I heard about this feature of WinPilot at the SSA convention
earlier this year. Amazing.

Now, it will be interesting to see the effect to the
database(s) as land-use changes take place. What happens
to the burned areas (California?) or timbered areas
or locations that were purely agricultural and change
to residential or commercial?

I don't have WinPilot, but I think it would be interesting
to know what happens.

Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA

At 15:12 20 November 2003, Richard Pfiffner wrote:
Check out the thermal finder in WinPilot. WinPilot
XP takes logger flights,
IGC files, and produces a thermal data base. You
need to have WinPilot XP
for your desktop computer and WinPilot ADV or PRO for
your Ipaq. I
personally have six years of data for Montague and
all the contest flights
in the area, in my Montaque thermal data base. WinPilot
can be set to
limit the thermals by sun position and wind direction.
The thermals can be
turned on and off by assigning a button on the front
of the Ipaq. Many
contest flights are available for download for most
US contest sites. One
interesting thing is the thermals that were found by
contest pilots in areas
that locals very rarely fly. I believe there is also
a thermal data base
available for the Minden area. I will add a thermal
database page for
WinPilot users to my website in the next couple of
days. If you have a
thermal database for you area and want it placed on
my web please email it
to me.

Richard
www.craggyaero.com