Does anyone use the Thermals layer?

[Eric Greenwell]

I like the idea of having previous years thermal locations marked, but the ones that appear when the Thermals layer is on don't seem to be useful: too many, too close together, no way of knowing the conditions at the time, and only available in very few locations. But maybe I'm missing something?

Eric

[Rick Sheppe]

I had a look at the Thermals layer, but I think it isn't as useful to glider pilots as it is to paraglider pilots.  The WeGlide Copilot app does a much better job of this (it's called "Hotspots"), but it must be noted that the data is good in Europe, but not elsewhere.

[Eric Greenwell]

Do you know how the Hotspots data is acquired? Maybe the same thing can be done in the US.

Eric

On 4/23/2025 6:19 PM, Rick Sheppe wrote:

I had a look at the Thermals layer, but I think it isn't as useful to glider pilots as it is to paraglider pilots.  The WeGlide Copilot app does a much better job of this (it's called "Hotspots"), but it must be noted that the data is good in Europe, but not elsewhere. --
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[Rick Sheppe]

That would be nice, but Naviter has access only to SoaringSpot flight log files, not much data compared with WeGlide, and almost none of it is from USA.

All the information about Hotspots is here:

https://magazine.weglide.org/thermal-hotspots-gliding-copilot-weglide/

-Rick

[Eric Greenwell]

Very interesting article, and reminds of the effort WinPilot put into a thermal database that also accounted for time and wind. 

Lots of pilots upload their flights to SeeYou (it's a choice on my Oudie N), and, I think, flight traces on OLC and WeGlide are public documents, so the data is there for the US. Perhaps Naviter can also work a deal with Weglide to use Copilot's Hotspot data.

Eric

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[Rick Sheppe]

I had forgotten about SeeYou Cloud.  Thanks for reminding me that Naviter has more flight log files than the ones that are publicly available on SoaringSpot.  It would be a huge effort to analyze them all in order to improve the "Thermals" overlay in Navigator.  I would like that to happen, but I would rather they work on bringing back some of the wonderful features of the Oudie 2.

[Andy Blackburn]

Maybe I missed a step, but I’ve always been under the impression that CoPilot uses OGN as its data source since it’s designed to be current up to the minute or tens of minutes, not a historical compilation of house thermals the way WinPilot was.

That would also eliminate the need to do a lot of processing for time of year, time of day, cloud cover, wind etc.

It does mean however that you need a pretty good density of glider flight tracks within the hour for it to be useful which basically restricts it to use in Europe, or big XC or particularly contest days where everyone is flying the same task. Even so, I think it’s only going to prove to be incrementally useful beyond what we already get with Flarm/ADS-B.

I have no idea what Naviter is using but they also forward OGN targets so they may also be using that data.

Is there some other function being offered that it mode of the “house thermal” variety that aggregates data over years? Maybe I missed that.

Andy

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 24, 2025, at 9:55 AM, Rick Sheppe <r...@sover.net> wrote:

I had forgotten about SeeYou Cloud.  Thanks for reminding me that Naviter has more flight log files than the ones that are publicly available on SoaringSpot.  It would be a huge effort to analyze them all in order to improve the "Thermals" overlay in Navigator.  I would like that to happen, but I would rather they work on bringing back some of the wonderful features of the Oudie 2.

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