User`s guide

Chapter 4. Flight Display
31
Displaying Multiple Flights
It is very popular to compare flights made by two different pilots on the same day, or
even different days, together on the screen at the same time. This is easily done with the
following steps.
1. Find the first flight to display in the PC pane and display it by doing one of the
following:
?? Double-click the flight icon.
?? Right-click the flight icon and choose Display.
?? Click and drag the flight icon to the Display pane.
2. Find the next flight to in the PC pane you want to display. Click and drag that flight
onto the Plot pane displaying the first flight.
3. To add additional flights to the display, repeat step 2.
If you try to display two flights flown on different days, the program displays a message
advising you of this. After you click OK, the program displays the flights.
Map Display
Map files in “raster” (bitmap) format can be displayed with flight logs in Cambridge
Aero Explorer. Raster map files are bitmap images, precisely cropped to the size of one
degree latitude and one degree longitude. Map files for many different soaring sites are
include on the installation CD, or can be downloaded from several soaring web sites. In
order to display the maps on your flights, click on the green icon on the toolbar or from
the View menu, and then choose Map Display. The program automatically displays the
map files appropriate for the current display.
If you don’t see any maps when you click on the icon or menu, check the following.
?? First make sure your computer is powerful enough to display the maps. For best
results you need a monitor and graphics card that supports at least 256 colors.
?? Make sure the necessary map files are stored on your computer’s hard drive. Only a
single map file for the Caesar Creek soaring site is included with the Cambridge
Aero Explorer program downloaded from the Internet. To display maps elsewhere
you need to install them from the Cambridge Aero Explorer CD-ROM or download
them from the Internet.
?? To check for map files, from the Tools menu choose Options. The directory for the
maps is displayed on the File Locations tab. The map files must be saved in this
folder. Check that the map files are actually in that folder by examining that folder
with the Windows file explorer. You should see some files with names like
N39W085.bmp. For example, the file N39W085.bmp is the sectional data for
latitudes 39-40 north and longitudes 85-84 west.
?? If the map files are saved in the correct directory, make sure they cover the area of
your flight. For example, if the displayed flight lies between the latitudes of 39-40
north and longitudes of 85-84 west, you would need a map file with the name
N39W085.bmp.
See the Appendix for more information on the map file formats.
Note: Map display requires a powerful computer if you wish to perform flight trace
animations or numerous scaling and viewing operations. Attempting to animate flights
with maps displayed is not recommended for systems with less than a Pentium II
processor. Even on fast systems, it is possible for the program to appear to pause for a
few seconds when maps are displayed.