Readers Comments:
08.03.2003 Marco Z.
At last a flight where I could really test the thermal map. After three hours of flight and about 50 Km I can say that… T2t works well! I was looking all the time at the GPS and at the thermals on it created by T2t, trying to tailor my flight path following the indications, pretending to know nothing about the site, and relying on the GPS only. Whenever I got close to the waypoints/thermals my vario started beeping!
The results have been better than expected.
In a few days I’ll try a flight where I have never really been before, but first I’ll make the thermal map for that area!
20.3.2003 Daniele D.
T2t is very cool and works great; I have only a doubt: the letter code of the waypoint and the icon actually have the same meaning, that is, the thermal extension. This one depends on the altitude where you hooked the thermal, which does not necessarily correspond to its starting altitude. So, this piece of information depends heavily on the history of the flights that were made. The climb rate is another story, it is also dependent on the weather conditions, but probably less dependent on where and how the thermal was turned. This is probably even more important than the thermal extension; granted, the most important datum would be the cloud base altitude, but this is also dependent on the choice of the pilot of letting go of the thermal when he pleases. This said, wouldn’t it be possible to match the icon and/or the letter to the climb rate? I understand that the letter and the icon should match the same information, but if it isn’t so, you could leave the meaning of the letter as it is and match the icon to the climb rate.
21.03.2003 Roberto M.
Track2Thermic: congratulations! It’s so nice. I tried yesterday at Lijak in
Slovenia to find again the thermals that I downloaded from my previous flights…
28.03.2003 Marco Z.
As promised I made a flight (107 Km!) where at least a portion of the route was unknown to me. The flight had a part in Italy and a part in Slovenia. Some days before I added to my GPS the thermal map of the Slovenian area, taking the tracks of flights made by Slovenian pilots from the OnLine Contest web site (www.onlinecontest.org/holc/). Also during this flight T2t showed its potential, allowing me to go rather calmly to search for thermals where the GPS suggested… and I found them.
Great!
08.09.2003 Dietmar E.
Hi Marc, i spend the last days some time to test your program and it´s really
surprising what this program can do. At the beginning of august i fly at german
cup and i downloaded same tracks from the olc-server to analyse this tracks with
your program. the thermik-hits are really at that places where t2t found them.
Greetings from Germany.
23.09.2003 John
Hi all, the guy who developed is a friend of mine and I had the chance to test it; I have to say he's a very good pilot (#9 in the italian XC leage) and a professional in the IT world. Well, the first time we talked about T2T my reaction was very skeptical: "what the hell is that? you have to be joking!". But then, following my curiosity, I tried it while flyin Xc and I've been surprised when, aproaching the thermal marked on the GPS map, I heard the vario getting alive. And that worked for most of the fligth that day.
I agree that T2t it's not great use when you fly in your usual spot, but when you go XC in little known areas I think it could help a lot. Marco (the creator) used it to map the thermals used by the A/R world
record owner Primoz Susa (216Km), since we fly in the same area; result: he was able to do almost the same flight with a sport class wing
(Radical); ok, he's a good pilot, but knowing where the good thermal are helped a bit. T2T should be used in this sense: to know QUICKLY if in a particular area you have good chances to find lift. That's speeds a lot your XC flight and helps a lot to make choices while flying distances.