On Monday, March 11, 2013 4:10:31 PM UTC-4, Tobias Bieniek wrote:
I suppose you are talking about the AAT task optimizer? I've flown two competitions with it last year, and it worked as well as always before... It would be great though if you could point us to the first version that behaved badly for you, because otherwise we can only do wild guesses too.

The task calculator, yes.

There was a problem early on in 6.3 that did get sorted out. That problem caused my XC speed predicted vs Mc setting to run very high. I wrote a ticket, it got worked on, many thanks.

Later on, I noticed the inverse: entering for instance Mc 3.0 (knots) would yield an anomalously low predicted XC speed, low 40 mph range. This would have been with what ever version of XCS was current in April/May 2012, 6.3..something. I pulled out my Dell Streak to see if I could reproduce the problem quickly and I cannot, so I withdraw the shot about not being fixed a year later. The version I have loaded is 6.4.5. Mc 3.0 yields 51 mph which is about right if cruising is done in still air for dry ASW-20A, which is the polar I have loaded. Of course we always try to cruise in better than still air, so it's a good thing to be able to tell the nav device that "yes, the next 40 miles are going to be *really* good" due to ridge, cloud street, convergence or what have you. Having to set the Mc value, observe the speed calculated, deciding if it's reasonable, adjusting again maybe and *then* looking at the turn areas to see how far I need to go is a gigantic pain in the ass and an unreasonable waste of time in the cockpit. It's much easier for me to simply estimate speed (based on experience and what I see ahead) and work from this. I find that I can estimate speed quite well for days that go well. On the days that don't go well, I don't care about speed, I just care about getting around and the calculator is of no real import. Anyhow, my $0.02. Sorry I can't shed any illumination on whatever the issue was, perhaps it really is all fixed now.

T8