Igc file help. Computer science

[[email protected]]

Hey guys im taking a computer science class on data structures and algorithms. I wanna do something glider related for my final project. I was thinking about trying to see if there is a pattern between average vario for a task and Xc speed. However, I have no clue how how to obtain such data from an igc file. Also,any suggestion On maybe doing something different for the project are welcome.

Thanks!

[Ben Hirashima]

On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 10:59:48 AM UTC-7, wrote:
> Hey guys im taking a computer science class on data structures and algorithms. I wanna do something glider related for my final project. I was thinking about trying to see if there is a pattern between average vario for a task and Xc speed. However, I have no clue how how to obtain such data from an igc file. Also,any suggestion On maybe doing something different for the project are welcome.
>
> Thanks!

An IGC file is just a text file. You can search Google for the format specification.

[[email protected]]

I did, but i can’t seem to find the format.

[David Hirst]

On Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 6:59:48 AM UTC+13, wrote:
> Hey guys im taking a computer science class on data structures and algorithms. I wanna do something glider related for my final project. I was thinking about trying to see if there is a pattern between average vario for a task and Xc speed. However, I have no clue how how to obtain such data from an igc file. Also,any suggestion On maybe doing something different for the project are welcome.
>
> Thanks!

The IGC file records the GPS time, GPS altitude and GPS position. It can also record barometric altitude, engine noise levels and other manufacturer-specific information. As previously stated, a lot of the format info is already out there and the file itself is not hard to decipher. The decision is in what to do with all that info.
SeeYou already processes IGC data to generate flight statistics, so a project in that area probably won't generate anything new. John Wharington used IGC data from multiple gliders at the 2017 worlds in Benalla to generate a lot of useful statistics around how close individual gliders got to each other during contest tasks (answer: scarily close in some instances, with particular repeat offenders!). You may want to repeat that analysis for other contests (with suitable credit to John).
You could also look at the data to show the usefulness (or not) of pulling up in thermals vs. a block speed-to-fly, however this (and a lot of other analysis) really needs other (accelerometer, airspeed, vario) data to be useful.
Good luck with the project, whatever you choose to do.

DH
TX

[David Hirst]

On Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 7:12:35 AM UTC+13, wrote:
> I did, but i can’t seem to find the format.

Google "IGC file format" and you'll find all the info you could ever want.

DH TX

[Tim Newport-Peace[_4_]]

At 18:15 31 October 2018, David Hirst wrote:
>On Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 7:12:35 AM UTC+13,
>wro=
>te:
>> I did, but i can=E2=80=99t seem to find the format.
>
>Google "IGC file format" and you'll find all the info you could ever
want.
>
>DH TX
>
http://www.ukiws.demon.co.uk/GFAC/documents/tech_spec_gnss.pdf

The file format is from page 17.

[Martin Gregorie[_6_]]

On Wed, 31 Oct 2018 21:55:10 +0000, Tim Newport-Peace wrote:

> http://www.ukiws.demon.co.uk/GFAC/documents/tech_spec_gnss.pdf
>
> The file format is from page 17.
>
I have written a Java package that can read IGC logs. They are read into
a container class that can be used to scan, analyse and write out logs or
parts thereof.

The package can do the same for lists of waypoints. It currently handles
CAI, CUP and EW formats but is designed to be easily extensible for other
waypoint formats. Its currently being used to create the UK landouts and
CGC Fieldbook files some of you are using, so is reasonably well tested.
The code documented using Javadocs but this does assume that its users
can program in Java and have a working understanding of how IGC logs and
waypoint lists are structured.

If this stuff would be useful to any of you, I'm happy to publish it as
open source under the GPL2 license.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

[David Hirst]

On Thursday, November 1, 2018 at 11:30:24 AM UTC+13, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2018 21:55:10 +0000, Tim Newport-Peace wrote:
>
> > http://www.ukiws.demon.co.uk/GFAC/documents/tech_spec_gnss.pdf
> >
> > The file format is from page 17.
> >
> I have written a Java package that can read IGC logs. They are read into
> a container class that can be used to scan, analyse and write out logs or
> parts thereof.
>
> The package can do the same for lists of waypoints. It currently handles
> CAI, CUP and EW formats but is designed to be easily extensible for other
> waypoint formats. Its currently being used to create the UK landouts and
> CGC Fieldbook files some of you are using, so is reasonably well tested.
> The code documented using Javadocs but this does assume that its users
> can program in Java and have a working understanding of how IGC logs and
> waypoint lists are structured.
>
> If this stuff would be useful to any of you, I'm happy to publish it as
> open source under the GPL2 license.
>
>
> --
> Martin | martin at
> Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Don't go writing his project for him now :-)

[Martin Gregorie[_6_]]

On Thu, 01 Nov 2018 00:36:57 -0700, David Hirst wrote:

>
> Don't go writing his project for him now :-)

I have no intention of doing that, being a firm believer in the principle
that, if you want to understand something, you have to design and
implement a working solution yourself.

The OP's post was just a trigger to remind me that I'd always intended to
open source my package.

In point of fact the real guts of writing this package in the first place
was a personal requirement to create Yet Another Format I call Open Field
that holds all the information available in the various waypoint file
formats (DAT, CUP and EW) as well as extra stuff needed to describe
useful features of outlanding fields, i.e multiple runway sizes and
surface types, frequencies and call signs in a readable form thats easy
to maintain with a text editor. My package can read and write Open Field
data in all of these formats and is easily extendable to deal with other
formats as well.

While I was writing the Open Source classes I also wrote classes to read
IGC logs because that seemed like a good idea at the time. Currently I'm
thinking of using the IGC classes in a project to convert IGC logs into
KML files. Yes, I know that can already be done by the GPLIGC application
but the latter makes no attempt to display the task data as well: that is
a major omission IMO.

All that said, if I was the OP I'd be hacking out awk scripts or writing
Perl to do his analyses rather than writing Java.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

[Dan Marotta]

Martin,

I salute you for taking on a project like this simply for the love of
the game.

Best,
Dan

On 11/1/2018 5:00 AM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Nov 2018 00:36:57 -0700, David Hirst wrote:
>
>> Don't go writing his project for him now :-)
> I have no intention of doing that, being a firm believer in the principle
> that, if you want to understand something, you have to design and
> implement a working solution yourself.
>
> The OP's post was just a trigger to remind me that I'd always intended to
> open source my package.
>
> In point of fact the real guts of writing this package in the first place
> was a personal requirement to create Yet Another Format I call Open Field
> that holds all the information available in the various waypoint file
> formats (DAT, CUP and EW) as well as extra stuff needed to describe
> useful features of outlanding fields, i.e multiple runway sizes and
> surface types, frequencies and call signs in a readable form thats easy
> to maintain with a text editor. My package can read and write Open Field
> data in all of these formats and is easily extendable to deal with other
> formats as well.
>
> While I was writing the Open Source classes I also wrote classes to read
> IGC logs because that seemed like a good idea at the time. Currently I'm
> thinking of using the IGC classes in a project to convert IGC logs into
> KML files. Yes, I know that can already be done by the GPLIGC application
> but the latter makes no attempt to display the task data as well: that is
> a major omission IMO.
>
> All that said, if I was the OP I'd be hacking out awk scripts or writing
> Perl to do his analyses rather than writing Java.
>
>

--
Dan, 5J

[[email protected]]

Hi Martin,

I just started reading here on RAS the last couple of days and this seems to be one of the more active fora on gliding I found so far.

Interesting to read you have this java class to interprete log files. I am sure many enthusiastic pilots with some programming skills started their own projects because non of the software they tried covered all their needs.

I for example wanted to do flight preparation in the SeeYou desktop app and then be able to use those tasks in XCSoar and do task declaration in my FLARM logger using the config file via the SD card interface. Therefore I wrote a powershell script to transform the SeeYou waypoints file into seperate FLARM config files, one for each task I prepared.

Are you aware of any central location where glider pilots share their projects, so no one has ro reïnvent the water again? :-)

Pascal

[[email protected]]

On Friday, November 30, 2018 at 1:32:16 PM UTC+2, pascal cuylaerts wrote:
> Hi Martin,
>
> I just started reading here on RAS the last couple of days and this seems to be one of the more active fora on gliding I found so far.
>
> Interesting to read you have this java class to interprete log files. I am sure many enthusiastic pilots with some programming skills started their own projects because non of the software they tried covered all their needs..
>
> I for example wanted to do flight preparation in the SeeYou desktop app and then be able to use those tasks in XCSoar and do task declaration in my FLARM logger using the config file via the SD card interface. Therefore I wrote a powershell script to transform the SeeYou waypoints file into seperate FLARM config files, one for each task I prepared.
>
> Are you aware of any central location where glider pilots share their projects, so no one has ro reïnvent the water again? :-)
>
> Pascal

Github.

[Martin Gregorie[_6_]]

On Fri, 30 Nov 2018 03:32:14 -0800, cuylaertspascal wrote:

> Are you aware of any central location where glider pilots share their
> projects, so no one has ro reïnvent the water again? :-)
>
I've put some projects on SourceForge.

The ICG package hasn't been published so for. I originally wrote it in
order to have a log analysis and display program that would run under
Linux, but then discovered GPLIGC and a utility for converting IGC logs
into KML files for display on Google Earth. Both work well enough for my
purposes but neither can display the task and turnpoint sectors or
barrels.

The package I DO use a lot, though is one I wrote to deal with turnpoints
and landout fields. Its based on my own proprietary file format that's
designed to be able to maintain with a text editor and is a superset of
Winpilot (DAT), CUP and EW turnpoint files: IOW it can store the data
that any of these contain plus extra detail about landout-suitable
airfields. The package can read and write its own proprietary format (of
course) as well as importing data from DAT, CUP and EW and outputting it
in any of them as well. Extending it to handle other formats would be
quite easy. I currently maintain a database of UK landout fields with the
data held in the proprietary OpenField format. This is published in both
DAT and CUP formats, with each accompanied by a Waypoint Notes file
suitable for input to XCSoar, LK8000 and any other moving map system that
can use it.

We're currently in the middle of the Great 25KHz to 8.33KHz conversion,
so I quickly whipped up another program that lists all airfield
frequencies in the landouts database in alphabetic order for easy
comparison with the CAA's converted airfields supplement. This has vastly
simplified updating the landouts database.

You can see the output from this program on my website (select the
'Landouts database and CGC Field Book'):

https://www.gregorie.org/gliding/pna/

I have a hazy plan to publish both packages next year, but they're more
likely to be added to my other website than to SourceForge, simply
because their main audience will be quite small. They will probably end
up here:

http://www.libelle-systems.com/free/


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

[Thomas Van de Velde]

On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 10:59:48 AM UTC-7, wrote:
> Hey guys im taking a computer science class on data structures and algorithms. I wanna do something glider related for my final project. I was thinking about trying to see if there is a pattern between average vario for a task and Xc speed. However, I have no clue how how to obtain such data from an igc file. Also,any suggestion On maybe doing something different for the project are welcome.
>
> Thanks!

You may want to take a look at the following Python module: https://pypi.org/project/xcsoar/

I've used it to generate this:
https://goo.gl/miiVrq

[Dan Marotta]

Pretty impressive looking!Â* Does each red dot indicate the location of a
thermal or a forecast of the likelihood of a thermal being there (or
thereabouts)?Â* Given the subject of "igc file", I would assume it's post
flight but then I'd have to ask again:Â* exactly what is each red dot?

On 12/13/2018 10:15 PM, Thomas Van de Velde wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 10:59:48 AM UTC-7, wrote:
>> Hey guys im taking a computer science class on data structures and algorithms. I wanna do something glider related for my final project. I was thinking about trying to see if there is a pattern between average vario for a task and Xc speed. However, I have no clue how how to obtain such data from an igc file. Also,any suggestion On maybe doing something different for the project are welcome.
>>
>> Thanks!
> You may want to take a look at the following Python module: https://pypi.org/project/xcsoar/
>
> I've used it to generate this:
> https://goo.gl/miiVrq

--
Dan, 5J

[Thomas Van de Velde]

Each dot is a historical thermal. You can click on a dot and get additional details about the pilot, time, altitude gain, thermal strength, etc for that particular thermal. The filters on the right interact with the map so if you zoom in on an area you'll see who flew there from where and when. You can also use those filters to slice and dice the data in many different ways; e.g. all flights from a particular airport at a particular time or month of the year, etc.

On Friday, December 14, 2018 at 7:33:18 AM UTC-8, Dan Marotta wrote:
> Pretty impressive looking!Â* Does each red dot indicate the location of a
> thermal or a forecast of the likelihood of a thermal being there (or
> thereabouts)?Â* Given the subject of "igc file", I would assume it's post
> flight but then I'd have to ask again:Â* exactly what is each red dot?
>
> On 12/13/2018 10:15 PM, Thomas Van de Velde wrote:
> > On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 10:59:48 AM UTC-7, wrote:
> >> Hey guys im taking a computer science class on data structures and algorithms. I wanna do something glider related for my final project. I was thinking about trying to see if there is a pattern between average vario for a task and Xc speed. However, I have no clue how how to obtain such data from an igc file. Also,any suggestion On maybe doing something different for the project are welcome.
> >>
> >> Thanks!
> > You may want to take a look at the following Python module: https://pypi.org/project/xcsoar/
> >
> > I've used it to generate this:
> > https://goo.gl/miiVrq
>
> --
> Dan, 5J