Fuji, you may wish to know it’s “FLARM”, not “Flame”. The Flarm people emphasise in their manuals that it is an aid to lookout and visually acquiring other Flarm carrying aircraft (and/or obstacles in its database – in Switzerland, cable car cables etc.), not a collision avoidance thing in itself.
From their website: “FLARM is designed and built as a non-essential 'situation awareness only' unit to support the pilot, and cannot always provide reliable warnings. In particular, FLARM does not give any guidance on avoiding action. Under no circumstances should a pilot or crewmember adopt different tactics or deviate from the normal principles of safe airmanship.”
My comments are limited to “Original FLARM for gliders and portable use” – I see that they now have other products including one “for GA” – dunno what that does.
It does have algorithms that separate what it deems non-threat (e.g. formation flying, gliders sharing a thermal and on non-intersecting courses) from threats – projected collision paths. So it does not do the same job F-F as Txp-Txp or PCAS-PCAS.
FLARM is the ONLY solution available now and in the foreseeable future that all, or almost all, gliders could use – because its battery requirements are low.
Sorry it’s not interoperable, but that’s a fact. Transponders are also not interoperable – notably, with things that can’t carry enough battery and/or can’t install it, as well as not being interoperable with other transponder-carrying aircraft unless they have TCAS or PCAS or something like it, or ATC and a totally known environment.
I presume other glider pilots who have it believe, like I do, that Flarm is the best available tool for us at present. I leave others to judge whether it could be so for them.
Chris N.
[edited to add points from Flarm website]
Last edited by chrisN; 26th Aug 2008 at 18:02.