At 06:35 PM 23/11/01 +1000, you wrote:
>A Joey can usually be found in it's mother's pouch!!,
>or connected to a battery in a glider.
>One kicks and scratches and the other beeps now and then!!
>
>At 05:01 PM 23/11/01 +1100, you wrote:
>>Read the FAI rules recently - makes no mention of Joeys - only barographs
>
>You won't have found anything in there because -
>Barograph - Winter make them
>Data logger - Joey is a brand of logger made by Mike Borgelt
>
>>and photo evidence of turn points.
>>Jay
>>PS Exactly what is a Joey? Hope to learn tomorrow night.
Perhaps a simplified short history of barographs/Flight recorders is in order:
In the beginning there was the Winter clockwork barograph
Later models had electric drive for the drum
About 1980 the Swiss Raber barograph came along. Continuous chart for 40
hours recording, pressure transducer and electronics with a servo driven
stylus for the altitude trace on pressure sensitive waxed paper.
About 1989 EW in Britain produced the EW barograph which introduced
electronic storage of the altitude trace in RAM. Download was to a printer
or to a PC.
In all the above cases the barograph was evidence that you didn't land and
gave height gain or loss. Cameras were used to provide evidence of
turnpoints achieved.
In about 1990 low cost commercial GPS became a reality.
It was pretty obvious that if you had an EW barograph it wasn't rocket
science to also record a serial data stream. The GPS flight recorder was born.
About this time we were working on the Joey electronic barograph and as it
was still in development we decided to incorporate the GPS recording
feature. We felt that EW were on the right track but a lower cost product
was possible.
Until the invention of the electronic storage barograph "approval" of a
barograph design was not required. The IGC decided to accept an electronic
barograph if 3 countries appoved it for use for badges etc.
Shortly thereafter the IGC decided to write rules for GPS Flight Recorders.
I won't go into detail here but the gliding movement got stuck with a
grossly over-engineered expensive concept and incorporation of the GPS into
the same sealed box as the memory storage was effectively mandated by the
IGC. Garmin Track logs etc were also effectively disallowed.
There was a slight relaxation of this rule to allow the EW GPS
recorder/barograph to be used for badges up to and including 500km (but not
the 1000km) including allowing the GPS record to be used for turnpoint
verification. This was most likely done to forestall legal action by EW
against the IGC as far as I know.
The IGC GNSS Approval committee had sat on EW's application for approval
for more than 6 months before inventing a (contrived)reason not to approve
it despite the EW/Garmin GPS combination meeting the rules as they were
written at the time. We had also notified our intention of submitting the
IGC version Joey Flight Recorder at about the same time and met with
reluctance to approve under the rules as written.
The rules effectively were changed outside the normal IGC procedures
without opportunity for comment by the public or interested parties.
As far as I know you can still do a badge flight with a barograph(clockwork
or electronic storage such as Joey , EW or Winter Electronic) and a camera.
Or you can use a Garmin GPS with EW barograph for up to and including 500Km
flights,
or you can buy an IGC approved Flight Recorder with inbuilt GPS.
Note that for Australian contests the Garmin track log is accepted as back
up but not for a badge. If you think this situation is anomalous you
aren't alone.
Mike Borgelt
Borgelt Instruments - manufacturers of quality soaring instruments
ABN 75532924542
Box 7474 Toowoomba M.C.
Queensland 4352
Australia
Tel 0746 355 784
mob 0428 355 784
0429 355 784
fax 0746 358 796
International
phone: int'l+ 61 7 46 355 784
Cellphone:int'l +61 4 28 355 784
int'l +61 4 29 355 784
fax : int'l+ 61 7 46 358 796
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
website:www.ozemail.com.au/~mborgelt
--
* You are subscribed to the aus-soaring mailing list.
* To Unsubscribe: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
* with "unsubscribe aus-soaring" in the body of the message
* or with "help" in the body of the message for more information.
