XCSoar is a great application (and FREE) for use by the beginner to the experienced contest pilot. Besides their website, here are some links that may help:
- Basic setup – People are intimidated by the initial setup. This brief video takes you step-by-step thru the process of getting it setup and running on your cellphone (for simply recording your flight) or on a tablet (for real X-Country flying). It only takes a few minutes to complete and you’ll be able to get .IGC file recordings of all your flights.
- Advanced setup – It has a LOT of options! We found this to be a good video from an experienced contest pilot to take you thru the entire setup process.
- Learning how to use it in flight – This is the tricky part. It’s very hard to fly and play with a computer application at the same time. You can do it with two pilots – OR – much easier, you can run Condor 2 on your PC at home and have it send data to XCSoar running on your cellphone/tablet. This is another setup video from the same pilot above.