On Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:53:53 +0000, Lucky812 wrote:

I feel that the information options are overwhelming in all of the
products (except for maybe Clearnav). I have limited XC experience and
have never competed so my question is what information do other pilots
have as their “default” information configurations for these programs
(cruise/thermal/final glide)?

LK8000: I leave it pretty much as it comes out of the box except:

- I turn terrain display off and set the overlay letters to black
(see my recent answer to Wallace Berry for doing that and my reasons)

- I have the thermal finder OFF because I don't find it much help: the
trail colour gives me enough help.

- I disable the top right touch area because it can put LK8000 into
a mode I don't want to see.

- I set units to km (distance), knots (speed and climb rate),
feet (height)

- I set the safety height to 1000 ft. You might want 1500 ft for your
first xc flights.

- I set airspace warning and display to AUTO, 500 ft vertical and 45-60
seconds horizontal - this should be enough to give planning time to
replan, find another working cloud, etc. without getting too close.

- I never go XC without declaring a task and putting it into LK8000
unless I'm local soaring, when I have my home field as my only TP
because this causes LK8000 to run the final glide calculation for
the trip home and to show whether I'm above/below glide.

Always declaring a task/intentions is a club requirement: if a member
doesn't get back we'll know more or less where to look. Besides, I find
it gives me something to concentrate on doing instead of bimbling round
as I tend to do when local soaring.

As I'm in the UK, which has a fair amount of airspace and NOTAMs that I
need to avoid, I make sure I have the latest airspace files installed. I
also use the excellent SPINE desktop program to download plottable NOTAMs
for the day from the AIS site, save them in OpenAir format and configure
them on in LK8000.

The airspace settings given above only display airspace if I may enter it
unless I do something to avoid it: this keeps the display nice and clear.


Do these informational configurations change for XC vs racing?

I do very little racing, but I use the same settings when I am doing it.


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