Personal flight computers

Admittedly, XC-Soar is extremely flexible and jam-packed with techie goodies but misses the point for cockpit usability (making it useless IMO).

Having never used any software in flight, I am curious about this remark.
I'm wondering if you can elaborate a bit on what you think what the point for cockpit usability roughly is?

Roel

On Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:57:39 +0000, Roel Baardman wrote:

I'm wondering if you can elaborate a bit on what you think what the
point for cockpit usability roughly is?

My personal 'must-have' requirements are that, assuming you entered the
task before taking a launch:

- if its a good day and you complete the task, you shouldn't have had
to touch the system during the flight, i.e. you get task start and
finish notifications, the display zooms in as you approach a turnpoint,
there is a beep and the next TP is selected as soon as you have a point
in the sector and the display zooms out again.

- if you need to skip a TP, abandon the task and head home, or get a
course for the nearest landable field, these should all be doable
without messing about with menus, etc.

- the map shouldn't be cluttered with airspace unless there's a
possibility you'll enter it.

That's my definition and please note that in the UK we seldom if ever
need to change tasks after take-off.

HTH


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

So Martin, what is your choice of software?

On Sunday, December 9, 2012 12:49:57 PM UTC-5, Martin Gregorie wrote:


My personal 'must-have' requirements are that, assuming you entered the

task before taking a launch:



- if its a good day and you complete the task, you shouldn't have had

to touch the system during the flight, i.e. you get task start and

finish notifications, the display zooms in as you approach a turnpoint,

there is a beep and the next TP is selected as soon as you have a point

in the sector and the display zooms out again.



- if you need to skip a TP, abandon the task and head home, or get a

course for the nearest landable field, these should all be doable

without messing about with menus, etc.



- the map shouldn't be cluttered with airspace unless there's a

possibility you'll enter it.



That's my definition and please note that in the UK we seldom if ever

need to change tasks after take-off.



HTH





--

martin@ | Martin Gregorie

gregorie. | Essex, UK

org |

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 08:11:07 -0800, beensoaring wrote:

So Martin, what is your choice of software?

LK8000 3.0d.

It does all of the above. By tapping the lettering in the top left corner
of the screen you step through all the TPs in the current task, Home
(which might not be part of the task), the best alternate landout and (I
think) the last thermal.

Functionally I see very little difference between LK8000 and XCSoar (they
have a common ancestor and both run on my Binatone PNA). I use LK8000
because I prefer its display layout to that of XCSoar: I prefer to have
data overlaid onto the map rather than permanently losing screen area to
the infobox array, but of course ymmv.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |