Adding a FLARM

I posted this on a different site, but I thought I would share this story.

I recently purchased a FLARM from Cumulus Soaring, Inc. Since the airspace we share is full of heavy metal (airliners) in addition to gliders, I felt that this would be an invaluable instrument to have on board.

 

Just days before receiving it, I did a fly-over of our home. Louise ran out of the house to take a photo of me passing over, but the glider she saw was not me!. It was a Duo Discus (upper right corner and I'm in the lower left corner), and thou she did take the photo, being under a dark cloud, I did not see them until after they past.

 

 

As soon as the FLARM arrived, I was out to the airport to install it in the glider. I purchase the FLARM Core brick. It is a tight fit on the tray. What is even tighter, is the antenna installation. 

Since the Libelle does not have a combing, I had to mount the GPS antenna in the nose, top-side up, and the FLARM A and ADS-B antennas were mounted on opposite sides of the nose bulkhead. It now requires small hands to button up the tray!









For the display, I bought the LX Nav  FLARMview. It is bright and easy to read in flight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Tuesday was the first time I flew with the FLARM, and as soon as I released from tow, it went off. It was alerting me of a target using a transponder.

 

The object was above me and closing. As I was circling in the thermal, scanned the sky around me to see what I was closing in on. When I was just less than three hundred feet from it, I banked out from the thermal in a direction away from the target. A soon as I made the turn I noticed it was the club Grob above me at my six-o-clock high position. I didn’t know if they could see me, since I was at their 12 –o-clock low position.

 

During the rest of the flight, I was warned a few times of a approaching target,, and sure enough, it was the Grob.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was a good first test flight with the FLARM. I certainly see a value in this instrument and those who fly with a minimum, a working transponder.

Thank you Paul and Renny for your help with this purchase. Money well spent!

 

Still more Trailer Mods

Howdy all!

I know that it has been a while since my last post. I have been busy with work, and doing some flying when the weekends are good. We have had a wet summer, and the soaring has been fair.

Since I don't have a hanger to store my bird between flights, I have been "Flying out of the box".

I had to create a storage box for my assembly equipment, after the bin I was originally using softened and the shaft from the Wing-rigger stuck the underside of the wing fairing.

The new enclosure is made of plywood, sealed in polyurethane paint, and marine carpet on the sides facing the wings.


So far, it works well in protecting the wings.




All that is left to do in the trailer, is to create and mount the wing-tip guards.