Tasks and competitions

22Competitions

Finding and following competitions, their tasks, files and news, and the pilot identification QR code.

Needs internet

Finding a competition#

The Competitions tab lists events hosted on SkyTrackPro, plus events listed from elsewhere. Filter with Upcoming, Past or All, and press Load more for older entries.

Fig. 22.1The competition list, with dates, location and registration state per event.
Registration open
You can sign up now. Sometimes shown as open until a date.
Registration opens <date>
Not yet open.
Registration closed <date>
Sign up has ended.
Signed up
You are entered in this one.
Listed externally
The event is hosted elsewhere and only listed here.

Pilot counts appear as Allowed, Registered and Confirmed, which tells you how full an event is and where you stand.

Caution

This whole tab needs a connection. Offline it says You are offline. Competitions are only available when you are online. Anything you will need in the air has to be pulled down first.

Inside a competition#

Opening a competition gives you five tabs.

Tab Contains
Info Summary, dates, location, timezone, registration status and the link to the public page.
News Competition announcements. The newest article opens automatically.
Tasks The tasks for the event. Tap one to open it and save it locally.
Files Documents and downloads from the organizer, including airspace, obstacle and waypoint files.
Operations Operational details such as transport, HQ and schedules.

Note

What you can see depends on your registration status. Operations may be hidden with Operations are currently hidden. Required status: <status>, and are only available for competitions you take part in.

Getting the task onto your phone#

This is the step that matters most on a competition morning. The tab hint says it plainly: Tap a task to open details and save locally.

  1. Open the competition, then the Tasks tab.
  2. Tap today's task.
  3. Save it to this device.
  4. On the Flight tab, choose it under Task before you start.

Caution

Do this while you still have a signal, at HQ or on the bus, not on launch. A task that is only on the server is no use to you at 2000 m.

Note

Task visibility is controlled by the organizer on the server. If a task is not showing, the app explains it as No tasks are available for your current registration status yet.

Files, airspace, obstacles and waypoints#

Competition files are more than documents. Airspace, obstacle and waypoint files can be installed into the app directly from here, which saves a lot of fiddling with downloads and file pickers.

  1. Open the Files tab. The hint reads Tap a file for actions: download/share, add to Airspaces, or add to Obstacles.
  2. Tap the file you want.
  3. Choose Download / Share, Save to device, Add to Airspaces or Add to Obstacles.
  4. The app confirms with, for example, Airspace file added to Settings > Airspaces.
  5. Check the file is enabled in its settings page. The hint Save locally and enable in Settings is there for a reason.

Waypoint files have their own section, with Add to My Waypoints, confirmed by Waypoint list added to Tasks > Waypoints.

File type Accepted formats
Airspace .openair, .air, .txt, .geojson
Obstacles .geojson, .mbtiles
Waypoints The formats offered by the organizer, downloadable as zip, gpx, cup or wpt

Tip

Work through the Files tab the day before: task, competition airspace, obstacles, waypoints. Then download an offline map region for the area and you are independent of coverage for the whole event.

Pilot identification QR#

Your personal code, described as Show this personal pilot QR for registration, briefing, lunch package and other goodies.

Note

It appears when your registration status is confirmed and the organizer has enabled QR codes. Otherwise the app explains QR codes are available in competitions where you participate with confirmed status.

Good to know

The code is cached on your phone, so it still scans in a field with no coverage. See Preparing a flight.

Rating a competition#

You can rate each task and the event as a whole. The app explains the timing as You can rate each task once you have flown it, and the overall competition on the last day, after the final task.

  1. Open the Feedback section of the competition.
  2. Press Rate on a task, or on Overall competition.
  3. Set the ratings. Tap a selected value again to clear it.
  4. Add a comment if you want. The hint is Share anything useful for the organizers.
  5. Press Send feedback. The app thanks you with Thanks! Your feedback was saved.

Note

You can come back and Edit your feedback later. Sending and loading both need a connection.

Tip

Write the comment the evening of the task while it is fresh. Organizers act on specifics, and "the goal field was hard to find from the north" is worth more than a score.

Live tracking in a competition#

Competition flying is where live tracking earns its keep: the organizers can see where everyone is, you can send status messages, and the retrieve can find you.

  • Level messages L1, L2 and L3 for the codes your event has agreed.
  • Emergency and need help buttons, sent by press and hold.
  • Task stop notifications pushed from the organizer to your screen.
  • A post flight sheet for reporting that you are down and whether you need retrieve.

All of it is covered in Live tracking and buddies.

Flying the task without a map#

In a competition the map is often the least useful thing on screen. The Task radar tile answers the only question that matters in the air: where do I go next, and what is in the way. It draws the whole task around you with you at the center, and it needs no map, so a page can be all instruments. A saved XC route is flown through the same task machinery, so the tile frames a cross country route exactly as it frames a competition task.

The scale
Automatic, and built from the optimized line rather than the cylinders: a big start cylinder may be clipped, the course line never is. It zooms in by itself as you fly, in quantized steps so the picture does not breathe with every GPS fix.
Zoom
Double tap the tile to zoom in, tap once to zoom out, long press to return to the automatic frame. The manual zoom keeps following the task, it only changes how close you sit to it. If you would rather tap for the summary, set Tap on the tile to Details.
Your position
Always at the center. The world moves around you, smoothly between fixes rather than jumping once a second.
The lines
The optimized route through the cylinders, and the shortest way into the next turnpoint, in the same colors the map draws them. Small chevrons ride the optimized route to show which way the task is flown, so a picture drawn north up is never ambiguous.
The rim
The wind arrow sits on the upwind edge with its speed beside it, pointing where the wind blows to, and north is marked whenever the view is rotated. The arrow can be switched off per tile.
The corners
Empty by default, so the task picture comes first. Any of wind, target distance, shortest distance, the distance still to fly, ground speed, airspeed, current L/D, required L/D, leadout or the vario can sit in any of the four corners, which lets a competition page drop the value tiles that used to carry them. A value lives in one place only: put it in a corner and its arrow carries just the direction, leave the corner empty and the value rides the arrow instead. Target arrows adds rim arrows pointing at the optimized crossing and at the nearest point of the next zone. Corner captions always use the short metric labels, WIND, TGT, TS, TD, GS, AS, L/D, REQ L/D, LEAD and VARIO, so the picture stays clear.
The thermal map
The seasonal thermal layer draws underneath the task when it is on in Settings, Maps, and can be hidden per tile. Downloaded offline regions are read first and the network only fills the gaps, so it keeps working in a valley with no signal, exactly like the map's own copy.
Where the line starts
The optimized line normally runs from takeoff. Set it to start at the start cylinder instead and the rest of the course is drawn bigger, since the fit follows the line. The route is solved again without the takeoff rather than simply cut, the way the task study map does it: where the line crosses the start depends on where it arrives from, so with the takeoff gone that crossing moves, and so does everything after it.
The warnings
Airspace and cables are drawn at their true position. Whatever the proximity alarm is warning about is highlighted here at the same moment.
  1. Open the layout editor on the page you fly competitions with.
  2. Add a tile and pick Competition radar from the Task category.
  3. Choose the background color, the orientation, and whether the scale fits the whole task or only what is left of it.
  4. Turn the airspace, obstacle, buddy, trail and ring layers on or off to taste.
  5. If you want no map at all, tap the map in the preview and delete it.

Note

Airspace and obstacle warnings keep working on a page without a map: the datasets are loaded independently of the map, so the banners, the sounds and the radar highlight all fire together.

AeroCell airspeed (beta)#

Competition speed is limited today only indirectly, through accelerator travel and line geometry rules. The AeroCell concept proposes to cap it in the air instead: a sensor in the wing measures indicated airspeed (IAS), and the meet director sets a maximum IAS for each task, the max_airspeed parameter proposed for GAP 2027. The AeroCell airspeed (beta) tile shows you, live, how that proposed rule would score your flight.

Caution

This is a beta and a preview of a proposal. No competition scores with it yet, and the numbers on the tile are not an official score.

Fig. 22.2Holding 63.1 km/h averaged against a 57 km/h limit: the penalty is running.
The dial
Your IAS from 20 to 80 km/h, with everything above the task limit painted red. The needle, the blue mark on the rim and the big number are your IAS right now; the limit in force is printed in the open bottom of the dial. A limit above 65 km/h extends the scale so the red zone stays on it.
Where the IAS comes from
A vario with a pitot, such as the Vector Vario, measures it, and that value is used whenever it arrives. Without one, the tile uses the app's own airspeed: GPS ground speed minus the wind, measured by the vario or estimated from your drift while circling. That is a true airspeed (TAS), and it is converted to IAS for your altitude, because at 2000 m the two already differ by about 10%. The number is then labeled km/h IAS (GPS). Until your first circles give a wind estimate, that airspeed is simply your ground speed.
The status
WITHIN LIMIT in green. SPIKE in amber when your IAS is over the limit plus tolerance but the 5 s average is not, which is a gust or a surge the average absorbs. OVER in red when the 5 s average is over: the penalty is running. CIRCLING ... EXEMPT in blue while you turn at 10°/s or more. TASK DSQ · SAFETY CEILING stays up once the average crossed the limit plus 10 km/h in straight flight. NO IAS DATA when there is no airspeed at all, neither from a vario nor from GPS.
The numbers underneath
Ground speed, altitude, vario and wind, in your own units, so the tile can stand alone on a page.
The tally
Over limit events counts how often the average went over, Seconds over how long it stayed there, and GAP penalty the points it cost. The tally starts from zero whenever you start recording a flight, or when you tap Start new task.

The rule the tile applies is the one from the proposal, with the same constants:

  • The scored speed is the rolling 5 s average of IAS, so a collapse or a spiral exit barely moves it while sustained speed cannot hide.
  • Nothing is scored up to the limit plus 2 km/h of sensor tolerance.
  • Above that, the penalty is 0.01 × (km/h over)³ points for every second: 0.01 points per second at 1 km/h over, 1.25 at 5 over, 5.12 at 8 over.
  • An average above the limit plus 10 km/h scores the task zero.
  • Only straight flight is scored. While the 5 s mean turn rate from your GPS track is 10°/s or more you are thermalling or spiralling, and neither the penalty nor the ceiling applies.
  1. For measured IAS, pair a vario with a pitot, such as the Vector Vario, under Connecting a Bluetooth vario. Without one the tile works from GPS.
  2. Open the layout editor, add a tile and pick AeroCell airspeed (beta) from the Task category. It opens at the instrument's own proportions and can be resized freely: a tall tile stacks the rows under the dial, a wide one puts them beside it.
  3. Set the Task airspeed limit in the tile sheet. One limit applies to every AeroCell airspeed tile.
  4. In flight, tap the tile to change the limit, read the live 5 s average, IAS source, turn rate and penalty rate, or tap Start new task.
After the flight
When you end a flight with the tile on one of your layouts, its tally is saved with the flight: the limit, the highest 5 s average in straight flight, the events, the seconds over, the penalty, and which IAS source delivered most of the time. The flight's detail page shows it as its own card, so a test flight can be checked afterwards.
In replay
The tile works in replay, older flights and IGC imports included. The replay scores the whole recorded track again with the limit set now, so every seek and every playback speed shows the exact tally at that moment, and you can try another limit on the same flight. Flights recorded from this version on keep the measured IAS for every point. Older flights stored a single airspeed value, IAS for most varios but a mix of IAS and TAS for the Vector Vario, so the number is labeled km/h IAS (recorded) and the result is approximate. Flights without any recorded airspeed use GPS and the wind recomputed from the track.

Note

The limit is always in km/h, because the proposed rule is defined in km/h. For now you set the limit by hand; once tasks carry max_airspeed, the task will set it.

Tip

To try the tile before a flight, hold the vario out of a car window with the flight screen open. Whatever you score on the ground is cleared when you start recording.