>From today's Soaring Society of America E-news. Download the validation tool from the ClearNav website.
Jim Great New OLC Deal for Old Cambridge Flight Loggers Wonderful news for the many pilots still using legacy Cambridge loggers - the original Model 10 and the 20 and 25 versions. After many months of often frustrating effort a group of SSA volunteers have managed to create a deal which satisfies the exacting requirements of the German administrators of the popular On-Line Contest. Starting immediately, owners of these legacy Cambridge loggers will be able to use a new program to convert their Cambridge flight logs into a fully - and automatically - acceptable format for the OLC. No more red V! The problem with legacy Cambridge loggers reached a head in January of this year when the OLC finally decided no longer to accept flight logs from them. The issue has a convoluted history. The International Gliding Committee decided late in 2011 to downgrade legacy Cambridge as acceptable only up to Diamond badge levels. This decision takes effect this month (October 2012). We believe this IGC decision gave the final impetus for the OLC to act. The underlying reasons for the OLC problem, however, date back to a decision by the original Cambridge Company not to update one piece of software to IGC standards. (Note that this entity is completely separate from the current R-Track Technologies, maker of the 302 series of instruments.) Back in 1994-95, the original Cambridge invented the GPS logger, specifically for gliding. Its first notable use was at the World's gliding contest held in 1995 in New Zealand, when the company made 200 Model 10 loggers and rented them to contestants and later sold them. A further 1,600 of the succeeding Model 20/25 versions were also sold over the ensuing years. Cambridge files were the de-facto standard. As other instrument makers entered the field, the IGC laid down additional standards, which in practical terms means that these newer loggers produced to a world standard format with files ending .IGC (thus the "IGC Format" we all use today). While Cambridge produced files which generally met the IGC Format, they failed to update their conversion routines to assign a required security element (the G Record). As a result, the legacy Cambridge loggers produce IGC files without the G Records, which would prove their authenticity when converted from the proprietary .CAI original. This required the OLC to create a separate processing stream from all other flight logs and often to have to intervene on a file by file basis to get them to acceptable standard. The owners of the up to 2,000 legacy Cambridge loggers have been the victims of these two conflicting forces, with neither side willing to change. However, now a handful of dedicated SSA member glider pilots has solved the problem. First to start experimenting with a workaround solution early this year was David Hoppe of Michigan. His work ignited the interest of other SSA members, including Paul Seifried and Erik Mann of New Jersey, who heads up the SSA FAI Badge and Record Committee. Paul became the energizer of the effort while Erik coordinated, especially with OLC. It helped that Erik has a German background and spent time with Reiner Rose, the head of OLC, at a Hilton Cup meet a few years ago. A crucial contribution came from Guy Byars of Winscore fame. Because of his work on the ubiquitous contest scoring program Guy is intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Cambridge programs and IGC requirements. He used this knowledge to create the necessary security algorithm and shell program which takes in a .CAI format file and outputs a .IGC file complete with the needed G record. This set up was satisfactorily tested with OLC on September 3, producing the all-important full validation of Green Vs. (It also makes it possible to use modern Windows programs without any involvement of the antique DOS.) In the background was the encouragement and more of the ClearNav team and German ClearNav representative Klaus Keim. Many of these soaring enthusiasts were involved, in one way or another, with the now-defunct Cambridge Company and its products. And it was three years back that ClearNav did U.S. gliding a service when it agreed to provide product support and repairs for the legacy Cambridge loggers and variometers. Richard Kellerman, a founder of ClearNav, says that the fees charged for servicing legacy Cambridge products make this a pretty marginal operation. Nevertheless, Kellerman and Keim have agreed to underwrite (meaning pay) the roughly $500 fee that OLC is charging to include the new shell program in its list of approved logger types - a growing list it must be said, including all kinds of PDAs, Androids and the like, as well as pure loggers. ClearNav will also host on its web site the custom conversion program that all users of legacy Cambridge loggers will need to download to be able to convert their flights to a standard acceptable to OLC. Look to http://www.clearnav.netunder the downloads section for software and instructions. The only thing that this remarkable piece of volunteer work by SSA members will not do is, it seems, is to convince the IGC powers, led by Britain's representative Ian Strachan, that legacy Cambridge loggers are, in fact, still suitably secure. And this without there having been one authenticated case of a forged or tampered with Cambridge file.
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