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