Thursday 12 January 2012

Condor and Oudie

Thanks to John Delafield at LX Avionics I now have a shiny new Oudie and LX Nano ready for this years soaring season.

It has to be said that See You Mobile running on the Oudie is an awesome piece of software, it does however due to its nature have a large amount of configurable options. Enter Condor.

It is perfectly simple to connect the Oudie to Condor and in my case I am using the Bluetooth connection to do this. Once connected you simply create your task in the Oudie and when you launch in Condor the NEMA output goes live giving you the full GPS feed.

               Here is my sample setup and a close up of the Oudie in action.




The great thing about using the Oudie with Condor is the ability to get familiar with the interface and tools before you take it into the glider, also for a guy like me without my own ship it is very easy to creat multiple profiles for the different club ships that I might fly, these profiles take in to affect the gliders polar and water loading etc..

Flying in Condor with the Oudie. Condors NEMA output means that you basically have the Oudie working as it would in the cockpit. Thankfully I have learned quite a few things that would of had be stuffed whilst while flying. One of them was that I inadvertently passed the start line whilst climbing before the start, See You started me and I could not figure out how to start again. Short pause read the manual, oh yes either hit go to and navigate back to the start or if you do not have the auto next after the start you have to press the start time indicator to agree with the start otherwise each time your cross the line it generates a new start time. The other big thing I have found is the airspace, whilst on a wave flight the other day for real I found myself constantly checking the map which detracts from ones lookout. with See You you simply tap the airspace ahead double check it against a current map to make sure its correct, or has been updated correctly and carry on. See You will then warn you when you are getting too close.

Finally is the Final glide, you can use the polar, bug, water settings etc.. which actually when you try to do the math can be quite often in correct. See You tells you what L/D you need to get back and what L/D you are currently doing. Both of these are pragmatic and are the actuals irrelevant of flies on the wings and the 20 gallons you have in each wing.

Highly recommended piece of software and method of learning to use it. I may start adding short how too's if anyone is interested.

Monday 9 January 2012

Passenger to pilot Winter round up

Been a little while since my last post so I thought I would add some more, especially after this weekend.

Not much flying in November and December, a total of six short circuit flights in K13's when weather and planning for Christmas allowed.

In what seems to be a tradition news years day saw the hanger doors opened and a K13 towed onto the field. about six of us turned up for some fun including our CFI, airfield manager and several other team members. Dave Watt was seen with his new cranium cam,
All though in the end he actually forgot to switch it to record so we didn't see them in action.

Leading up to the 7th of Jan I had been keeping an eye on the weather for that weekend to see which day would have the least cloud cover, expected 5/8 on sat and 6-7/8 on Sunday. Saturday looked OK but the wind was strong out of the North, until Fridays forecast when the wind swung westward meaning we could have wave on Saturday. I arrived at the club early, DI'd the Astir and headed out onto the field. Several coffees and an windy winch launch brought us to nearly lunch time and I decided to take a 4k tow into the blue to see what I could find. We headed west towards heyford and the old disused airbase and releasing at 4k over the eastern end of the runway I quickly realised that the eVario did not agree with the mechanical one. The eVario was showing a regular downward trend while the mechanical was showing 1-2kts up, the altimeter confirmed I was climbing so I turned off the eVario, which I suspect is having TE issues. Ahead I could see a wave bar but as I was climbing in the blue I decided to track across wind where I was. I no time at all I was passing 4500ft and as I turned 180 to head back along the bar I saw the lenticular forming to my east, a short tack to get me just above the leni was rewarded with 3kts. the next 25mins were spent exploring the western half of my 5nm from the airfield limit. After working my way to just short of 6500ft the lift was down to a knot and the cloud had started to fill in, mindful that I did not have the turn and slip working I picked my way down to 4000ft back below cloud base. I finished off the hour long flight with a final glide exercise, starting at 2k over heyford I ran the 5nm miles back to the airfield aiming to get there as quickly as possible with a 1000ft remaining didn't take long downwind with a ground speed of ~120knots.

Head over to U tube and search for lhitchins you can access my page and take a look at the 1 hour long flight in HD.