As a disclaimer, I was not physically present during the last World Women Gliding Championship in Australia so I will not discuss any of the protests or investigations and/or appeals currently in process from divers parties. Also this is my post and my idea can diverge sensibly from the official position of my own team (France) about live tracking.
All results of last Women World Gliding Championship in Australia can be checked there. Congratulations to winners and all pilots and teams.
On this post today :
I just want to focus on what is the OGN tracking system, its behaviour and the different settings you can get from a Flarm to share data with OGN.
I will then talk about why the idea of getting a different official tracking system is there and what is, from my point of view, the advantage of that.
OGN tracking system ?
It is a system developed notably in France, and first minimal input idea was apparently to manage the daily logbook of a club gliders and to be able to get information about GPS position in live for the CFI of the club. This club was a mountain club so it can help to manage also safety of pilots knowing their positions more accurately than asking by radio, and radio is limited in mountain area.
The system is quite simple : an OGN ground receiver gets the Flarm data from the gliders around, send it on a data server and displays the data on a googlemap styled interface. The full time to gather the data to display them is around 20 seconds so we can call it a “live tracking”.
Second step went quite fast from the same team as interest grew up from other clubs naturally, then the French national association promoted and helped the OGN system by asking whose club were interested and then OGN receivers multiplied quite steeply.
As system grew up, interest also grew up among the pilots community to be able to also “see the gliders when cross country” so the gaps between 2 OGN receivers were years after years filled in France to be able today to have a quite nice coverage for a kinda full tracking.
In the same time, concerns appeared as some pilots want to keep their privacy and infringement of restricted airspaces could become problematic if the OGN system would be use as a system for the national authorities to charge pilots. In parallel, some pilots wanted to stop their Flarm to avoid tracking.
So Flarm protocol had to find a solution to be able to still manage to help pilots in the air to make a better anticollision behaviour, but also provide guarantees that, if you want, you would not be tracked. From Flarm v6 protocol it is now possible to set your flarm as “non trackable” so OGN will still receive your data but you flag them as “do not display me”.
In parallel, in competitions, this problem of “privacy” appeared also in with the Flarm system, as pilots were able to display the gliders their Flarm antenna received on moving maps like Naviter Oudie or LXNAV LX9000 and so on. For this purpose, a “privacy” mode (known as “stealth” mode today) was introduced. Basically, it enabled the fact that you were still a target visible for the other pilots but with no ID information nor altitude nor vario, so back to the "essence" of anticollision and not a big help to follow a pilot.
As kindly advised by one of the audience pilot, I repeat : this "stealth mode" DOES NOT AFFECT THE CAPACITY OF ANTICOLLISION OF THE FLARM SYSTEM AT ALL!!! It does affect only the way you are displayed on others screens in cockpit and on the ground! And we don't need displays screens for anticollision, we need Flarm displays which tells you where is the traffic and helps you to act wisely.
So today you are able to set your Flarm as :
Normal mode / trackable : your flarm is visible to the other pilots with full data (altitude, vario, ID) and the OGN receiver gets that too for live tracking
Normal mode / not trackable : your Flarm is visible to the other pilots with full data (altitude, vario, ID) but the OGN receiver is asked to not display you for live tracking
Stealth mode / trackable : you Flarm is visible to the other pilots but with poor data (only position but no altitude, no vario, no ID) but OGN will display you with altitude but a fake random ID which will change everyday
Stealth mode / not trackable : you Flarm is visible to the other pilots but with poor data (only position but no altitude, no vario, no ID) and the OGN receiver is asked to not display you for live tracking
The important to understand is that it is UP TO YOU to set your Flarm in the mode you want! And the mode you use has a huge impact on the OGN displayed information.
So why creating another "official tracking system"?
Second part of my post is about why IGC is pushing to get another official tracking system with a delay compared to live tracking.
First, it is impossible to wipe out OGN tracking, this will ever exist, but you can see from my first part of discussion that you can manage what you show through this network.
I have been coach and Team Captain during a lot of IGC events and I am also part of the organisation of Sailplane Grand Prix so I pretty understand the power of a live tracking as an informational tool for the team and its strategy. IT IS STRATEGICAL !
In what?
First you know that more and more gliding competition is about “flying with the best” so knowing where they are before the start is just a crazy tool
Second you will know exactly at what time people start on start gate so you can manage how log you want to wait before starting behind them
Then you know what they made as first glide and first vario so this can be also a big help
Then on any task if your pilots did not made it early start you can see evolution of real weather just by judging the traces : spreading and low = difficult, straight and all same track = easy, so you can help your pilots to anticipate or set the style!
On an AAT you can even know where the competitors turn in the aeras to help your pilots make better…
On final glide you can see when/where/with what glide ratio set the competitors started their final glide, and if it was a good idea
…
So yes, full live tracking is a very powerful tool. Especially for the ground team as it would be impossible to check that in your cockpit, too many data, too small screen, and hey you are busy finding thermals!
But this need a “big ground team”, with experienced competitor pilots on the ground, and change the idea of competition in gliding from a storytelling of pilots in cockpits to routing ground team and engineered tactics from the ground. DO YOU WANT THAT? Personally NO! I want the best pilot to win, not the best ground team, even if MY FRENCH TEAM will get an advantage from that.
First fully tracked championship was World Women Gliding Championship in Denmark in 2015, experience was ok as also experience of ground team was low, on a small numbers of pilots per class, so feedback was positive from IGC representative present on the event but still I informed my National Association that the thing was big and powerful, the live tracking was already a BEAST!
Then first complains among the pilots started during the following IGC events (except Grand Prix but GP is live tracking of no team flight, start is regatta, and scoring system is completely different so following is not at all a good idea…). Complains went from “good pilots” who were stating it was becoming more and more a “follow me” championship, also with big gaggles and sometimes dangerous as live tracking helped pilots to be together so more density of gliders at same place same moment. Few months later, live tracking was also now possible to display on your computer screen in the cockpit! As data were collected through 3G of your cellphone and shared to your LXNAV computer or Oudie, and now XCSoar. Even if, this frankly, with no distance to analyse (so brains on the ground), is not really usable, still it wipes part of the brain of some pilots from piloting to watching this tiny screen… Again personally, I DON’T LIKE THAT.
So IGC wanted to react, OGN is a superb system, and we can’t ask to stop it, this is evolution and a very good one, well done! But for competition, YOU CAN SET your Flarm aboard in a way to avoid live tracking or minor the informations you share on it. But still, competitions MUST BE DISPLAYED for public or we are crazy people and should stop this sport, so A tracking system must be set, AND (from my point of view as pilot) with a delay to avoid these tactical ground teams effect, BUT with mandatory full data (ID of the pilot, altitude, etc) so you, me, all potential fans and perhaps sponsors can enjoy the beauty of our flying races. Australian people made a brilliant tracking system with their own trackers, NOT USING FLARM DATA, I insist, and that’s why it was possible to display all data even if a Flarm was set as stealth / not trackable, and that’s why a delay was manageable too.
This brilliant system was experienced during their GP1.0 events were Club Class gliders make Grand Prix competition like (such a fun and brilliant idea!), and this was set for the WWGC in Lake Keepit with an official 15 minutes delay on the start. This idea and system is good, we enjoyed following the races, and I allows the team to not become beasts of ground routing control, so it will also ensure that in future even “small teams” will be able to get gold medals with little investments on ground team. So our sport will still be, as far as possible, a pilot's sport.
Have fun, fly safe!
You enjoyed these 6 minutes reading?
>>>> You like our reviews and reports? Buy us a coffee! <<<<
\\\\\\\\\ Or buy something in Claire's e-shop, all the best for the pilots! //////////
More information:
OGN : go there
Australian tracking system : go there
Setting your Flarm : go there
Wanna try gliding?
You want to follow main sailplane championship around the world? Go there.
You want to follow the crazy Sailplane Grand Prix Series? Go there.
You want to join sailplane sport or share our passion or just have a try?
For France.
For UK.
For Germany go there.
For USA go there.
For Australia go there.
For New Zealand go there.
For Spain go there.
For Canada there.
Contact me for other countries on Facebook through @benjaminneglais
Hi Benjamin,Claire
Thank you for taking the time to publish these nice articles, really enjoy reading them.