User manual

4 Cross Country Tasks
XCSoar provides a full task management system, in which tasks
can be edited prior to flight and, when undertaking casual cross-
country flying, modified during flight. Waypoints are advanced
automatically or may be cycled through manually. This chapter
also describes the use of IGC loggers with XCSoar.
4.1 Editing tasks
You can edit tasks in several ways. Some methods are more use-
ful for editing prior to flight, and others allow tasks to be modi-
fied whilst in flight for casual cross-country touring. Tasks can be
saved to files and loaded later, and can be transferred between any
XCSoar platform (Pocket PC, Altair, PC).
It is also possible to save a ‘default’ task and have this task loaded
automatically upon start-up of XCSoar. One application of this
is to set up a default task with one waypoint being the home —
this means that XCSoar is then programmed for final glide back to
home, which is useful for casual cross-country touring.
The main ways of setting tasks are the following:
• Using the task editor dialog
• Selecting waypoints from the map and adding them to the
task from the waypoint details dialog
• Loading the task from a file
Loading a task from file may be useful in competition or casual
cross-country flying in groups, as one person can distribute the
task file to others, thereby saving the group the job of editing the
task themselves.
If no task is present at startup, a task is created automatically, con-
taining one waypoint to home.
XCSoar saves the current task when shutting down and loads it at
startup, thereby allowing the task to be entered early in the day,
then turning off the glide computer until ready for flight.
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