A new generation of soaring instrumentation (page 1)

Today’s cross-country soaring pilot must gather, display and assimilate a large amount of information. In most glider cockpits, this is still being accomplished with a collection of equipment including a GPS receiver, flight recorder and PDA (Personal Digital Assistant).

Real-world experience with this approach reveals severe limitations: PDA’s weren't designed for aircraft use and are too small and dim to effectively supply information to a busy pilot in a sunlit cockpit. Cabling and connectors tend not to be rugged, so failures are all too common. Flight recorders require tedious and slow file downloads.

The Clear Navigator is the next generation of soaring instrumentation, the only system purpose-built for the task: an integrated hardware and software system that overcomes the shortcomings found in PDA approaches and all other small-display designs.

From the start, one of our core goals has been to offer a display far superior to current options available to glider pilots. The cockpit of a glider, with its limited space and extremes in lighting (ranging from dim to direct sunlight on the display or in the pilot’s eyes), is a challenging environment for a graphic display. The needs of the pilot must also be considered — a glider pilot’s most important task is to focus attention outside the cockpit, so struggling to see the small and dim screens currently available creates a dangerous distraction.

The ClearNav offers a bright and optimally large VGA display designed specifically for outdoor and industrial use - it performs exceptionally well in bright sunlight conditions. PDA and other navigations displays don't even comes close.

The images you see here give a good idea of the quality, but to be fully appreciated the ClearNav display must be seen outdoors, in a glider. Every display element, from colors to fonts to icons, has been carefully selected to maximize the capabilities of this unique display and provide maximum at-a-glance visibility.