Best instrument combination

I have a realy well compensated vario, airspeed, altimeter, and a
Colibri. The Colibri gives me the distances to where I headed. Then
I lookout the window at the clouds a lot, and figure in my head what L/
D I think I will get by what I see out the window. Looking out the
window can be very effective. I often see other gliders and power
planes! And hawks and eagles. I even saw some naked women sunbathing
on the top of our ridge.

Boggs

On Sep 12, 12:30*pm, ryanglover1969 wrote:
Looking for some consensus of opinion on what is the best combination
of flight computer, logger and PDA. / soaring software.

Recently sold my glider with LX 1600, Colibri and 3800 series Ipaq
running SeeYou Mobile. I liked the set up ok, but there were some
minor glitches, as I'm sure there are with any set up. What do you
think is the best? And cost is a factor.

302/303. Don't care much for PDA's. I'm not a contest flyer, so the
CAI system is more than enough for me. Simple, easy to use, easy to
read in sunlight, and doesn't require much "heads down" time in the
cockpit.

On Sep 12, 1:30*pm, ryanglover1969 wrote:
Looking for some consensus of opinion on what is the best combination
of flight computer, logger and PDA. / soaring software.

Recently sold my glider with LX 1600, Colibri and 3800 series Ipaq
running SeeYou Mobile. I liked the set up ok, but there were some
minor glitches, as I'm sure there are with any set up. What do you
think is the best? And cost is a factor.

OK, here's my experience:

Have flown a number of gliders lately, and two of those in contests.
Varios used: Winter and Sage mechanical, Borgelt B40, Westerboer
VW900,
LX160, LX5000, old Cambridge (not sure about model).
Flight computers: LX5000 and SoarPilot on several Palm units.
Loggers: LX5000, Volkslogger, and handheld Garmin eTrex.

My current plane has a Sage, LX160, and VW900. As far as I'm
concerned
the VW is the best of the bunch. The Sage is beautiful but twitchy to
get
working properly. The LX160 is an amazing vario but it mostly drives
me up
the wall with technical problems. The B40 is great, especially since
it has
a battery backup. The shortcoming of all except the LXes is the lack
of
averager (although there are upgraded versions of some of those that
do).

The LX5000 also had an amazing bunch of stuff in it but it was
practically
impossible to use them. The interface frustrated everyone who tried
to use it.
It's currently on a round trip to Slovenia since it refuses to talk to
anyone anymore
(and someone's badge flight is trapped inside it). When it works it
does great
as an IGC logger and enhanced GPS data source for SoarPilot.

For logging the VL has worked OK for me. The LX5000 was better once
SoarPilot got fixed to cope with it. The VL has some annoying habits,
including a small memory and a poor user interface. It also starts
beeping
once you are down to 7.5 hours of memory left in it. If you're
recording
at 4 second intervals that happens about 2 hours into a flight. :-(

For me the best out of everything has been SoarPilot on the older Palm
units with reflective screens. They are very inexpensive on eBay and
get
more visible in sunlight. SoarPilot has great info readily available,
and
I really love the tabular final glide screen it uses.

My ideal cockpit (still in the future since my glider partner fell
through):
Sage with averager, VW1010 plus VW1150 data unit, PowerFLARM
as a logger, SoarPilot (eventually ClearNav).

-- Matt

On Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:35:44 -0700, Brad wrote:

This is probably the simplest setup described yet. I don't fly contests
but am an avid XC pilot with a lot of western WA km racked up.

Here's a somewhat more elaborate one, which works well for me. Its
similar to Brads, except that my backup vario is a B.40 rather than a Sage
and in addition I carry a T&B and a radio.

Mechanical instruments:
ASI (80mm)
Altimeter (80mm)
Turn & Bank (57mm) (in case I get caught above cloud in wave)
Compass (57mm)

Electronic: - all run off two 12v batteries
A runs T&B and radio, B runs the rest.
SDI C4 (80mm) main vario and STF. No GPS connection.
Borgelt B.40 (57mm) backup vario (with 9v backup battery)
Filser ATR-500 (57mm) radio
Binatone PNA on RAM fleximount in front of panel. Runs LK8000.

My glider is an early Standard Libelle, which limits panel space severely
because everything has to be inside the edges of the panel: This slides
in under the cockpit rim. This panel tells me everything I need to know
during normal flying and is adequate for cloud flying.

In addition I carry an EW model D logger, which has a dedicated Garmin
GPS II+ connected to it. Both are mounted on the battery box lid and not
visible during flight and are powered from both batteries. The EW is my
main logger. LK8000 also records an IGC log.


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

On 9/13/2010 1:29 PM, mattm wrote:
On Sep 12, 1:30 pm, wrote:
Looking for some consensus of opinion on what is the best combination
of flight computer, logger and PDA. / soaring software.

Recently sold my glider with LX 1600, Colibri and 3800 series Ipaq
running SeeYou Mobile. I liked the set up ok, but there were some
minor glitches, as I'm sure there are with any set up. What do you
think is the best? And cost is a factor.

OK, here's my experience:

Have flown a number of gliders lately, and two of those in contests.
Varios used: Winter and Sage mechanical,
Snip...

My current plane has a Sage, snip... The Sage is beautiful but twitchy to
get working properly.
Snip...

My ideal cockpit (still in the future since my glider partner fell
through):
Sage with averager, snip....

-- Matt

The comment, "The Sage is beautiful but twitchy to get working properly,"
likely reflects the Sage's rapid (compared to a host of other actual
analog-needle-containing variometers) response time...which rapid response
time is (to me) a good thing.

For the record, there are 3 Sage vario types, with 3 different response times
ranging from 0.7 sec to (as I recall) 1.7 sec, response time being defined as
being from initiation time of a sustained, unvarying, input signal to 67% of
max signal-matching needle displacement.

Anyone who can get a (hidden assumption: known-properly-functioning) Sage
operating to their satisfaction without resorting to slowing it down by some
indeterminate amount via restrictors/'gust filters' can be satisfied they have
a really good static system on their glider...a worthy goal for any glider,
regardless of vario type!

I have no financial interest in Sages, but just thought this an opportunity to
touch upon a bit of universally applicable (i.e. static system
importance/sensitivity) info that historically seems to fade a tad as the
glider-guider population trends away from geeky mechanical developer types to
geeky user types.

Geekily,
Bob W.