As I am flying in the competitions as well as scoring some of them using my script program in SeeYou for OzGAP 2005, I am very interested in having some one else downloading the day's flights so that they can be read later by SeeYou. The download program needs to create IGC files from the GPS download of each pilot's track log.

As a competition pilot I need the hours that it takes to download to rest, write the Oz Report, eat, and prepare my equipment for the next day. I might want to take a quick nap after driving back from goal and then get to the scoring late in the evening (hopefully before midnight) or early the next morning.

I like very much the idea of dividing scoring into two main functions: Downloading GPSes and scoring based on the track logs. Downloading is really two functions. Downloading the GPS and displaying the flight relative to the task so that the pilot and the person downloading the flight can confirm at that time that the download is correct.

Also if you have a "loose" competition with say lots of "new" competition pilots who aren't well versed in the use of GPSes, the download person might be taking down landing coordinates (that can't be used automatically by the scoring system and must be used to manually score the flight) or not downloading some flights at all because the pilot doesn't have the GPS and/or they landed in the bomb out zone, so what's the point of the download?

I would hope that the person doing the downloading would not have to have a great deal of expertise when it comes to scoring, or downloading, or using computers for that matter. This would broaden the field of possible candidates who could take on this task. I would like to be able to give them a set of instructions, or a quick training session on the first night, and just let them go at it after that.

I would have setup the computer before hand to make sure that all the required software and drivers are there and tested it to make sure that it works (most likely under real world circumstances on the first night after a preliminary test with a few GPSes the day before). Hopefully it is all ready to go when the pilots start piling in.

I would have to setup the download computer with the task before the person started downloading if they are going to display the flight to the pilot to check it. It would be much quicker if they didn't have to carry out this task, as they could just download one flight after another. But it is good to spot problems early. A nice semi-solution is to have another computer networked to the first one and allow the pilot to sit at it and bring up his/her flight to review. This requires training pilots on how to do this.

I've tried various methods to get this "system" to work. It depends greatly on the level of expertise and understanding and general experience and education of the person doing the downloading so nothing is really systematic. Also, nothing is automatic about the download software. It works 90% of the time, but it is the 10% of the time that it doesn't work that causes the problems.

The first option is to use GPSDump, software made specifically to handle the job of downloading a whole set of GPSes used by hang glider and paraglider pilots. GPSDump is a nifty little program that is integrated with FS, the CIVL backed scoring program. While its default setting is to save tracklogs as KML files it is quite easy to save them at IGC files instead, which is what I need for my SeeYou scoring program.

At the NSW State Titles we started off using GPSDump (version 4.29) just as we had last year at the Santa Cruz Flats Race, the East Coast Championship and Big Spring Internationals (using earlier versions of GPSDump). Given the personnel (Jamie Shelden and then David Glover), that worked well.

When we got to the NSW State Titles it all fell apart. GPSDump 4.29 had a few features and a few problems. SeeYou version 3.91 had even more problems. The combination was deadly.

GPSDump version 4.29 had a new feature that allows port numbers to be set without consulting the registry. Maybe this was causing a problem. We normally run four copies of GPSDump each one assigned to a different physical port, but the new version didn't seem to allow us to do this, and we couldn't tell which instance of GPSDump was assigned to which port and they kept changing.

Also somehow half a dozen of the GPSDump IGC files got their time stamp screwed up so that they didn't show up correctly in SeeYou.

Then there was the major bug with the new version of SeeYou (3.91) which wouldn't read IGC files taken from Garmin GPSes (and did a divide by zero).

Fortunately (thanks to Warren Simonsen) we were able to upload an earlier version of SeeYou which fixed the Garmin problem. Also got a fixed beta version of 3.92 a day later from Andrej at Naviter which solved this problem.

With all these problems, we switched over to downloading with SeeYou on day three. You might ask why we didn't do this before. Well, GPSDump is a free program. It allows you to do multiple downloads at once. It previously had much better COM port control than SeeYou, which was always slow at finding the ports. It was easier to put in the name of the IGC file (we named them the last name of the pilot + the task number and stored them in the Task# folder for each task, just to keep things straight as I had to take these files and associate them with a pilot and task in SeeYou).

Also (we found this out later) GPSDump allows you to combine bits and pieces of track logs from the GPS (this is a big issue with Garmins) to create one IGC file. A lot of our pilots didn't seem to realize that they had to have fresh batteries in their Garmins, so we got a lot of track logs in three pieces that in the end required that I do some manual calculations to determine where these pilots went.

When we switched to SeeYou things got better. It wasn't all that hard to change the name of the IGC file to the pilot's last name + task number. It was reasonably easy to get the file to the right folder. The earlier version of SeeYou could download Garmins without any problems. Monica, who was doing the downloads, could display the flight and know right away if it was correct. It couldn't lash various pieces of Garmins track logs together into a coherent file though. So I got these in pieces.

Now it is possible to display flight downloaded with GPSDump in FS Flight, but only if you save them at KML files, which would be in addition to saving them as IGC files. SeeYou displays the flights automatically when you download them. I would have to install FS Flight and train the download person to use it also. Also I would have to put up the task in both FS and SeeYou. Also FS Flight does not display the flight nearly as nicely as SeeYou does.

Now you see that I've had to train Monica to use two different pieces of software just to do downloads, but it doesn't end there. Soon Flytec 6030's started acting up with SeeYou. This is an old problem, and it seems to keep coming back like from the dead. Monica had to resort to bringing 6030's home at night for me to download with FlyChart. I guess I could have taught her how to use that software also, but that would be three pieces that she needed training and a little help on.

The Flytec 6030 problems may have had something to do with the drivers and they may have started acting up with GSDump also (but by then we weren't using it). The drivers were fine at first. I tried to download the first 6030  that showed the problem and it wouldn't download correctly with SeeYou on my computer, so I went to FlyChart.

In the end we got it all done with a little bit of headache from Monica and I. Software and hardware together just barely work, as far as I can tell, and it takes someone with some level of experience to hold the hold thing together with the equivalent of chewing gum and baling wire.