Another FLARM thread

On Aug 14, 11:03*am, John Cochrane
wrote:
I'm still trying to track down two flarm questions.

Here's another one that was raised by a friend of mine at the field
yesterday. What do accident statistics show in regions where Flarm
has been widely deployed?

-Evan Ludeman / T8

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:00:32 -0700, Andy wrote:

Do FLARM user in other counties have any sort of standardized training
in FLARM use or is it generally a case of read the manual and go fly
with it?

Our club adopted Flarm back in 2005. We have them in most of the club
ships and most of the privately owned single seaters, including my
syndicate LS3a, which has one of the very first Swiss Flarm units.

The default mode is for the Flarm to light up and silently to indicate
the position of the "nearest traffic", which can be up to 1km away. The
Flarm display quickly becomes part of your scan - "see the indication on
the panel" - "see the aircraft outside of the window" (but not
necessarily in that order). Obviously this must not be to the exclusion
of the rest of the panel, nor to the exclusion of other non Flarm traffic
visible outside. It also quickly confirms that your Flarm is working and
that the other aircraft is (or is not) Flarm equipped.

With this exercise you probably have a better awareness of what is going
on around you then would be the case without Flarm. At least if you loose
concentration Flarm will wake you up with an indication of traffic that
you were previous unaware of.

If the audible alarm goes off, look out of the window and find out why,
quickly! Actually it is best to pause to look at the display for a few
tens of milliseconds to determine which sector to look out at first.

At this stage, the Flarm alarm was either generated by traffic that you
are already aware of and that you regard as "not a threat" (the glance at
the display should confirm that) or by traffic that you were not
previously aware of ... (this is a sobering experience).

Student training is typically an informal discussion on the launch point
in response the question "what is that thing".


A few other comments with regards to Flarm:

- Having flown with one, I would not want to go back to flying without
one. (I believe that most of our members feel the same.)

- You cannot get 100% penetration of the technology within any "fleet" of
gliders. Even if it is "mandatory" in a club or a competition, the units
themselves are not 100% reliable so there is always a chance of coming
across a glider that does not light up the display.

- The Flarm is a minor distraction inside the cockpit - it does not
contribute significantly to "head down" time. At least I find my PDA,
glide computer and transponder (which has a flight level readout and
flashes in response to interrogations) to be bigger distractions.

- Our Flarms all have a logging capability (although most of them are not
regarded as "secure"). They are always installed and always active when
the gliders are flown. They have enough memory for a season's worth of
flying. Thus they provide a useful "black box" function. It is very
useful to be able to go back to the Flarm trace when there are accident
and incident investigations, questions about airspace violations as well
as for reviewing early cross country flights, outlanding decision making
etc. Some of our pilots use Flarm logs to post to OLC.

- Flarm logs also include information of signals received from other
Flarms. In the past Flarm logs from gliders that returned to base have
been used to help S&R locate a missing glider.

- The biggest achievement of Flarm was to package the technology with a
low enough price/license/installation overhead to enable it to be adopted
by nearly all of the aircraft in a specific glider fleet.

- The 2nd biggest achievement is not its ability to warn of the presence
of other traffic, but rather its ability to keep quiet when that other
traffic is not an immediate threat.


A point worth noting. In the past the Flarm protocol/software has been
subject to a number of upgrades. Past versions of the firmware had a
built in "expiry date" beyond which it would not function. New versions
were released shortly before the expiry of the old versions and everybody
had to upgrade simultaneously to the new version. This was a bit of a
logistic challenge. However going forward I believe the protocol has now
stabilized, that it no longer has an expiry date and that further
upgrades will be backwardly compatible. If it is not, this could be a big
issue, particularly now that there are more manufacturers building
licensed compatible devices.


It is good to see that other countries like the UK and the USA are
starting to adopt Flarm. The new devices like Powerflarm look really
attractive. It is just a pity that it has taken so long...


Ian

T8 wrote:
Here's another one that was raised by a friend of mine at the field
yesterday. What do accident statistics show in regions where Flarm
has been widely deployed?

I'm not aware of a midair where both gliders were equipped with a
(working) FLARM. But luckily, the number of midairs has always been too
low to allow for serious statistics.

That said, I've been flying a FLARM equipped glider in a FLARM
"congested" area for several years now. To me, FLARM was a big
eye-opener. I just wasn't aware how much conflicting traffic I didn't
see before. You know, if you don't see a glider, you will never know
that you didn't see it.

For me, statiswctics is not the whole story. There is a huge difference
between risks that I can handle responsibly and those that I'm just
exposed to without being able to do something about it.

On Aug 15, 2:14*am, Andy wrote:
On Aug 14, 8:03*am, John Cochrane
wrote:



I'm still trying to track down two flarm questions. Maybe r.a.s.
readers know the answers.

1. Does the Power-Flarm include a flight recorder? If so are there
plans to make it ICG approved? Obviously, the fact that regular flarm
also serves as an igc flight recorder is a big plus for pilots. The
various websites are silent on this issue, leading me to suspect power
flarm does not have any recorder capability. But I can't imagine they
would leave that out, or at least a non-igc recorder that can produce
an igc file.

2. What is the status for the US of the various LX flarm products? The
LX website lists all sorts of interesting licensed flarm productshttp://www.lxnavigation.si/avionics/products.html
including the "mini box" the "red box", the colibri/flarm, and
displays. There are also the full fledged computers with integrated
flarm. Are these for sale in the US? Will they be? How are they
affected by FCC certification of power flarm and its frequency?

I've gotten various answers to both questions. Does anybody know?

John Cochrane

I'm 90% sure that the PowerFlarm distributor for the US told me that
the unit includes an IGC logger - otherwise you wouldn't be able to
determine what mode the pilot was using in a contest. The idea would
be that you would be required to submit the PowerFlarm log. *It does
raise a question about what happens if the PowerFlarm logger fails to
produce a good file. *The rules would need to deal with how to handle
the use of backup logs that don't have whatever Flarm uses to validate
the mode of operation.

I don't know about IGC approval. It seems like the units are pretty
new, so they may not even be submitted yet - if approval is part of
the plan.

9B

BTW Richard has updated his web site to clarify that the PowerFLARM
will have IGC Flight Recorder up through Diamond see
http://www.craggyaero.com/powerflarm.htm for details.

Flarm is aware that PowerFLARM details of the flight recorder are
missing on the PowerFLARM web site.

Darryl