SSA-OLC Update

[Doug Haluza]

Lots of great stuff happening on the OLC, including the SSA-OLC in the
US. We have had over 600,000 km claimed so far, and the soaring season
is just beginning in most of the US! Sixteen pilots have already posted
flights over 1000km.

The Ridge Soaring Irregulars in PA and Aero Club Albatross in NJ took
the early lead because the ridge season is best early in the OLC year,
but Albuquerque Soaring in NM is quickly catching up.

The OLC league is in it's 5th round, with 55 US clubs scoring so far in
the SSA-OLC League. FAI is sponsoring the IGC-OLC World League, and
Albuquerque Soaring and Black Forest Soaring are the top two clubs in
the world!

For more info:

SSA-OLC:

http://www.ssa.org/members/contestreports/OLC.htm

IGC-OLC World League:

http://www.fai.org/gliding/igcolcwl2006

It's easy to participate, all you need is a flight logger compatible
with the OLC. All IGC approved loggers are compatible for all claims,
and many non approved loggers are suitable for the OLC Classic. If you
have trouble processing your claims, US pilots cab send an email to
olc<at>ssa<dot>org for help (or help<at>onlinecontest<dot>org for all
other countries).

[David Walsh]

I am still unable to submit files via the web interface. The problem
is not with the file!!! The file passes all validity checks!!!

The problem began in the 10th or 11th month of last year when the
"Take-Off" location was added to the submission form.

Last year the OLC was a lot of fun. This year, it's a Pain in the A**!
I have to call around, find someone with SeeYou, email them my file,
along with some personal information, or email the OLC folks and ask
them to fix the entry. (The OLC folks are great, I'm now on a first
name basis with their help line). You would think they would get tired
of manually fixing all the grayed down entries. The problem could
easily be in my end, but I get consistent behavior from Netscape,
Mozilla, and IE browsers.

I liked the OLC the way it was, when it actually worked. (for me)

Sincerely,
David Walsh


Doug Haluza wrote:
> Lots of great stuff happening on the OLC, including the SSA-OLC in the
> US. We have had over 600,000 km claimed so far, and the soaring season
> is just beginning in most of the US! Sixteen pilots have already posted
> flights over 1000km.
>
> The Ridge Soaring Irregulars in PA and Aero Club Albatross in NJ took
> the early lead because the ridge season is best early in the OLC year,
> but Albuquerque Soaring in NM is quickly catching up.
>
> The OLC league is in it's 5th round, with 55 US clubs scoring so far in
> the SSA-OLC League. FAI is sponsoring the IGC-OLC World League, and
> Albuquerque Soaring and Black Forest Soaring are the top two clubs in
> the world!
>
> For more info:
>
> SSA-OLC:
>
> http://www.ssa.org/members/contestreports/OLC.htm
>
> IGC-OLC World League:
>
> http://www.fai.org/gliding/igcolcwl2006
>
> It's easy to participate, all you need is a flight logger compatible
> with the OLC. All IGC approved loggers are compatible for all claims,
> and many non approved loggers are suitable for the OLC Classic. If you
> have trouble processing your claims, US pilots cab send an email to
> olc<at>ssa<dot>org for help (or help<at>onlinecontest<dot>org for all
> other countries).
>

[David Kinsell]

You're not alone. 5-27 results for the US currently have red marks for
four of the five top flight claims!

But I haven't seen the same issue you're having. Using an older (2.82)
version of SeeYou, I've never been able to directly submit flights, so
have always used the web interface. I use SeeYou to prepare the .olc file,
then upload that through the web, and it seems to work reliably. It pulls
the phoney .igc file from my Cambridge automatically. I thought the .olc
file was just a typing convenience, maybe there's more to it than that.

-Dave



David Walsh wrote:
> I am still unable to submit files via the web interface. The problem
> is not with the file!!! The file passes all validity checks!!!
>
> The problem began in the 10th or 11th month of last year when the
> "Take-Off" location was added to the submission form.
>
> Last year the OLC was a lot of fun. This year, it's a Pain in the A**!
> I have to call around, find someone with SeeYou, email them my file,
> along with some personal information, or email the OLC folks and ask
> them to fix the entry. (The OLC folks are great, I'm now on a first
> name basis with their help line). You would think they would get tired
> of manually fixing all the grayed down entries. The problem could
> easily be in my end, but I get consistent behavior from Netscape,
> Mozilla, and IE browsers.
>
> I liked the OLC the way it was, when it actually worked. (for me)
>
> Sincerely,
> David Walsh
>
>
> Doug Haluza wrote:
>> Lots of great stuff happening on the OLC, including the SSA-OLC in the
>> US. We have had over 600,000 km claimed so far, and the soaring season
>> is just beginning in most of the US! Sixteen pilots have already posted
>> flights over 1000km.
>>
>> The Ridge Soaring Irregulars in PA and Aero Club Albatross in NJ took
>> the early lead because the ridge season is best early in the OLC year,
>> but Albuquerque Soaring in NM is quickly catching up.
>>
>> The OLC league is in it's 5th round, with 55 US clubs scoring so far in
>> the SSA-OLC League. FAI is sponsoring the IGC-OLC World League, and
>> Albuquerque Soaring and Black Forest Soaring are the top two clubs in
>> the world!
>>
>> For more info:
>>
>> SSA-OLC:
>>
>> http://www.ssa.org/members/contestreports/OLC.htm
>>
>> IGC-OLC World League:
>>
>> http://www.fai.org/gliding/igcolcwl2006
>>
>> It's easy to participate, all you need is a flight logger compatible
>> with the OLC. All IGC approved loggers are compatible for all claims,
>> and many non approved loggers are suitable for the OLC Classic. If you
>> have trouble processing your claims, US pilots cab send an email to
>> olc<at>ssa<dot>org for help (or help<at>onlinecontest<dot>org for all
>> other countries).
>>

[Doug Haluza]

The first two red marks from 5/27 are the C302 issue described in my
last post. The third is an ENL flag that does not affect scoring. The
fourth is from a WinPilot log, and WinPilot is not approved for OLC
yet.

P.S. If you are a WinPilot user who wants to post your WinPilot logs to
the OLC Classic, you should contact WinPilot and let them know it is
important to you. OLC wants WinPilot to become a sponsor before they
will add them to the approved logger list, and make the necessary
software changes to accept WinPilot logs. Since OLC does not charge
users directly, they depend on the support of the vendor community. So
we need to let our vendors know that we want them to support the OLC.

P.P.S. You can still claim flights directly with SeeYou v2.82 if you
apply the OLC2006 patch from their web site (if you have an older 2.x
version, you must upgrade to v2.82 first). For Cambridge GPS-NAV Model
10/20/25 users, this older version will use the Windows DLL, and not
the DOS software to convert the *.CAI to *.IGC, so it will not work all
the time. You really should consider upgrading to v3.5 to avoid the
hassel of manually converting your *.CAI to *.IGC.

[David Walsh]

Doug,

It's like you guys only have one excuse, the file is corrupt. And you
stick with that excuse despite the fact the file passes all security
checks. If the file really

The default security check run by the 3UT15256.exe download utility
displays:

Log Data Integrity OK
Signature Data Integrity OK
Security OK

The Valicam2.exe displays:

Log Data Integrity OK
Signature Data Integrity OK
Security OK

Page 10 on the 302, shows 'good seal'


So, again, I say the web interface is broken, and It was broken last
year when the 'Take-Off Location' field was added to the form. I wish
someone would look into fixing the web interface, or you could just
send me another email telling me my file is corrupt.

Sincerely,
David Walsh



Doug Haluza wrote:
> I see that you are using a Cambridge C302 logger. The SSA-OLC committe
> has isolated a problem with the C302 where the logs show a security
> violation when checked with Valicam2.exe, but the logger display shows
> the security seal is good. We had one case where the user sent the C302
> back to Cambridge, and they were able to download a good log file at
> the factory using the newer v2.57 version of the Cambridge utilities.
> So we are advising people to try to download the log again using the
> newer software to get a valid claim. Unfortunately Cambridge still has
> not posted this software version to their web site yet, so you will
> need to contact Cambridge directly to obtain it.
>
> If you are having this problem with your C302, you will see the
> following when you run Valicam2.exe, or in the OLC Flight Info page:
>
> Log Data Integrity OK
> Signature Data Integrity OK
> Security Fail
>
> Assuming that your security flag is still good, you will need to
> download the file again with the new software and run Valicam2.exe
> again to check the file. If this does not work, you should contact
> Cambridge, because you may need to send your C302 back for service.
> Note that this problem is intermittent, and does not always happen with
> the same logger every flight. We actually had one case where only every
> other flight log was affected.
>
> Paul Remde has more detailed info at his site:
>
> http://www.soarmn.com/cumulus/cai/How%20to%20Avoid%20Flight%20Log%20Download%20Valid ation%20Issues%20-%20302.pdf
>
> As for why this is a problem this year, and not last year, OLC was
> letting all Cambridge logs slide on the validation checks because of
> the GPS-NAV proprietary *.CAI validation challenge. Once the GPS-NAV
> workaround was in place, OLC started checking all Cambridge logs in
> November of 2005. Initially there were a lot of problems with the
> GPS-NAV validation, but once these were sorted out, we discovered the
> C302 security flag issue. Now this is the biggest OLC validation
> problem in the US.
>
> Note that OLC is using the same FAI/IGC DOS validation software that
> Official Observers and NAC representatives (the Badge Lady in the US)
> are required to use. So, this C302 validation problem affects badge and
> record claims and Barron Hilton Cup as well--It is not just an OLC
> thing. Actually, it is a good thinig we discovered it in the OLC,
> before too many people lost badge and record claims to this bug.
>

[01-- Zero One]

"Doug Haluza" > wrote in message
oups.com:
<snip>

> P.S. If you are a WinPilot user who wants to post your WinPilot logs to
> the OLC Classic, you should contact WinPilot and let them know it is
> important to you. OLC wants WinPilot to become a sponsor before they
> will add them to the approved logger list, and make the necessary
> software changes to accept WinPilot logs.





As a vendor, don't you just love having a gun pointed at your head!

[Doug Haluza]

Gary from Cambridge says the best way for C302 users to solve the
validation problem is to contact him directly at the factory,
preferably by phone. I won't post the number here, but it is listed at
the web site:

http://www.cambridge-aero.com/contact.htm

[JS]

I remember when the OLC was FUN.
Jim