Nano splits wave flights into multiple .igc files

[Brian Hart]

Is there any setting or hack to adjust the parameters that specific the conditions that auto-finish a flight? Or is there any chance the firmware developers might be sympathetic to my plight below?

 We regularly use our three Nanos and one Nano3 for recording wave, thermal, convergence, and ridge flights at our club, Hood River Soaring. We have a recording problem when flying wave: because wind velocity at wave altitude is often equal to or more than our airspeed, groundspeed when flying wave can often be zero, sometimes for a few minutes or even longer, and sometimes for longer than 30 seconds at the same altitude.

 Under these conditions, the Nano finishes the flight and starts a new flight—from that altitude, often 10,000' AGL—when it again senses motion—invalidating any use of the Nano for recording badge or record wave flights for our junior pilots. I understand that:

 The Nano is unaware of terrain elevation, so it has no way of knowing that we are still in the air, not on the ground.

• We could disable the “Automatically Finish Flight” option; however, this it not a good option. We often automatically record multiple training flights on the same day, and we need them to be automatically separated; that is, we do not want the Nano to record the entire day’s activity as a single flight, we do not have time to be tinkering with settings between pattern flights, and we cannot have these flight segments, separated by periods of no apparent motion (despite our 40-knot airspeed!) merged into a single .igc file. Neither splitting nor combining flights is a good option and would invalidate flights for badge or record purposes.
• We can manually edit & merge the .igc files using a text editor to move the B records from one file to another, but this is only for our own viewing; it does not work when posting to WeGlide and also invalidates many wave flight for badge or record purposes, since those processes correctly look at the file validation (checksum?) and split the flight into two.

 From the Nano manual version 3.0:

 5.2.2 Automatically Finish Flight

If this option is enabled flights will be automatically finished and digitally signed once conditions for finishing flight are met. The NANO must fulfil the following conditions for 30 seconds: GPS status is ok, ground speed is below 4m/s, vertical speed is within 0.2m/s and altitude is below 3000m.

 The problem here is the “below 3000m” part of the built-in flight-finishing parameters. Anyone at 2999 meters—or anywhere above about 200 meters—is very far above our ground level of 600 feet (approximately 183 meters). In fact, there is nowhere anywhere near our gliderport to landout; we would have to crash into Mount Hood or Mount Adams to land at anything over 2000 meters. What we need is a way to set the “below 3000m” to something like “below 500m”. Is there any undocumented feature or hack that can be used to adjust this one parameter? If so, then we could continue to tell all our flights to Automatically Finish, and they would only do so when we are on the ground—not when the headwind equals airspeed and we gain no net altitude for a period of 30 seconds at 11,000’. And that might result in a smaller number of invalidated attempts at Gold Altitude.

[Paul Remde]

Hi Brian,

Turn off the Auto Finish Flight setting, and enable the "Logger always on" checkbox.  

Best Regards,

Paul Remde

Cumulus Soaring, Inc.

[brian...@hartcraft.com]

Hi, Paul.

 

I do not have a “Logger always on” checkbox. I have only these three:

 

• Automatically finish flight
• Start recording on power on (only for paragliders)
• Automatically turn off Nano, when flight is finished

 

I considered using the second option, despite the indication that it is for paragliders only; however, I cannot see how that would correctly segregate each flight into its own .igc file when doing multiple flights in quick succession. I use my Nano regularly to record an entire day’s flights with students, including many patterns and shorter ridge flights—then unexpectedly launch with a student on a wave flight on the same day. But then when I go look, the Nano has split the long wave flight at some point where—despite our 11k AGL altitude—the wave slowed us down to zero groundspeed and up to 30 seconds with no climb. So then I can manually merge the two files to view the result in SeeYou (PC version), but when I try to post that combined flight to WeGlide, it splits it into two flights, indicating a landout at 11k AGL on the first one and starting the second on at 11k AGL.

 

Thanks!

Brian Hart, Sr.
Husband, Father, CFIG, AGI

Facilitator of Opportunity
Chief Instructor & Youth Progrma Director, Hood River Soaring

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[Paul Remde]

Hi Brian,

You're correct that enabling the "Start recording on power on" will log the entire day's flights into a single flight log - unless you turn off the Nano for about 5 minutes between flights.  

You can't have both a logger that doesn't turn off in wave, and a logger that turns off when you land.  You need to select between those options.

Best Regards,

Paul Remde

[brian...@hartcraft.com]

Actually, we have already demonstrated that the problem comes down to that hard-coded 3000m threshold, and possibly the 30-second threshold, both as stated in the manual. As per the manual, the logger, in fact, does not automatically finish the flight at 11,000’ MSL—even when, as is often the case, groundspeed and ascent/descent are effectively 0 for 30 seconds. But it does automatically finish the flight when those other two parameters are 0 for 30 seconds at 9,000’ MSL. That seems to indicate, in agreement with the manual, that this possible technologically but is excluded by the combination of parameters hard-coded in the firmware.

 

I was just hoping someone might have a sense of whether the LXNav firmware developers might be amenable & approachable about the possibility of adding that automatically-finish-flight altitude as a variable parameter to be set within NanoConfig instead of hard-coded at 3000m.  If it were 1000m instead 3000m, it would presumably correctly work to continue recording at typical wave altitudes even when altitude & groundspeed come to rest temporarily in the wave, while still finishing automatically on the ground. We often sit still in the wave at 2500m (~8200’), but probably never below 1000m (~3300’). Or if we could set the auto-finish time to 2 minutes instead of 30 seconds, that might be sufficient for the auto-finish countdown to be interrupted by a new ascent/descent.

 

So close, and yet so far☹

 

Thanks!

Brian Hart, Sr.
Husband, Father, CFIG, AGI

Facilitator of Opportunity
Chief Instructor & Youth Program Director, Hood River Soaring

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