How to use

On PDA

  1. Start Soaring Pilot
  2. In Soaring Pilot open 'Settings' 4 'NMEA/Port'
  3. Set 'Data Xfer Type' to DOC
  4. Open 'Settings' 4 'Transfer' screen and select 'Flights/Logs'
  5. Use 'Transmit' to write your flight(s) to DOC file(s) in PDA memory
  6. Exit Soaring Pilot
  7. HotSync ®

On Workstation

The HotSync ® process will transfer the DOC files with your flight logs to your workstation. Here they end up in the 'backup' directory of your PDA user. This usually is something like 'C:\Program Files\Handspring\<username>\Backup', or 'C:\Program Files\Palm\<username>\Backup'  where <username> is the name of your PDA account.

The flight logs generated by Soaring Pilot have a naming convention of 'IGCNAME_IGC.PDB' where IGCNAME is conform the IGC file naming convention.

The Soaring Pilot generated flight logs are in so called Palm DOC format. This is a binary format that needs to be converted to text format to come up with IGC format flight logs. Several other tools are available that can do that, f.i. DocReader but these tools are all single file based and require quite a few steps to convert one Palm DOC database to IGC logger file.

Here are the steps involved when using DOC2IGC, where steps 1 to 4 are one time only:

  1. start DOC2IGC if not done so already.
  2. Use the 'Browse' button next to the 'PDB directory' to browse to your 'backup' directory. This directory will be remembered when you exit DOC2IGC, so next time its all set.
  3. Use the 'Browse' button next to the 'IGC directory' to browse to a suitable output directory for your IGC flight logs. This directory will be remembered when you exit DOC2IGC.
  4. Optional check the 'skip exisiting IGC file(s)'. This will prevent DOC2IGC to convert IGC file(s) with the same name that are already found in the target directory. This option will be remembered when you exit DOC2IGC. When you keep this option checked, all you have to do after a HotSync ® is to press the 'Start' button in DOC2IGC to convert only your new flight logs.

DOC2IGC screenshot ready for start

  1. Now use the 'Start' button to start processing PDB DOC file(s) and convert them into IGC file(s). The 'Result(s)' window will show the progress and results of the conversion process.
  2. Done! You can now analyze your flights using flight analysis software like SeeYou or SoaringDotNet.