Cheap GPS Loggers for FAI Badges - Status?

I'm new on this forum, and this thread has captured my attention because
the theme is really popular in the gliding world. So I'll try to give
my opinion on a number of posts I read.

It always strikes me as odd that we fumbled with cameras and expensive
barographs, plus the problems of sealing them and finding an Official
Observer, for all these years without complaining, and that the whole
gliding world now seems to resent the approved loggers just for being
more costly than the typical off-the-shelf GPS. My barograph cost me
about half the price of my Volkslogger, but with the 20 years
difference in time, even with modest inflation rates, I think the price
is not that far off.

And indeed, finding an OO is still often the hardest part of the
administrative burden. Luckily it's only necessary for badge flights,
if you are using an approved FR.

I don't now if you have decentralized contests in Oz, like the OLC in
Europe. For this kind of flights, who are certainly as interesting as
badge flights, the use of an approved FR allows one to be completely
free of paperwork and OO's. In most European countries, this freedom
has done much more for the generalization of cross-country flying than
the badge system itself.

In Flanders (Belgium) where I live, when I come home, I download my
flight from the logger, upload it to the Flemish contest website, the
program checks the validity and respect of airspace, calculates the
points and classifies it in the correct class. Done! I can check in
real time how I did in comparison with others today.

In France, you can use some non-approved loggers in their NetCoupe, but
because of that, the system is much less automatic, and for
non-approved loggers you need indeed paperwork and an OO. I much prefer
the Flemish system, even if I was obliged to get an approved FR. All
clubs here have one or two FR's for rent to their members, some have
one per club glider.

I've read somewhere in this thread that because of different club
systems between Europe and Oz / USA, it would be impractical to have
the clubs buying FR's and renting them to their members. This seems
rubbish to me: if a club can buy and rent something as expensive as a
glider with radio, parachute, trailer etc., surely a FR can't make much
difference. And I suppose it has always been done with barographs, just
like here. Or does everybody have to buy his own to fly for badges?

I agree that the "data security" aspect seems a bit overdone at IGC,
but that's no reason to be verbally aggressive against the people who
developed the norms: they are not "self-appointed geeks", as one writer
put it. Geeks they may be, I don't know them personally, but as so
often in gliding, they probably are the people who volunteered to do
the job. Having been rather active as volunteer for lots of little and
bigger jobs on club, regional and national level, it strikes me that
there are very few people who agree to spend much time in doing things
like studying lots of documents, participating in conferences,
workshops, meetings... instead of flying. But when decisions are made
by these few (always the same, hence the accusation of "oligarchy",
"self-appointed", etc.), lots of people start to question them. I don't
think that's fair.

I sure as hell don't agree with everything IGC decides, but I write to
my delegate, assemble petitions, etc., if I think it's really worth it.
Just discussing it on a forum doesn't help. So if you want to get
cheaper GPS units to be used for badge flights, you'll have to do some
serious lobbying work. And prepare yourself to become OO, because
you'll find your club needs more of them. I don't now how it works in
other countries, but here it means passing an examination and following
an (almost) annual refresher course.

So! Now you have another pianist to shoot at. Fire away!


--
stephanevdv
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