An ADS-B In Question

Even if somebody makes a separate ADS-B UAT receiver or box able to merge FLARM and UAT data together it might not deliver a very usable product/significant enhancement over current PowerFLARM systems for most glider pilots.. And folks need to be very careful talking about all this home grown/crowd-funded toys maybe eventually doing anything like this. It's one thing to play with stuff, or hope to just display traffic, but it's a very different thing to generate a FLARM like traffic warning. So hands up who would want a box that can display ADS-B traffic on your current soaring flight computer but will not/can not issue any warning at all as you collide with a threat? ... and to be clear to everybody that is exactly what Andy is proposing that crowd funded project actually do. So lets separate our interesting to play with toy ideas from an actually usable collision awareness system like FLARM (or even a modern ADS-B In receiver which does its own style crude and less useful for gliding audible traffic warnings). For the later this seems to me like stuff that I'd want only FLARM doing.

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These are all important statements. People need to take care with projects of this type and in general collision warning is best left to professional developers with the specialized skills to deal with all the complexities. Caveat Emptor.

However...To the extent that any GA in the US equip with UAT Out it would be nice to have a way for glider pilots to see them that is better than PCAS - which from my perspective becomes nearly useless as gliders equip with and use transponders - the nuisance alarms just become intolerable if you fly close to one or more of them. Ask me why I know this.

Since UAT Out is most likely to be carried in GA aircraft rather than gliders lacking Flarm, a simple traffic alert at 1mi and +/- 1000' ought to be sufficient - and certainly better than invisibility. While it would be nice in a perfect world, I don't anticipate GA traffic needing sophisticated Flarm collision algorithms unless someone in a Mooney wants to come thermal with us. Such a simple traffic warning appears to be possible and ought to be better than nothing. All the other stuff is either transitional (TIS-B), or a future option (FIS-B - assuming a glide computer maker decides they want to take up the development just for the US - which is a big unknown at best).

All of this is further support that gliders should equip with Flarm and a transponder first and UAT Out never. If you go ADS-B Out absolutely make it 1090ES or you will never get Flarm collision warning capability - at least not unless Flarm decides to add it to their box.

9B