Top Hat Question (XCSoar?)

On Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 3:24:36 PM UTC-6, wrote:
A very long, detailed, and not-guaranteed-accurate post for Top Hat users in response to a couple of questions. Don't say you weren't warned! Just my interpretation. Would love to hear other views and better ways. The XCSoar User Manual is detailed but overwhelming in the breadth of its offerings and not always specific to Top Hat, which differs in some ways. Nearly all of the comments are based on my experience with Top Hat on a Kobo Glo, althought I've flown with it on a Dell Streak 5 and played with it in SIM mode on a Windows PC.

As I understand it, Top Hat screens (pages) are defined when the user selects (i) orientation: portrait vs. landscape and (ii) the number and location (right, left, top, bottom, split) of infoboxes that are displayed. This template serves for all screens, more or less.

To set up a cruise screen:

While in SIM mode (one of the choices on the main screen), press "M" 3 times and then press the gear icon to get to Settings. Then:
Screen (brings you to the "Set up screen" page)
Display Orientation (select one; I'm using Portrait but have tried Landscape, too, and it may depend on your device)
Infobox Geometry (select one: I'm using "10 bottom or right"--which may not be available in earlier versions--but have played with other settings).

Then:
Infoboxes Cruise (the other pre-set modes are Circling, Final Glide, and AUX-1). Then click an infobox at the bottom of the screen, then click whatever is in the Content box in the middle of that screen, then scroll through the available infoboxes and Select one to be displayed in that infobox on the Cruise screen*. Set up each infobox this way.

[*There are a LOT of infoboxes, some of which make more sense to me than others. Some seem like techno gadgets but who knows? Some are buggy. In answer to the obvious question: I no longer know the status but one bug was the average speed on course adjusted for altitude lost/gained since the start--a really cool idea that wasn't implemented properly. Several others involved variations on final glide status: at one time I had 3 or 4 different versions displayed including the bar on the left side of the screen but only the latter seemed to be consistently accurate; when adjusting for finish cylinder diameters and minimum altitudes and safety altitude(s), some of the other boxes were clearly not agreeing with each other and the team found a bug in at least one of them. Rob Dunning told me just to use the "Final Glide" bar on the left side of the main screens that always shows altitude needed to complete the entire task so that's what I do.]

Now is a good time to set up your Circling screen infoboxes, too. Click "Copy" (to copy all of your Cruise infobox selections), then go back one screen (the left arrow coming out of a rectangle icon, which--defying good practice--can appear almost anywhere on different screens) and select the Circling screen, then paste the same infoboxes in it, then edit whichever ones you want to change. Then return two pages to the "Set up screens page" again.

Screens Add (a new screen) then select choices for the three areas on the page:
Main Areaclick on content that's already there and then select (I use Map)
Bottom Areaclick on content already there and then select (I currently use Nothing)
Infoboxesclick on content already there and select (here's where you select "Cruise", which will "import" the Cruise infoboxes you selected in the previous step). If, instead, you select "Auto" for the screen choice, the cruise screen (i.e., your master screen template but with the Cruise infoboxes) appears to be displayed whenever you're flying straight while the Circling screen displays when you circle. The way mine is set up, the same zoom level is displayed for both screens, even when "Distinct Zoom" (see below) is enabled.

Set up a Final Glide screen if you desire (lots of discussion about this in the XCSoar manual plus the short help messages in Top Hat).

NOTE: If you want your Circling screen to zoom into a tight overhead view automatically, enable "Circling Zoom". From SettingsAdvancedMap DisplayOrientationCircling ZoomOn. [full disclosu I'm not 100% certain whether this is the way to enable automatic thermal zoom or whether it's through the Auto Zoom button on the second "M" navigation screen because I don't use it anymore and I can't make either of them work in SIM mode to test]

If you don't select "Auto" for any of your screens, then you have to manually switch them when you shift from climb to cruise and back again. I believe "Auto" functions the same way even when you have one screen set to "Auto" and another set to "Cruise" or "Circling". I haven't figured out how to switch between screens manually if one is set to "Auto" (see below).

To allow easy manual screen switching, go to the main settings screen:
Advanced LookScreen LayoutScreens button locationOn the map. I don't see this option in the PC version; only on my Kobo. And I don't believe this "S" screen switching button is displayed if any of the screens is set to "Auto". But I don't know how to switch screens manually without it (none of the usual gestures worked for me). I tried setting my circling screen to Auto with a separate Cruise screen but the "S" switching button still didn't appear, although it did reappear after I removed the "Auto" designation for all screens.

IF you have the option to display the "S" button on the screen but choose not to, you can also switch screens from a button on the second "M" menu. But I prefer to have it on the main screen. It's fewer clicks and the "S" button also has a tiny caption that tells you which screen you're seeing. If you have different infoboxes for Cruise and Circling, you'll know anyway but I haven't always set things up that way.

"Distinct Zoom" (enabled on the same page as Circling Zoom) works well when you switch screens manually because unlike autoswtiching, in this case the zoom levels for each screen remain wherever you set them (e.g., zoomed in for thermaling, zoomed out for cruise). It seems like auto-switched screens should behave the same way (i.e., carry with them their unique zoom levels) but that's not what is happening with my Kobo.

If you're using Top Hat's Thermal Assistant (enable it on the second "M" menu), you may not care about a zoomed-in view of the thermal, but I do. Thermal Assistant give you its interpretation of the lift profile in the thermal but not your track through it. My ClearNav vario has a really excellent thermal assistant (that it autoswitches to when circling...most of the time) so I want my Top Hat circling screen to display my path through the thermal from overhead. That's important especially as I'm completing my first 270 after pulling up and whenever I'm exploring different parts of the thermal and want to be able to return to a spot.

Sorry for the long post and likely errors and omissions. I'd love to hear from others about better ways to configure and use Top Hat. It's not perfect but is quite good for contest flying with perhaps a slightly better user interface and definitely less complexity (at the cost of less customizability) than XCSoar. XCSoar adherents will probably say, justifiably, that once you get that system set up properly and learn how to use it, it's very powerful, too. Top Hat is not as customizable as XCSoar--on which it is based--but the design philosophy was to eliminate as much of the complexity of XCSoar as possible, leaving what's needed for competition. I think Rob Dunning and the TH team have done that well. I still have a wish list, haha, but I'm more comfortable with TH all the time.

Coming from Chip Garner's super-easy-to-use Glide Navigator II, I decided to try TH first because I wanted something I could come back to after a 6-month layoff and still remember how to use. TH isn't as good as GNII in that regard (I suspect nothing is, although ClearNav is probably closer) but it's good enough, although it took me several seasons and a lot of experimentation to feel that way.

Top Hat could benefit from a thoroughly documented User Manual but I know from experience that this is rather low on everyone's to-do lists.

Chip Bearden The XC Soar manual is relevant to learning Top Hat.


The XC Soar manual is relevant to Top Hat. The main difference is how the info is presented, not how it is set up.

Mike

On Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 8:24:36 PM UTC-4, Mike C wrote:
The XC Soar manual is relevant to learning Top Hat.


The XC Soar manual is relevant to Top Hat. The main difference is how the info is presented, not how it is set up.

Mike

Mike, you must work in IT.

I absolutely agree that the XCSoar Manual is relevant to Top Hat, more so than anything else I could find. But it's 187 (!!!) pages long, and much of the functionality described in it is not included in Top Hat. It's like telling someone that the answer they need is on the Internet. Go find it.

And setting up Top Hat IS different. It's a different user interface, including different screens and menuing. If you know what you want to find and do a search for it in the XCSoar manual, it's usually there. For example, I finally found the difference between Auto Zoom (zooms in when approaching turnpoints) and Circling Zoom (zooms in when thermaling). Then you have to find where it is in the Top Hat set up screens and menus.

But the Top Hat info is buried among things like: "Reach calculations may be configured to two levels of detail...If turning reach is enabled, then the reach shows the greatest area the glider can reach in all directions, even allowing turns around obstructions.[The maximum number of turns is set to three, and no turns may be greater than 90 degrees.]" This bit of "techno geeks go gliding" esoterica--just one paragraph out of 1 1/2 pages on the subject in the manual, is fun to read but not relevant to any U.S. contest flying I am familiar with. And, thankfully, it is not present (to my knowledge) in Top Hat.

So after inquiring of (a) the development team, (b) a user who's been involved in Top Hat almost from the beginning, and (c) various experts on RAS, I'm still not sure whether what I want to do can be done through configuration settings.

Chip Bearden

Is anyone else enjoying the irony as much as I am :-)?

Jus' curious.

Goin' flying today (yippee!). I don't plan to spend much time looking at a computer.

T8

T8,

I was thinking about proposing that the ClearNav software be made open source. Then we could all enjoy the fun.

JB

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 11:25:16 AM UTC-4, wrote:
T8,

I was thinking about proposing that the ClearNav software be made open source. Then we could all enjoy the fun.

JB

You can't do open source for a secure flight recorder, sorry!

T8

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 7:51:16 AM UTC-4, Tango Eight wrote:
Is anyone else enjoying the irony as much as I am :-)?

Jus' curious.

Goin' flying today (yippee!). I don't plan to spend much time looking at a computer.

T8

No irony Evan. Every software effort has ongoing bugs and enhancements. The fact that Tophat is as useful as it is, while being free, is wonderful. Big thanks to the developers, especially Robert Dunning! And yes we want to look outside the cockpit mostly, but without some sort of glide computer we'd either be lost, spend more time deciphering paper maps, or stay closer to airports to make sure we can glide there.

No irony Evan. Every software effort has ongoing bugs and enhancements. The fact that Tophat is as useful as it is, while being free, is wonderful.. Big thanks to the developers, especially Robert Dunning!

I agree. I hope no one has misinterpreted my queries and comments. When I decided not to spend the money on a commercial flight computer, I was prepared to live with some lower level of functionality and higher level of UI aggravation. Instead, I've been amazed at how powerful Top Hat is.

I also think the TH team have mostly delivered on their goal of "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" without giving up functions needed for competition.

I've occasionally brought my handheld device running Top Hat to dinner with pilots who own commercial flight computer systems and passed it around to get their input. Their reactions have been quite interesting. They've seen things they like better about Top Hat while at the same time commenting about things they think their systems do better. I've confessed to the aggravating hardware problems I've had and they've done the same. None of these is perfect. I suspect we'd all like to take the best from each to get the perfect product.

And, yes, all of these products--commercial and freeware--still have some bugs. That's inevitable; our soaring market is just too small to justify the kind of investment and testing that something built in the millions of units can justify.

Indeed, kudos to Rob Dunning's team. I've had the happy experience of seeing most of my issues resolved fairly quickly.

Chip Bearden

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 1:17:04 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 7:51:16 AM UTC-4, Tango Eight wrote:
Is anyone else enjoying the irony as much as I am :-)?

Jus' curious.

Goin' flying today (yippee!). I don't plan to spend much time looking at a computer.

T8

No irony Evan. Every software effort has ongoing bugs and enhancements. The fact that Tophat is as useful as it is, while being free, is wonderful.. Big thanks to the developers, especially Robert Dunning! And yes we want to look outside the cockpit mostly, but without some sort of glide computer we'd either be lost, spend more time deciphering paper maps, or stay closer to airports to make sure we can glide there.

Do a search for Chip's r.a.s. contributions as far as GPS vs pilotage and maybe you'll get the irony :-).

TopHat is idea rich and a lot of Rob's ideas are very good and I'd put 'em in ClearNav if I could! If TH works for you, that's fine. Understand that there's quite a lot that CN just does better and it is vastly more robust. One example: What happens if you lose power momentarily with TopHat? Here's what happens with ClearNav: nothing! Task and stats are retained along with the validity of the flight log.

T8

On Saturday, July 14, 2018 at 4:20:32 PM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 1:17:04 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 7:51:16 AM UTC-4, Tango Eight wrote:
Is anyone else enjoying the irony as much as I am :-)?

Jus' curious.

Goin' flying today (yippee!). I don't plan to spend much time looking at a computer.

T8

No irony Evan. Every software effort has ongoing bugs and enhancements.. The fact that Tophat is as useful as it is, while being free, is wonderful. Big thanks to the developers, especially Robert Dunning! And yes we want to look outside the cockpit mostly, but without some sort of glide computer we'd either be lost, spend more time deciphering paper maps, or stay closer to airports to make sure we can glide there.

Do a search for Chip's r.a.s. contributions as far as GPS vs pilotage and maybe you'll get the irony :-).

TopHat is idea rich and a lot of Rob's ideas are very good and I'd put 'em in ClearNav if I could! If TH works for you, that's fine. Understand that there's quite a lot that CN just does better and it is vastly more robust. One example: What happens if you lose power momentarily with TopHat? Here's what happens with ClearNav: nothing! Task and stats are retained along with the validity of the flight log.

T8

Well, actually, if my Kobo mini running TopHat gets disconnected from ships power, it just keeps on running on the Kobo's internal batteries. Now, if the GPS feeding data to my Kobo loses power, then I have a problem with the flight log, but I don't use the Kobo as my primary logger anyway. Got a PFlarm and a Nano 3 for that. By the way, what happens if a ClearNav dies in the middle of a contest? Do most ClearNav users keep a spare ClearNav around? I got a backup Kobo mini in the side pocket in my cockpit (have not had to use it so far).

This is not to say that I wouldn't rather have a ClearNav. In fact, even though I don't own a ClearNav (at present),I very much appreciate the investment, effort, and dedication to the sport that it takes to develop, manufacture and market the ClearNav or any other instrumentation for the soaring market.

Fair enough on my past objections to GPS. They were, at the heart of it, primarily financial. I tossed an inexpensive handheld GPS receiver into the cockpit as soon as they were legal and happily coupled it to my LNAV with Dave Ellis's help. My real objective was to slow down the headlong rush to mandatory flight recorders until the oft-promised plunge in prices arrived.. IIRC, those things were over $3,000 in the mid 90s. Anyway, I'm nothing if not adaptable: still trying to do it on the cheap! Haha!

I didn't mean to compare Top Hat and ClearNav. I'm still trying to find a better display for TH so I'd love to have a ClearNav. It looks great. And I love my ClearNav vario (not everything about it, as T8 knows, but it's the best vario I've flown with). I just don't want to pay up for the CN nav display.

[I'm waiting for someone to tell me that a few thousand bucks spread over the remaining years of my soaring career is nothinig; or that I owe it to myself; or that CN is safer and isn't my life worth the price; or something "helpful" like that. ]

I was surprised but pleased to discover just how good TH is, but I have no idea how it compares to CN. Pilot buddies who have flown both (or XCSoar) usually say TH/XCS has 80% to 90% of what CN does. If I ever fly with a CN, I might be less happy with TH. It's certainly not perfect, which is how this thread started.

I agree with WB that you picked a bad example in citing a power loss. I, too, am shielded by the internal battery in the Kobo. And I did have a problem with my Kobo in Cordele last summer (not power, but the GPS feed). I pulled my Dell Streak 5 out, slapped it in the X mount, and was in business a minute later (I always pre-load the task in both devices). The comforting thing is that unlike the Kobo, the Dell is completely self contained including GPS, needing only a USB battery pack for long flights. And while I would lose my CN vario's flight recorder if the power went down, my PowerFLARM Portable/flight recorder also has its own batteries so it will keep chugging away until I get home (take that, Dave Kinsell!).

But all is not lost with CN. I know several well-off types who have redundant purpose-built flight computers and presumably separate power supplies. One well regarded pilot I chatted with at Cordele has a high-end flight computer and also carries a phablet running XCSoar: he says each does certain things better and he uses both.

Regarding open source, it might involve rearchitecting the CN to do it, but I was referring only to the navigation software, just like TH and XCS often get their GPS data from IGC-certified flight recorders such as my PowerFLARM and CNv. But with such a great application in CN already, I'm not sure why you would do it...except for your comment about loving to adopt some of Rob Dunning's TH ideas for use in CN if you could. Hmmmm.

Chip Bearden