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

Good question. Someone can leech more easily with FLARM in non-stealth mode.. Someone else who's making their own decisions can also use gaggles/markers more easily. Periodically we have to address the role we want technology to play in changing the nature of soaring competition. Anything that makes soaring easier--from GPS to longer-range FLARM to onboard satellite maps to remote thermal sensing--will provoke discussion. I don't think there's a magic answer or rule that can be applied universally.

In this case, unrestricted FLARM makes it easier to leech without adding much in the way of safety over stealth-mode FLARM. So my view is why let technology encourage behavior that we've thought less than desirable for decades? But it is just my view.

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

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 12:04:36 AM UTC-7, Alexander Swagemakers wrote:
There was a project in Germany called the "Pulk Pranger" which basically translates to "gaggle pillory" or "leeching pillory. It was a software which scored each participant of a competition for the amount of leeching he/she did. If I remember correctly the rules defined that the first 4 entrants of a thermal are not leeching. All subsequent entrants received leeching points for the duration of their climb. Just like normal competition scoring there was a daily leeching score and an overall leeching champion at the end of the competition.

A quick google search shows the following github project:
https://github.com/thelightwasbrighter/pulkpranger


Do you know who the developer is? Github has no contact info and the script has, um, issues.

9B

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 3:11:40 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Good question. Someone can leech more easily with FLARM in non-stealth mode. Someone else who's making their own decisions can also use gaggles/markers more easily. Periodically we have to address the role we want technology to play in changing the nature of soaring competition. Anything that makes soaring easier--from GPS to longer-range FLARM to onboard satellite maps to remote thermal sensing--will provoke discussion. I don't think there's a magic answer or rule that can be applied universally.

In this case, unrestricted FLARM makes it easier to leech without adding much in the way of safety over stealth-mode FLARM. So my view is why let technology encourage behavior that we've thought less than desirable for decades? But it is just my view.

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

MInor note: It has always been possible and allowed to put yourself in stealth mode. If you don't want people leeching off you, put yourself in stealth mode and go for it.

MInor note: It has always been possible and allowed to put yourself in stealth mode. If you don't want people leeching off you, put yourself in stealth mode and go for it.

I'm flashing on "The Hunt for Red October" with submarines running in quiet mode listening on passive sonar with an occasional active ping when attacking. Between changing FLARM modes and popping little tinfoil hats on the antennas when in a good thermal, we won't have time to play with the other toys in the cockpit.

No problem, though. Next step is remote control of the FLARM status by the flight computer: stealth (most of the time), "non-emitting" mode (automatically in any thermal of MacCready value or above), and normal mode (when seeking a longer-range look ahead) at the press of a virtual button. I can't wait!

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

At 20:54 14 August 2015, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 2:51:19 PM UTC-4,
wrote:
I chatted with some experienced guys - they all seem to agree -
have a Flarm and set it to 50 miles so you know where everyone
is........



If FLARM did have 50 mile range this could tell you a lot
about the conditions ahead. As a thermal finder pretty
useless at that range.

I went to a talk by Erazem of LXNAV in March. He said
that LXNAV are looking to include live data to and from
the cloud during flight in order to provide the pilot with
this information. We shall have to ban or nobble the LX9000
when that happens!

Jim

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 9:30:53 PM UTC-7, wrote:


No problem, though. Next step is remote control of the FLARM status by the flight computer: stealth (most of the time), "non-emitting" mode (automatically in any thermal of MacCready value or above), and normal mode (when seeking a longer-range look ahead) at the press of a virtual button. I can't wait!


Isn't that even better than stealth mode? No useful information is transmitted. Totally automated. Problem solved. We could even mandate it.

Wow, indeed Erik. You'd reject additional help from Flarm in showing you a possible way out of a jam? When all you'd have to do is glace quickly at the radar when you heard a beep, then fuse that information with your outside search?

And you'd reject this help from Flarm because of a sense of pride in self-reliance and resourcefulness? Is that the same sense of pride that accepts the help of GPS, moving maps and flight computers?

I think your strong dislike of Flarm stems from something much deeper than pride.

-John, Q3


On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 2:30:23 PM UTC-4, Papa3 wrote:
Wow - I'd argue that the scenario you describe is just about the last "situation" I'd want to be relying on FLARM to bail me out of. Low and desperate and staring at the "thermal finder" vs. looking outside at the terrain for thermal sources, searching for hawks, looking at the wind relative to a small ridge line - whatever.

FWIW, one of the truly scary things I've witnessed as a result of blind leeching (or maybe just "hanging on to the pack and hoping") is some really scary landouts and one crash (into the trees in the Juniata River gap at Lewistown). I can see people using FLARM as another source of that blind hope ("well, the scope says there are three guys out over the trees climbing through 5,000, so here goes...")

Not to twist this scenario beyond recognition, but it's that sense of self-reliance and resourcefulness that many of us who have been racing for years really relish. At some point, it's just you and your senses vs. the weather and you need to make it work.

Anyway, I've said my piece on this. I hope we use FLARM as intended which was to avoid collisions (with glider or obstacles) and not as an electronic substitute for skill and judgement.

P3

Next step is hacking your competitors FLARM and making their screens display Dilbert cartoons.

John/Q3, I gave you an honest (if lengthy) answer about leeching and you chose to be argumentative in your response. Fine. But your intentional misrepresentation of Erik's comment goes further. He said he was done (I know the feeling) so I'll jump in again on this point because a few people might actually believe your distortion of his position.

Erik didn't say he would reject help from FLARM. He said this was the last situation in which he would want to RELY on it: i.e., low, no place to land, few options. And I agree. Without getting into how you would allow yourself to get into that situation in the first place, a "FLARM radar" image of a few gliders circling up ahead is no guarantee of a workable thermal. It's the same way that savvy motorglider pilots talk about never relying on their engine to get them out of trouble. If it works, great. If it doesn't, though, they always have an alternative.

Not having a psychology degree or paranormal powers, I don't have any idea what you're referring to when you say his "strong dislike of FLARM stems from something much deeper than pride." Are you talking some kind of childhood trauma?

I can say that Erik, like me, thinks that FLARM is a very good addition to safety. But he's also said, and I agree, that we should limit its use to safety, not to providing a look ahead that invites certain people (not mentioning names) to blindly follow other pilots without making their own decisions OR to trust technology to bail them out of making bad decisions, as both FLARM and GPS have the potential to do. And yes, before you counter, I know of at least one nearly disastrous outlanding caused by a pilot blindly following his early GPS-enabled flight computer down to pattern height on final glide before, in sudden sink, bothering to look out to see what the landing prospects were (nearly nonexistent).

Misuse of FLARM also begs for another technical arms race of better antennas, ground station repeaters, FLARM cloaking devices, etc. It's soaring, not video games. We've consistently rejected remote thermal finding devices in our rules for a combination of reasons. To me, FLARM in non-stealth mode is on the borderline. I'll go further and say that if we continue to allow the use of FLARM for remote sensing, we're hypocritical if we don't allow the use of IR imaging, cloud-based aggregation of FLARM and SPOT data, and other ways of displaying distant thermals, updrafts, and flight tracks on a screen. And that will make the cost of a FLARM device seem like small change indeed.

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

On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 9:02:48 AM UTC-4, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 9:30:53 PM UTC-7, wrote:


No problem, though. Next step is remote control of the FLARM status by the flight computer: stealth (most of the time), "non-emitting" mode (automatically in any thermal of MacCready value or above), and normal mode (when seeking a longer-range look ahead) at the press of a virtual button. I can't wait!


Isn't that even better than stealth mode? No useful information is transmitted. Totally automated. Problem solved. We could even mandate it.

I'm in. The rules-based algorithm to make it happen is trivial. Forget all the nonsense about safety and let's welcome gliding to the 21st century!

JB