XCTrack Pro Widgets - Xcontest - Manual AIR³

XC map

Map configuration

Map configuration

In the Map configuration section, you can

decide the way you want the maps to be displayed according to what should be at top (read more in the next section below)
display a small compass on the map to display north direction
activate the automatic map scaling to fit the whole tracklog or define a fixed map scale (see additional info regarding automatic map scaling below)
keep pilot in the center of the screen or at a given distance from the edge (see additional info regarding distance from the edge below)
display the map scale in the bottom left of the map
Show relative position in pan mode

Automatic map scaling: this setting allows to scale the map to view the whole track. It has been designed for flying closed triangles (FAI or flat). Therefore, this setting may not be very useful for flying straight distance. As soon as you zoom in or zoom out, the automatic map scaling will be disabled.

Keep pilot in the center of the screen: by default, the pilot will be centered in the center of the screen. It corresponds therefore to 50% of the distance of the widget.

If you disable this setting, you can choose a different distance from the edge by moving the slider to increase up to 40% (close to the center) or decrease down to 10% (close to the edge).

The off-center function works this way:

– there is speed history for 20 minutes

– when your 20 minutes speed is similar to the XC speed (this means you’re on your way), your position is moved from the center of the map

Note that if you replay a tracklog, this algorithm should only work if you replay it slowly (max 3X).

Using AIR³ for free flight, rotating in circles in the thermal, it is recommended to keep north at top. If you want the map to rotate while you are moving (such as with paramotor), you have different choices.

Navigation target at top is used to always have your target at top.
Bearing at top is used to always have where you are going to at top (can be influenced by the wind).
Heading at top is used to always have what you have in front of you at top.
Once the wind has been computed after a full circle, you may also want to have your map rotated to always have the down wind direction at top.

By default, XCTrack uses the bearing/track direction thanks to the GPS, the wind speed and direction to compute the heading direction.

By enabling “Use internal compass” in Menu/Preferences/Connection & sensors, XCTrack uses the information coming from the internal compass to display the heading.

Read more details on using the internal compass in the Preferences page of XCTrack Pro manual.

Downwind direction at top requires to have computed the wind direction. So, in any case, the map will get North at top at the beginning of the flight. Read more details about Wind direction computation in the Wind direction widget description in the Air section page of the XCTrack Pro Widgets Manual.

Travel direction at top is used to have your travel direction at top. The goal of this setting is to have less map rotation than Bearing at top, still with the main direction where you are going to at top.

Travel direction at top requires to have computed the Travel direction. So, in any case, the map will get North at top at the beginning of the flight.

Travel direction gets changed when BOTH of these conditions are satisfied
– the user has traveled for more than 3 km in 20 minutes
– the user has been travelling directly for about 2 minutes
… Then, the direction is changed, with preference for the angle travelled if it doesn’t differ too much from the 2 minutes bearing.

Road map

Road map can be displayed by enabling the “Display road map” option.

With the color screen of AIR³ you can take advantage of all the information that are provided by road maps. Info such as forests, roads, borders, rivers, … are very easy to identify and would be more difficult to read with black and white screens. So, we recommand to display road maps with AIR³.

You can also watch the Tuto video related to Maps and elevation in the video page.

Rain radar

Rain radar can be displayed by enabling the “Display Rain radar data” option. To be able to enable this option, you need the Pro version.

With the color screen of AIR³ you can take advantage of all the information that are provided by the rain radar map. You can easily analyse the intensity of rain on your way. This would be more difficult to read with black and white screens. However, we do not recommend to display Road maps together with Rain radar for improved readability.

It is updated every 10 minutes. The data load is negligible. If it rains, there would be a few kilobytes, a maximum of tens of kilobytes transferred. It uses the same service that anyone can see on the Livetraking web page.

The rain radar tiles are displayed exactly over the visible area on the map.

Thermal map

Thermal maps show the probability to find a thermal uplift at a certain geographical location using a paraglider. The thermal maps are solely based on real flights and void of any model data. Data come from thermal.kk7.ch.

All thermal maps correspond to a location on the ground where the thermal would originate from. Depending on your altitude, you need to determine thermal drift based on wind speed and direction.

“Display basic thermal overlay” provides information about possible thermal uplifts without any filtering (day of the year and the time of the day).

“Display time adjusted thermal overlay” provides information about possible thermal uplifts adjusted to cover current season and time of the day. For example, you can expect finding thermal uplifts in the morning from an east-facing slope and nothing on a west-facing one. However, as the data come from real flights, including flights which may have occurred on a west facing slope in the morning, thanks to a westerly wind…this will not always show up as previously mentioned.

You can easily observe these data in thermal.kk7.ch

If you select “Time filter”, you can see at a specific geographical location the change according to the day of the year and the time of the day.

By adjusting the opacity of both options, you can for example display the basic thermal overlay with a low opacity value that will always give you some info about the general situation, in the background…. and activate with a higher value of opacity the adjusted thermal overlay.

Thanks to the very bright color screen of AIR³, you can easily take advantage of this feature.

“Show alert screen when approaching an obstacle” can be activated or deactivated. The enabled option will change a map into a special ‘zoomed in’ mode when you get near an obstacle, so that you could see clearly where you are and where is the obstacle.

You can either decide to use the “Automatic zoom in emergency obstacle mode” or select the map scale you want to apply in case of alert when approaching obstacle.

This feature requires to have activated the obstacle alert mechanism in the Menu/Preferences/Airspaces/settings.

Display Airspaces and Obstacles

Airspaces map can be shown by enabling the “Display airspaces” option.

If you activate other maps such as Terrain and RoadMap, Airspaces will always be on top.

If you want to know more about Airspaces and how to get airspaces information with AIR³, watch the tuto video related to Airspaces in the videos page.

Obstacles will only be displayed if

You have downloaded and activated the Obstacles database in Menu/Preferences/Airspaces/Obstacles
You have activated the option “Show only” or “Show and alert” for the Obstacle category you intend to see on the map in Menu/Preferences/Airspaces/Settings
You have activated the option “Display Airspaces and Obstacles”

Show alert screen when approaching obstacle

By activating this option, the Obstacle alerting mechanism will change the map into a special ‘zoomed in’ mode when approaching an obstacle, so that you could see clearly where you are and where is the obstacle.

This special map conversion alert linked to the Obstacle alerting system will only work if

You have downloaded and activated the Obstacles database in Menu/Preferences/Airspaces/Obstacles
You have activated the option “Alert only” or “Show and alert” for the Obstacle category you intend to be alerted from, in Menu/Preferences/Airspaces/Settings

You can also:

display nearby pilots on the map (you need to have activated the livetracking). Read more details about Livetracking in Menu/Preferences/Livetracking and Menu/Livetracking.
display the tracklogs of selected pilots. To select pilots, go to Menu/Livetracking. In the Flights tab, you will see the list of pilots that are currently flying. You can select the pilots you want to display.

For more details regarding livetracking, watch the XCTrack Pro for AIR³ tutorial in the videos’s page

You can also:

display waypoints on the map. Don’t forget to activate the waypoint file that contains the waypoints you want to display. Read more details about how to activate a waypoint file in the Navigation menu.

Go to Menu/Navigation and click on the Waypoints in the upper right to access the waypoint menu. In the Files tab, you can see the wpt files that are located in the Waypoints folder of XCTrack. The size of the waypoint name on the map is set in the font size portion below.

display the large cities on the map. Large cities of each country have been integrated into XCTrack. This option is useful if you have not activated the RoadMap display. With RoadMap display enabled, you will have the name of the large cities display twice: with the RoadMap and with the display cities option. The size of the name of the cities on the map is set in the font size portion below.

Should you want to display medium or small size cities, contact us to get a Waypoint file.

display takeoffs

With AIR³, the main arrow that indicates the direction of the target is included on every page. To avoid creating confusion with other information on the map, navigation is set to “Do not use” on the XC Map widget.

However, here are some details if you want to display navigation instructions directly on the XC Map widget. Two different options are offered:

Type of navigation mode (Point, Optimized point, Cylinder (nearest point) or Do not use.
Activate “distinguishing brackets” in order to quickly identify your previous settings:

Point mode [Optimized point] (Cylinder)

Different settings are available for navigation depending on your preferences:

“Point” indicates the direction to the exact target. Green line. The difference with “Cylinder” is that the distance, glide, time,etc. are calculated up to the point/target. However, once the circle around the target is reached, the navigation will switch to indicate the next point.
“Optimized point” indicates the direction to the optimized point depending on your route. This is the most used setting. Blue Line.
“Cylinder (nearest point) indicates the direction of the nearest point of each circle once the previous is reached. Green line. The difference with the “Point” is that the distance, glide, time, etc. are calculated up to the circle to reach.
“Do not use” is the setting to not show navigation.

The next slider lets you decide the number of last thermals to show on the map together with its climb rate.

The number corresponds to the average climb and the color depends on that value.

Show wind displays a small arrow on the map to indicate the direction, with the speed of the wind. Wind is computed the completion of a full circle.

The sun and the wind display are located on the border of the map widget. If you display also the RoadMap, you may create some mess, not being able to identify information correctly.

The thickness of lines will determine the thickness of the track on the map as well as the thickness of the line showing the Bearing direction in front of the pilot.

If you have the Pro version, you can change the color of the tracklog.

You can modify the Pilot arrow size to better identify the current heading by increasing the coefficient.

Depending on the wind direction and strength, you can therefore better visualize at any moment the Heading (Pilot arrow) and the Bearing (Line in front of the pilot).

By default, XCTrack uses the Bearing/track direction thanks to the GPS, the wind speed and direction to compute the Heading direction.

By enabling “Use internal compass” in Menu/Preferences/Connection & sensors, XCTrack uses the information coming from the internal compass to display the Heading.

Read more details on using the internal compass in the Preferences page of XCTrack Pro manual.

Postpone airspace showing

XC map settings

In the XC map settings section, you can display different tools that can help you manage your XC flight.

Different settings related to the XC discipline can be adjusted in Menu/Preferences/XC Disciplines and Competition.

Triangle closing distance: a flight may be scored as a triangle, when the distance between start point and finish point (= closing distance) is less than the percentage indicated of the entire distance as given by the 3 turn points. The scoring distance will then be given by the turn point distance, minus the gap (finish to start) distance.

Discipline factors: number of points per km depending on the type of flight: FAI triangle, Flat triangle or Flight over 3 turnpoints.

If you participate to the XCcontest competition, check here to adapt the settings accordingly.

Flown XC Distance

UNFINISHED Triangle

Average XC speed