On Dec 9 2012, 9:32*am, wrote:
Anyone in US flying with LK8000? Can you compare its friendliness to SYM, XCSoar, or WinPilot Pro?

I've used LK8000 extensively for 3 seasons (and XCSoar before that).
Using LK8000 as my primary flight computer in the Std Class Nationals
last year, I finished 4th (and all the major mistakes were mine; can't
blame the avionics, sadly!).

In terms of "Friendliness": All of the programs you listed have
roughly the same feature-set, and all are "big" enough that it takes a
little effort to figure out how to configure any of those to display
exactly what you want.

In terms of finding and using terrain files and such, SYM is probably
the best - but of course you pay for it (in other words: since they're
a paid company they can afford to have people sinking time and money
into nice installer files and such). Both LK8000 and XCSoar take a
little bit of effort to download terrain & waypoint files; but its not
hard at all. For LK8000 terrain you simply use the LK8000 website.
For XCSoar terrain/maps there used to be an online terrain generator
you could plug GPS coordinates into (not sure what the standard is
these days). For both, you can download waypoint files and airspace
files from the Worldwide turnpoint exchange (http://soaringweb.org/
TP/). Turnpoint and airspace files come in a few different formats.
The format to use for LK8000 and XCSoar is documented on their
respective website.

Hope this info helps! Feel free to ask if you have further questions.

--Noel