Preflight Settings - Common
Common
This is where you enter various common preflight data.
- Arrival Altitude
-
The arrival altitude is your chosen safety (reserve) altitude above the terrain
altitude of your goal when on final glide. In calculating the final
glide parameters, the value entered here is added to the elevation of
the selected target. For many situations, the default value of 200 metres
would be sensible. The units used for this value are set in
Settings/Units.
- Arrival Altitude Display
-
The arrival altitude display selection is only active, if a flight task
and a glider are setup. The arrival altitude is calculated above the selected
target. Tow different display targets can be selected.
- Landing target: Displays the arrival altitude above the landing
target by taken into account of all turnpoints starting at the current
position. That is the default setting.
- Next target: Displays the arrival altitude above the next
turnpoint target starting at the current position.
- QNH
-
The area QNH (as given by ATC) is entered in hPa (hectopascal). It is only
used in calculation of the vertical warning distance to airspace
boundaries expressed as flight levels. The default value is 1013 hPa.
- Autostart logging
-
If you activate this check box, Cumulus automatically starts the IGC
logging when you start to move faster as displayed in the spinbox. With
the help of the spinbox you can adjust the speed limit to your needs. The
current logger status is signaled by a variously-coloured field in the status bar. After landing the
flight is closed, if 90s no moving could be detected. If the GPS signal
breaks down, the same condition is applied.
- B-Record Interval
- Interval for logging of the IGC B-Record. Default time is
10 seconds. Note that shorter times will increase the log file size and the
processor load.
- K-Record Interval
- Interval for logging of the IGC K-Record. Default is None,
i.e., switched off. If you enter a valid time, the following
additional items are logged, if they are available. Otherwise default values
are used.
- HDT, true heading as 3 numbers
- TAS, true airspeed as 3 numbers with unit kph
- WDI, wind direction as 3 numbers
- WSP, wind speed in km/h as 3 numbers
- VAT, compensated variometer (total energy/netto) vertical speed in m/s
and decimals with sign if negative.
Note that the activation of this option will increase the log file size and the
processor load.
- Logbook
- If Autostart logging is enabled, Cumulus records the basic data of your
flight into a logbook. Pressing the button Logbook opens a window,
where all flight logs are listed. If you want you can remove selected or all
entries. The Logbook is a pure ASCII data file in a CSV format. Semicolon
is used as separator.
- Flarm Logbook
-
Pressing the button Flarm Logbook opens a new window. If you press
the button Read a flight overview is downloaded from the Flarm
device and displayed in the list. Now you can select one or more flights.
If you press the button Download all selected flights are downloaded
to your device into your defined
data directory.
All flight are stored there under the subdirectory flarmIgc.
It should be noted that the Cumulus IGC logger does not fulfill in all respects
the IGC requirements for glider flight documentation. There is no security G-Record
written into the log file, because the PDA device cannot be secured against external
manipulation. Furthermore, there are not always pressure altitude values available,
as required by the IGC. For more information about the FAI IGC requirements, including
the IGC logger formats, see
here.