Provided by Rat Race organizers. I added steps 15 and 16 for mailing from my smartphone in case there is no wireless for the laptop.
If you stand in line and hand your GPS to the scorekeeper, they will then tell you what your distance was for the day right then and there. Or, if you leave your GPS in the appropriate box to be scored, then you can come back later to check the results and deal with any issues. But if you know what you are doing and want to email your tracks in, this is how to do it
If you stand in line and hand your GPS to the scorekeeper, they will then tell you what your distance was for the day right then and there. Or, if you leave your GPS in the appropriate box to be scored, then you can come back later to check the results and deal with any issues. But if you know what you are doing and want to email your tracks in, this is how to do it
- Connect your GPS to your computer.
- Open GpsDump. You should be using the latest version, which is 4.68 and available at: http://home.gethome.no/stein.sorensen/body_gpsdump.htm (note, there is an “_” between “body” and “gpsdump.htm”)
- Select menu item “ Misc->Set COM Port” and set your COM port to the one you have your GPS attached to.
- Select menu item “Logs Read [GPSTYPE] “ where “GPSTYPE” is whatever kind of unit you have. Thus, if you have a Garmin unit attached via USB you would pick “Log->Read Garmin USB”
- If it finds multiple flights on your unit, it will prompt you to pick which one you want to download. Choose the correct one.
- After the flight downloads, the bottom window with the scroll bar will have all of your track points listed.
- Select menu item “Edit->Select All” to select all of the track points
- Select menu item “File->Save log(FlightLog/.kml)
- A dialog box will pop up with various flight statistics. Click the “Save” button.
- You are now prompted to save your track. To whatever file name GPS Dump suggest for you, put “[PilotNum] [Name] [Task_N]” BEFORE it, where you replace [PilotNum] with your pilot number and [Name] with your first and last name and [Task N] with the task number. Thus, if my pilot number is 705, my file name would end up looking something like “705 Bill Hughes Task_3 2012-06-10_21-07”
- After the file is saved, hit the “Exit” button in the “Flight Statistics” dialog box
- Now select menu item “File->Save log in IGC format
- 13. In the “IGC File format” dialog box enter your name in the “Pilot” field, the task number in the “Flight” field and your pilot number in the “FR serial no.” field. The other fields do not matter except you need to make sure that the “Save with IGC long file name” checkbox is checked. Now hit the “Save” button, leave the filename as it is, and save the file.
- 14. An optional but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED step is to open the .kml file you just created with GoogleEarth or something like it and look at your track. Does it seem about right? If it looks like it is empty, then you might not have selected all the track points before you saved. If you have the waypoints loaded in GoogleEarth also and it looks like your track is what you expect, you’ll be more likely to be sending us the right thing.
- Connect Smartphone to your computer
- Transfer the files to your smartphone file directory
- Attach the two files you just saved to the scorekeeper on your smartphone email app. The Subject of the email should look something like this: “705 Bill Hughes Race Task 3” for me. If you are in the “Sprint” then replace “Race” with “Sprint”. Obviously you should use your own pilot number and name, and the correct task number. Send the email with the 2 tracks as attatchments to: If you are in the Sprint: sprint@flyxc.org If you are in the Race: race@flyxc.org
- Check the results page later to make sure that you are happy with how your flight for that day was scored. If you are not happy with it, go and actually talk to the scorekeepers, with your instrument. Do not email with issues. Do not delete the tracks from your instruments until you see your flight scored as you think it should be on the results page.