Advance paragliders in the West Country

I thought I’d share the User Defined Fields (UDFs) that I use for XC and comp flying. As you probably know there are two pages of UDFs – too bad I’ve got four sets! So there’s a certain amount of reprogramming before and after a comp…

XC and general flying:

1. FL	3. Cur GR	5. Dist Thermal
2. Max Altitude	4. GR Toff	6. Ave Speed

XC flying to goal:

FL	Cur GR	Dist Thermal
Max Altitude	GR Goal	Arrival Goal

COMP – pre-start and early part of task:

Dist Edge	Cur GR	GR Next
Max Altitude	Speed Start	Arrival Next

COMP – when considering final glide:

Dist Edge	Cur GR	Dist Thermal
Max Altitude	GR Goal	Arrival Goal

“Altitude2” – I’ve set this to show Flight Level height (see “Set Altimeter” below) (Edit 25/06/2012 – at some point a new UDF, FL (Flight Level), was introduced, which negates the use of Altitude2. Using FL is much simpler!)

“Dist Edge” gives you the distance to the edge or the cylinder, rather than the distance to the centre of the turnpoint.

“Speed Start” tells you the speed you need to fly at in order to cross the start cylinder at exactly the right time. Once it gets above your trim speed you can head for the start!

“Arrival Goal” estimates the height you’ll arrive over the goalfield based on your current glide ratio. Not to be confused with “A OverGoal” which tells you your current height above the goalfield.

“GR Next” – during a recent into wind task at the British Champs in Pedro Bernardo having this on my screen would have been very useful.

“Arrival Next” – ditto, would be nice to know how much height I’ll arrive with at the next turnpoint.

“Potential Spd” – When you’re on a leg of a task this UDF calculates your average groundspeed over the last 30 seconds only when you’re pointing within +-8 deg of the next turnpoint. So it’s being calculated even when you’re thermalling, which means you can get an idea of what your groundspeed will be when you finally leave the thermal.

Set Altimiter

• Set QNH to 101.32 then copy the value of Altimeter to Altimeter2, then Altimeter2 will show you the Flight Level height. Perfect for XC flying. Alt2 never needs changing now
• Get from GPS: Yes

Vario Acoustics

• Sink threshold: -1.0 m/s (changed from -2.0 – silence is nice, but not too much!)
• Climb threshold: 0.1 m/s
• Sink alarm: 0 m/s (0 = off)
• Base: 700Hz
• Increments: 10Hz

Advanced Features

• Damper: 05 (default 08)
• Cadence: 0 (default 1) NB. 1 provides more differentiation at lower climb rates (up to 0.7m/s) whereas 0 provides better differentiation at climb rates greater than 3.5m/s. So maybe it depends on the day (or location) as to what’s best.
• Dynamic freq: On (default)
• Buzzer: 3 (default)
• Auto Silent: On (default)
• Start Speed: 5 (default)

I hope this helps you make a start when setting up your UDFs. I’m not saying this is the perfect combination, but it seems to work for me. Let me know what you use by posting a comment…

Edit 08/02/2012. I’ve changed some of my settings according to Richard Carter’s post on pgforum here. In particular the tip about using Altitude2 for Flight Levels.