Personal flight computers

Gotta admit that I haven't had the privilege of flying a ClearNav, but I
find XCSoar extremely easy to use and I'll bet that if I got a flight in a
glider with CN, I'd find it complex and confusing.

It's all about what you're used to... It's the same with every new
whiz-bang thingy.


"Jim" wrote in message
...
On Sunday, December 9, 2012 1:53:18 AM UTC-5, noel.wade wrote:
I'm an IT professional and a glider pilot, and here are my thoughts

after a lot of testing and experiementation over the last 5 years:



I've got a Vertica V1 and intend to get a V2 shortly. I prefer it

over several other PDA/PNA devices i've owned and tried, including:

the original Oudie, iPAX hx4700, HP 310, Mio Moov Spirit, and a couple

of chinese PNAs I've bought over the years to test. The V1 has the

"Oudie-like" GPS chip which does smoothing, therefore it is not very

accurate during circling. The V2 fixes that problem.



For my V1, I pipe in data from my logger to my gliding program over

the USB port (so I see EXACTLY what my logger is seeing, in terms of

altitudes and distances to waypoints) - so the V1 GPS "problem"

doesn't affect me in the slightest. I use the V1 GPS as a backup/

secondary input into my gliding program - its there only to help me if

my logger dies during a flight.



For _all_ of the newer PDA/PNA devices, you pay a price for the screen

brightness: battery-life. Displays are far and away the most power-

hungry parts of all modern computing devices, and PNAs are no

exception. Almost no device out there will give you more than about 2

hours of flying time, if you're using the GPS receiver and displaying

the screen at any usable level of brightness. So its mandatory to

plumb into ship's power or buy an external battery and use the USB

port to provide supplemental power.



I've also been a longtime user of LK8000 (and I used to fly with

XCSoar back before LK8000 was available).



The Naviter/SeeYou folks are nice; but with all the free software

options out there that are excellent (such as LK8000), I don't see the

need to pay extra amounts of money for SeeYou software or their Oudie-

branded hardware.



All of the top software programs perform almost all of the same

functions nowadays. For normal pilots making normal cross-country or

competition flights, any of the major software options will work fine

(LK8000, XCSoar, SeeYouMobile, ClearNav, LX, etc). They may have

slightly different menus and iconography, but in the end the

differences are styling, not function. As I said, my personal

preference is LK8000 - its got a few extra menus and bits to set up

initially; but I find it is responsive in-flight and the displays are

very customizable so I can group information together in ways that

make sense for me. LK8000 also lets me easily turn OFF features and

information I don't care about; which is nice. I think these programs

can give you way too MUCH info, and it takes precious extra seconds

for your eyes and brain to read and filter the info on the screen, to

figure out just what's important at the moment.



--Noel

I can't agree that they are all the same. Have you really tried them all?

"(LK8000, XCSoar, SeeYouMobile, ClearNav, LX, etc). They may have
slightly different menus and iconography, but in the end the
differences are styling, not function."

I can't speak to the others but I find XC-Soar far less user freindly that
CN or even GNII. Admittedly, XC-Soar is extremely flexible and jam-packed
with techie goodies but misses the point for cockpit usability (making it
useless IMO).

-Jim

On Dec 9, 12:02*pm, "Dan Marotta" wrote:
Gotta admit that I haven't had the privilege of flying a ClearNav, but I
find XCSoar extremely easy to use and I'll bet that if I got a flight in a
glider with CN, I'd find it complex and confusing.

Naw, a five minute briefing on CN will get all the essentials. It's
designed that way.

CN setup is less than 1/10 of what it takes to get XCSoar going. No
exaggeration.

Power comes up a lot. CN isn't as bad as some imagine. 400 mA is
typical average.

Evan Ludeman for CNi
For more CNi discussion, please see come to our forum
www.clearnav.net

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 |

On Dec 9, 12:02*pm, "Dan Marotta" wrote:
Gotta admit that I haven't had the privilege of flying a ClearNav, but I
find XCSoar extremely easy to use and I'll bet that if I got a flight in a
glider with CN, I'd find it complex and confusing.

Naw, a five minute briefing on CN will get all the essentials. It's
designed that way.

CN setup is less than 1/10 of what it takes to get XCSoar going. No
exaggeration.

Power comes up a lot. CN isn't as bad as some imagine. 400 mA is
typical average.

Evan Ludeman for CNi
For more CNi discussion, please see come to our forum
htp://www.clearnav.net

On Dec 9, 12:02*pm, "Dan Marotta" wrote:
Gotta admit that I haven't had the privilege of flying a ClearNav, but I
find XCSoar extremely easy to use and I'll bet that if I got a flight in a
glider with CN, I'd find it complex and confusing.

Naw, a five minute briefing on CN will get all the essentials. It's
designed that way.

CN setup is less than 1/10 of what it takes to get XCSoar going. No
exaggeration.

Power comes up a lot. CN isn't as bad as some imagine. 400 mA is
typical average.

Evan Ludeman for CNi
For more CNi discussion, please see come to our forum
http://www.clearnav.net

On Dec 9, 12:02*pm, "Dan Marotta" wrote:
Gotta admit that I haven't had the privilege of flying a ClearNav, but I
find XCSoar extremely easy to use and I'll bet that if I got a flight in a
glider with CN, I'd find it complex and confusing.

Naw, a five minute briefing on CN will get all the essentials. It's
designed that way.

CN setup is less than 1/10 of what it takes to get XCSoar going. No
exaggeration.

Power comes up a lot. CN isn't as bad as some imagine. 400 mA is
typical average.

Evan Ludeman for CNi
For more CNi discussion, please see our forum
http://www.clearnav.net

Allow me please do disagree on the Power Consumption issue.

I would argue that it is an issue considering everything that we pack into our cockpits these days.

At 12V CN consumes 400mA, V2 300mA while Oudie 2 exactly because of a less power hungry LCD (which is not the same as in the V2) and a more modern processor takes between 200-220mA. That is full brightness, processor running at full speed. It's about half of CN and ~30% less than a V2. It means that it will run 2h 45min off its internal 1450mAh battery or if you like - it will give you almost 3 hours of navigation after everything else has failed in the cockpit (figures valid for Oudie 2's shipped after September 2012).

This is significant when you multiply this with as many hours as you will want to be airborne with all your electronic gear working flawlessly. While CN and V2 will easily consume most of a standard lead battery on a good flight you can connect a Nano (even over Bluetooth) to Oudie 2 and combined still consume less than the other two in this comparison. And get more value out of it (fully IGC approved logger file).

This is the reason why at Naviter we chose not to install an ancient power hungry GPS and processor into Oudie 2 but rather pack all the interface cables you will ever need to connect to a better data source right into the box.

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 |

Andrej Kolar wrote:
Oudie 2 and Oudie 2 Lite are the same hardware. They just come with differe
nt licenses.

Allow me to deviate from the main discussion a bit please.
I'm a bit confused that your hardware platforms are still aimed at Windows Mobile, while you recently announced Android software and a Android-enabled
roadmap for the future.
Can we expect hardware running Android in the future, with SeeYou Mobile on it?

Roel

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 |