Recording your Flight

This is the feature that most pilots are interested in. It's the reason why most have a GPS. It's so they can re-live their flights on their computer, now in 3D!! Thanks to the GPS models that record altitude. Matching a 3D GPS with applications like Google Earth, CompeGPS and SeeYou have given us great tools to analyze and learn from our flights, share them with the world and of course have a lot of fun watching them on our computers.

Recording your track has also given the greatest amount of grief for probably all competitors and record setters. It is now our only proof of actually flying where we said we flew (as opposed to using cameras in competitions). The inability to properly record a flight has ruined many a good flight due to not being able to prove it. It shouldn't take away from achieving personal bests but it's always nice to prove you did do something.

Therefore, this is probably the most important section....as long as you can record your flight, MOST other settings are somewhat fixable. So check your tracklog settings before every flight:

Recording Method - "Stop When Full (aka FILL) vs "Wrap When Full (aka WRAP)" - sometimes there is controversy on what to use but with a few small steps that you follow every time, "Stop When Full" is recommended.

FILL - records tracklog points at give intervals (see below) until you GPSs memory is full and it then stops recording. WRAP records points until your memory is full and then continues to record new points by over-writing the first tracklog points stored in your GPSs memory.

For Free-Flying (non-competing) WRAP has its merits as if you want to make sure your best flights are recorded in full, you don't mind over-writing previous tracks from past flights. However, I've seen many competitors come to an event and obviously don't want to over-write the beginning of their competition flight as they would wipe out their launch (start-time) and get a zero for the day.

The problem is they just switch their settings from WRAP to FILL and don't clear their tracklog's memory....if the pilot has had it set to WRAP for a while, it's guaranteed that their memory is full and now their GPS has been told to stop recording when it's full.

For this reason, I always fly (free-flying or competing) with my GPS set to FILL. My opinion is if you are diligent about downloading your tracks to your computer after each flight (or at least every couple) and then clear your GPSs memory, you will have lots of room to record all your flights.

One other REALLY important factor with the FILL recording method is that on most GPS models, when you do fill up your memory and your track log stops recording, it actually turns the recording off...even once you clear your memory, your GPS has been told to stop recording tracklog points. So if you ever do fill your memory (watch the percentage full when clearing your memory), be sure to switch it back to FILL so it continues to record your next flight.

Record Method The options are DISTANCE, TIME OR AUTO.

DISTANCE records a point each time you've covered a defined distance - suitable for hiking but not the flying around in circles that we do! AUTO records a point every time you move...not suitable for us either.

So set it to TIME so it records a tracklot point every 'x' amount of seconds

Interval This is where you set how often your GPS records a tracklog point. It's a bit of a personal preference. The idea is you want to record as many tracklog points as possible without running out of memory by the end of your flight. This way you'll get the most detail in your flights (great for watching your animated track) and, for competition flying, you can spend the least amount of time possible in a turnpoint cylinder before targeting your next turnpoint. This is advantageous if the turnpoint is in major sink.

Most GPSs now have 10,000 tracklog points worth of memory so this isn't as much of an issue....but if you have an older GPS (Garmin 12 or older), you only have 1,000 tracklog points requiring you to manage your interval much closer. Here is some of the math:

INTERVAL, FLIGHT TIME 10k points (1k points)
30 seconds, 83 hours (8.3 hours)
20 seconds, 56 hours (5.6 hours)
10 seconds, 28 hours (2.8 hours)
5 seconds, 14 hours (1.4 hours)
** quick math shows how much of an advantage you are at if you have a GPS with 10,000 tracklog points. A pilot with 1000 points shouldn't put their GPS below 20 seconds and a pilot with a 10,000 point GPS could easily go to 2-3 seconds and still have more recording time than the other pilot. 18 seconds in 1200fpm down is almost 400'!!