in contests
in the US. The last I knew there was ~1 Arcus in the US. But if they
want to encourage further development in the 20 meter 2 seater class
then it will be the Arcus class until something better comes along.

On Jan 26, 6:38*am, Big Wings wrote:
Flarm has a configuration file in which it is possible to specify the
frequency to be used. *The current options a
Australia * * * * 921 MHz
New Zealand * 869.2 MHz
North America 915 MHz
Rest of the World 868.0 - 868.6 MHz

No doubt if the FCC specified a different frequency in this part of the
spectrum additional config. file options would be made available.


This has been discussed many times on ras already. Flarm classic
devices already support the USA 915 MHz ISM band (and will
automatically frequency switch as well as being manually configurable
if you want), this is the same frequency band that PowerFLARM will use
in the USA. However having something implemented in the code and
having the devices legal/FCC approved are two different things. And
the Flarm classic devices are not FCC approved. I do not believe there
is any work underway by FLARM or any OEM to have any existing devices
FCC approved and FLARM seems to be putting significant work into
meeting all the niggly specs for FCC approval on the PowerFLARM units.
This is something I would assume the IGC and others involved in this
contest know all the details on, if not its a simple email or phone
call to the Flarm guys to find out the details to help with making
decisions to ensure Flarm technology is available for those
contestants that want it at this contest. Again not one thing here
should be a surprise.

Darryl