Not to be contentious, but there are several points to be made:

1. With a 5 minute search I found the following three pages that
explain how one can implement a binary file transfer under a web
session:
http://www.vbip.com/itc/itc-http-component-01.asp
http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2006_05...ettingstarted/
http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/arc...29/436838.aspx
It would appear that most of the grunt work has been done towards
alleviating a lot of OLC heartache for Cambridge users.

2. Cambridge users might indeed be declining, but as you well know the
OLC ever evolving poor treatment of them over the last year has caused,
and is still causing, a lot of complaints on RAS and other soaring
sites. This widespread bad reputation, combined with the really poor
user interface on the OLC web site itself, has turned off a lot of
pilots that I know towards participating in the OLC. I submit that one
good way of assuring future growth of the OLC is to make sure that
everything that they have implemented at the moment works well, easily
and reliably - before they start offering new features! The current
approach of OLC towards software has doomed many, many other
interesting and worthwhile ventures.

3. I already volunteered my services to the OLC team. I won't go into
detail on RAS; suffice it to say my offer was brushed off.

I hope that these points will be viewed as constructive criticism of
OLC, rather than as a gratuitous slam. I like the idea of OLC very
much, it's just that the implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

-John

Doug Haluza wrote:
When you email a binary file, it is also converted to text prior to
transfer, and converted back to binary on the other end.

You are probably correct that the OLC programmers don't want to spend
additional effort on the non-standard and now obsolete CAI binary
format, especially since ey have already spent considerable effort on
the current compromise solution. Since the relative number of GPS-NAV
loggers will keep declining, this is probably a wise allocation of
limited resources. They should focus their efforts on future growth
opportunities.

I don't think you are correct about the ease of implementing a binary
FTP transfer. But, if you want to volunteer to implement this, and
prove me wrong, I can put you in touch with the right people.

jcarlyle wrote:
Doug,

I'm not a web expert, but this assertion seems incorrect. Certainly you
can e-mail a binary cai file and it will still be valid upon receipt.
It can also be sent via FTP, and I guarantee that this process would
result in a valid binary file. And a FTP transfer could be easily built
into the OLC submission process if OLC chose to do so.

Sounds to me like OLC programmers simply don't want to go to the effort
of figuring out how to handle cai files, and so are putting what should
be their problem on all of us Cambridge users.

-John

Doug Haluza wrote:
Actually, it is not possible for OLC to process the CAI binary because
it cannot be uploaded via the web form. The HTTP transfer used to
upload the IGC files will not accept the non ANSI characters in the
Cambridge CAI binary file. This is why the binary data needs to be
converted and appended to the IGC file as text.