T3D2 - Terrain Track Thermal Data Displayer -Some Screen Shots


The Terrain can be displayed with color coded altitude, or with an overlaid scanned map.
The tracks show area of lift, or uniterrupted lift, as a white line.
The big grey blocks are North and East to give some idea which direction is where.


Dasklip - Porterville South Africa


Looking at Dasklip with a flight track courtesy of Andrew Smith.


THE DAM - South Africa


THE DAM - With a scanned ICAO Map jpeg file texture applied
Filght Data provided by Andrew Smith

The Dam in wireframe

 

THE DAM in Alitude Color Mode


Rauschberg - Europe

Data provided by Ruediger Bien.


 


Greifenburg - Europe

Data provided by Ruediger Bien.
 


 


Barberton - South Africa

Flight provided by Nevil Hullet.
Showing Lift instead of Speed color coded track.


Showing all the thermals for all the flights collected for Barberton.
Showing all the thermals for a site

The green ones got collected on a different time. Most flights were done during the SA 2004 PG Nationals in weak conditions, 0-1 m/s.

One can see the triggerpoints , house thermals, as accumulation of color lines in certain areas.

Pilots can use this info to plan your XC flying for this site .   The thermal info is available as GPS waypoints to be downloaded into your GPS.




Welkom, South Africa, 109 km

109 km flight from Welkom.
Using Landsat satellite data.

Track Display with Points activated. One can analyze individual trackpoints by picking on them.


Speed 2 Fly and Best Glide Track Analysis

A flight from Dunnottar. One can max get 700 meters above take off to avoid the TMA above the winchpark.

Using Polar Data of a wing, the code checks, if the pilot flew optimal
Green means the pilot flew around optimal.
Blue is too fast.
Red is too slow

Blue means the pilot flew too fast. Red means too slow for flying optimal.

And a Best Glide Analysis

Bot much difference between a Speed 2 Fly and a Best Glide.

This Speed to Fly Analysis  of the Barberton flight shows mostly green.

Pilot flew quite good . Pilot uses a Speed 2 Fly GPS Vario combination.

While the Best Glide shows blue areas in his track.

Blue means too fast for Best Glide, what one does when you fly faster to get into the next lift.
 

Polar Calculator

The code includes an interactive Polar calculator.
Which allows you to compare 2 wings glide performances

WS = Wind Speed
AS = Air Sink , or expected Lift of next Thermal
GR = Glide Ratio
SP = Indicated Air Speed = Speed where tangent touches Polar
SI = Polar Sink , sink in calm air
GS = Ground Speed, what the GPS would show you
TS = Total Sink = AS + SI, ( the code does rounding up )
ATS = Average Travel Speed , how fast you would go as you thermal and glide


Turn Polar Calculator

Besides a Best Glide Calculator the code also offers a Best Turn Calculator

One can use it to determine how to turn your wing optimal in a Thermal.
And under what conditions is one wing better than another wing in outclimbing one another in a thermal.
 

Shows a cross section through half a thermal, maximum lift in this example 4m/s
And the radius of the thermal is 53m, 0 lift 53 meters away from the core.
Best way turn the wing would be for the blue glider 22km/h inside and 36 km/h on the outside tip


Animation

Shows a moving cone follwoing the track

And shows the Pilot View , what the pilot would see


Auto Terrain from a Track

Creates from the minimum and maximum coordinates of a track log the grid terrain data and then defines a site called Auto.
 

Thermal Analysis

This shows all the thermals of a flight , the climb rate in red and the turn radius in blue , overlaid


And one can select a specific thermal from that flight
Like Thermal 7 for example

 

Above are South Africa Thermals in a mountain area
While below is a European Thermal from Alpine Greifenburg

One seems to turn much wider in Greifenburg compared to Barberton