Top Hat Question (XCSoar?)

On Fri, 06 Jul 2018 08:54:40 -0700, chip.bearden wrote:

Based on my and other reported experiences, I think the best system is
whatever you are comfortable with and is reliable. I've seen problems
reported with a variety of hardware and software. I'm in the IT business
and it's amazing to me that this stuff works as well as it does given
the low volumes, whether it's commercial products like ClearNav or
freeware such as Top Hat/XCSoar.

I was also in the IT business, now retired. I think a major reason this
stuff works as well as it does is that the developers are (all?) also
active users of this stuff. That is not knocking professional developers,
just pointing out that they are seldom active users of what they write
and IMO this factor makes a huge difference, especially to usability and
GUI design.

I flew with XCSoar for a few years, but switched to LK8000 whe nit
appeared because I prefer its user interface, which took less effort to
set up the way I want it that XCSoar did, and on a good day with no
weather or airspace issues to force changes of plan I won't touch it from
launch to landing. I've looked at SYM but prefer LK8000.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org