PC,

PowerFlarm is becoming very common in the gliding community in Canada, particularly after a head-on fatal collision in BC a couple of years ago.

It is ubiquitous in my club now and is very useful, providing pilots remember to turn it on!

I have a few hours experience with it, mainly in tow planes and I am impressed. I had my first alarm the other day, when I was descending towards the downwind leg and there was a glider head-on to me, also aiming for the downwind leg. I had already seen him and was planning to avoid, but he hadn't seen me, so it was it useful wake-up.

There are two drawbacks to this technology, in my opinion. One, there is a tendency to concentrate on the display at the expense of a good lookout. Two, in the case of our tow plane, there are significant blind spots behind the aircraft, where the PowerFlarm target disappears.

I was lucky to attend a conference held at Upper Heyford many years ago (was allowed to fly in) it was a basic PR excercise for the USAF to try to pacify the locals due to the racket from F111's and the opening of garage doors when the ECM Ardvaarks forgot to switch off.

The most valuable lecture was from the USAF Flight Surgeon who explained how the MK1 eyeball functions when staring out against a featureless sky/ground combination. The eye tends to fix a distance not that far ahead unless the head is made to move and the eyes constantly made to focus in the distance, this can be tiring on a long flight so any help particularly from a "TS" which is the only service I ever ask for (and probably get 50% of the time), coupled with an auto-pilot does allow excellent "See & Avoid" along with traffic the MK1 cannot see due to WX or into sun etc.

Was at a presentation by NATS recently

They are developing a cheap ADS-B output that will give and receive traffic information.

They made the point that FLARM was in an unprotected part of the spectrum so not to put your faith too much in it

Fully agreeing to the first,not knowing about the second, I'd like to add two more:

3) flarm is not governed or controlled by any normative body, it is anybody's guess wether today's equipment will work tomorrow. If it doesn't, there's nobody to blame.

4) flarm uses consumer grade electronics for the essential radio data link - which neatly explains the low cost - if comms fail, again there's nobody to blame.

All in all, flarm offers worthwhile information with perhaps 90% availability, and nobody should reject it - the danger is to believe in it 100%.

Jan, for me any collision avoidance equipment I use (I have an old Xaon MRX) is used IN ADDITION to other methods of detecting traffic - for example, my primary means of seeing and avoiding will always be using the Mk 1 eyeball of myself and other passengers; on top of that I regularly request a traffic service - whether I get it when in the UK is another story :}

So, put in that context, I'd rather have a piece of equipment with me with consumer grade electronics in it which MIGHT fail as part of an extending net to help find and avoid traffic than rely on just my eyes solely - after all, if it points out conflicting traffic which I've not seen, then it's done it's task......

Steve,
I agree with you. An interesting point about my club's experience, is that there is a lot of Mode C traffic in our airspace that we weren't previously spotting visually.

For the benefit of people not familiar with PowerFlarm, it gives range, azimuth, track direction and altitude differential of other PF and ADS-B equipped aircraft. For Mode C equipped aircraft, that are being interrogated by SSR, it shows an estimated range ring, based on the power of the received signal plus the altitude differential.