Welcome

September 10th, 2009

Welcome to the new homepage for the FAI/CIA balloon competition loggers.
The logger project has started with discussions at the CIA plenary 2007. Since then professional devices based on the hardware by Flytec and firmware by Marc André have been engineered. With the decision of the plenary 2009 the CIA bought 40 loggers to start a pool of loggers that can be rented for competitions. With the help of NACs and event organizers the pool has grown continuously. Currently 90 devices exist and the Europeans 2011 will use these loggers.

This homepage is created to manage the pool of loggers and to give all stakeholders (pilots, officials and event organizers) useful information and share documents.

Guidance documents

April 29th, 2012

With the Scoring WG we agreed to post two guidance documents for working with the CIA loggers. The documents describe how logger handling errors were dealt with during the Europeans 2011 and give recommendations for fail-over procedures.
The documents will be discussed in the CIA forum and during the next CIA conference with the Scoring WG and eventually be included in the COH.

Logger fail-over procedures
Electronic Mark Errors

FAI Ballooning Commission votes more events with loggers

March 27th, 2012

The FAI Ballooning Commission held it’s 2012 plenary on 23&24th of March in Birstonas, Lithuania.
All sanctioned and granted Europeans and Worlds (except Worlds 2012) intend to use the competition logger. It was accepted that the logger project is now officially out of development and test phase.
Additionally, it was strongly recommended that competition loggers should be used in all CIA Category 1 events in the future. A great confirmation and success for the project.

The following upcoming events have already confirmed to use the balloon competition loggers:

  • 2012, May – 1st FAI Junior World Hot Air Balloon Championship, Marijampole (LIT)
  • 2012, May  - 4th Stuttgart Linde Open – 24 hours gas balloon race, Stuttgart (GER)
  • 2012, July – World Balloon Trophy, Echternach (LUX)
  • 2012, September – 2nd FAI Women’s European Hot Air Balloon Championship, Frankenthal (GER)
  • 2012, August – 12th Debrecen Cup Int. Hot Air Balloon Competition (HUN)
  • 2013 – 18th FAI European Hot Air Balloon Championship, Wroclawek (POL)
  • 2014 – 1st FAI Women’s World Hot Air Balloon Championship, Leszno (POL)
  • 2014 – 21st FAI World Hot Air Balloon Championship, São Carlos (BRA)

If you need more information, don’t hesitate to contact us here.

New BLM 2.1.187 / updated SignatureLib

January 8th, 2012

Added new BLM with the following new features:
- Added Swedish Grid SWEREF 99 TM. (no firmware upgrade of loggers needed)
- Added Drag&Drop for opening files.
Fixes:
- Fixed issue for signature validation when IGC file contains non-ASCII characters.

Also SignatureVerifier and SignatureLib have been updated to fix the bug mentioned above (for developers only).

The software and firmware can be downloaded in the Official’s section

Big success at the Europeans in Lleida

September 25th, 2011

For the first time the loggers have been used in a continental championship. At the Europeans in Lleida 77 competitors flew 7 flights and 24 tasks. A total more than 500 tracks (>1000h) have been recorded. The loggers worked flawlessly. The off/on-problem is resolved. During the whole event no pilots GPS had to be downloaded and no data was lost! A big success and important milestone for the logger project.

A new screen might pop up: “New Flight?”

September 10th, 2011

With the latest firmware upgrade of the logger a new question was introduced, that could show up at startup after entering QNH (See image).
Pilots, don’t get confused: The question is simple: Is it a new flight or not? If you start the logger before launch or at briefing and this question rises, the answer is yes. If you want to start the logger after the flight (e.g. at debriefing) to read your declarations, the answer is no.
When a new flight is started, the logger allows you to drop all markers again and also goal declarations disappear from the user interface. Be aware that in any way you cannot clear data from your tracks. The declarations/drops done so far will remain in the track, thus scoring will not be affected.

This functionality was introduced in order to allow to reset the logger in case something went wrong with clearing the so called declaration cache. Of course pilots are not allowed to use this functionality to redrop a marker that has already been dropped in flight. Doing this might be considered interfering with the logger.

Europeans 2011 training

September 8th, 2011

As you will know, the loggers will be used at the Europeans starting in less than one week. In order to allow inexperienced pilots train with the loggers, they can be borrowed for the training flights 14PM/15AM and 15PM/16AM. Find details the Europeans 2011 homepage.

New Firmware 1.2.180 and BLM 2.1.182

September 8th, 2011

Added new firmware (and BLM) with the following new features:
- Depending on setting by the event director disallow multiple marker drops of the same number during flight.
- On startup in case old goal declarations or marker drops are found, ask the pilot if it is a new flight.
- If the logger is set to use GPS altitude, don’t ask QNH.
The software and firmware can be downloaded in the Official’s section

BLM 2.1.181

September 5th, 2011

Fixed a problem with marker drops in the western or southern hemisphere.

The software can be downloaded in the Official’s section

Switch off/on issue resolved!

August 14th, 2011

I am very glad to announce that after many nights of debugging I could finally fix the nasty switch off/on issue! The issue caused loggers to crash during switch off in random cases. They couldn’t be switched on until batteries had been removed. I know that some pilots experienced stressful situations if the issue occurred.

I just published the new firmware release 1.2.178 which contains the fix and also a few cosmetic improvements.
I would like to thank the guys from Flytec for their support in resolving the issue.

We have 90 devices! Ready for the Europeans!

July 31st, 2011

Since Mid July we have 90 loggers in the pool! This is enough devices to run the Europeans this year in Lleida. But already before the loggers are required for many competitions in Europe including German Nationals, British Nationals and the Spanish Nationals.