On Tuesday, May 26, 2015 at 2:35:08 PM UTC-4, Dan Daly wrote:
Keep your eyes out of the cockpit and look for other gliders. Listen to the audio to center. An occasional glance at the average climb and then look out again.

If you have too much displayed, you will have difficulty absorbing it and your climb rate will suffer.

One famous pilot has said, "If you can think about anything except thermalling
when you're thermalling, you're not thinking about thermalling hard enough!"

Another famous pilot described all the ways to look for traffic when
thermalling, e.g. at odd thousands and thousands plus 500, especially watch
for traffic coming from the East, and from the West at the evens.

Myself, I get (mentally) tired just thinking of all the stuff you have to
think about! As far as what I want to see and hear, I like the color coded
display of the lift (drifted with the wind) that XCSoar provides. After that,
I want to see the 20 second average compared with the thermal average.
The little lift strength vs. altitude graph is nice to check out. As
I get higher I want to see how well I'm doing compared with getting to final
glide, and where my course line is, and what the clouds are doing down
that course line. I want to hear where the lift is best in my circle and
anticipate 1/4 turn ahead of that so I know where to flatten out to better
center the lift. Finally, and most importantly, I want to know about other
traffic and other things in the same thermal (gliders, birds, cornstalks,
small houses, etc!) so I can see where the core of the thermal is.
Especially down low, I can see the wind drift by taking note of ground features
and cloud shadows.

And lastly, if you do see a conflict, match *bank angle* !!! Then push or
pull to avoid the impact. In wingspan we're a lot bigger so it's much
easier to avoid impact if that long aspect doesn't cross.

Matt