On Sep 29, 3:08*pm, Steve Koerner wrote:
I sure hope that the ClearNav folks are gathering input here about the benefit of a good climb maximizer feature. *I am in agreement with the posters here who think that only WinPilot has gotten it right so far. * I do wish that the ClearNav software would include an emulation of the WinPilot climb maximizer so that I can finally ditch the damn PDA from my panel. *The zoom-in feature that the ClearNav offers now is nowhere nears as good. *As Tim has noted, the maximizer should come on automatically and quickly, then quickly go off when you leave the thermal. *The WinPilot continuous graph is way more effective than lift dots.

One characteristic that is also important and not yet mentioned here is the matter of time delay. *WinPilot has no discernable delay; whereas other systems, including ClearNav, have a time delay in the display that makes it very difficult to interpret what's really going on when trying to reposition in a thermal.

Simple suggestions for CN maximizer improvement:
1) Automatic on as you start thermaling!
2) Drift the dots with the wind.
3) include a N arrow to help deal with screen refresh delay
4) anticipate the screen refresh time -- paint the screen rotated in
the direction of turn so that by the time the screen is refreshed it's
pointing where you want to go.
5) blank dots more than 10 circles old -- or keep them as track only
but not dots (useful to find old thermals, but the dots all merge to a
green mess otherwise)

Even in its current form the CN display is very useful. I was out
thrashing around in broken up blue thermals all weekend; when you try
some big maneuver that doesn't work out it's very easy to lose track
of where that last good gust was. Even in wind, I got back to several
cores that I had lost with CN.
I also find it useful when you find a big tight core and you're full
of water. The big zoomie and turn leaves you several diameters away
from the original core. Keeping track of the effect of speed on
thermaling moves is hard.
But... don't forget to look outside for birds, corn stalks, other
gliders, etc. ... still better than any maximizer!

John Cochane