Category Archives: General

Final season – On with FAI Balloon Live

After 14 years the lifetime of the FAI balloon loggers has come to an end and we are happy that the new follow-on project FAI Balloon Live has seen an amazing adoption. First events have very successfully switched to Balloon Live and Watchmefly.net in 2021.

End of 2021 is therefor also the end of this balloon logger project and we will not be able to continue to rent the loggers to more events.

Have a look on balloonlive.org for more information about the new live tracking and scoring project of the FAI Ballooning Commission.

Thanks for having supported the FAI Ballooning Commission projects. We are looking forward to many more exciting years.

Balloon Live is online!


Balloon Live is a new logger project by FAI CIA/NTSC. These next generation logger are developed as a phone app and provide the same functionality as the FAI logger. The app is now available in the app stores and can be used for training and small competitions. Larger competitions (e.g. Nationals, Cat1, etc.) should still use the FAI Logger until Balloon Live is extended with an external GPS and pressure sensor.

The Worlds 2020 will still be flown with the FAI logger. If all tests are successful there is a chance that Balloon Live can be used for Cat1 events by 2021. Until Balloon Live is fully operational, the FAI logger will remain to be supported and can be rented.

 

Welcome

Welcome to the official homepage for the FAI/CIA balloon competition loggers.
The logger project started 2007 and is hosted by FAI/CIA/NTSC. Since then professional devices based on the hardware by Flytec and firmware by Marc André have been engineered. Currently FAI/CIA owns a pool of 110 devices and these devices are used throughout the world for balloon competitions including World and European championships. Since May 2013 the devices may also be bought by individuals or organizations.
This homepage also contains lots of information for pilots and officials about using the loggers.

Since March 2013, you may also buy your own logger. Up to now more than 40 loggers have been sold to pilots.

You can now buy your own logger!

As decided by the FAI/CIA plenary, the loggers can now be bought by any individual or organization. The devices are available through any Flytec dealer.

Find more information and prices on the buy-a-logger page.

All loggers are entitled for unlimited firmware upgrade. Support documents and instructions can be found on this homepage. Hardware support is provided by Flytec and software support by the New Technology Subcommittee of the FAI Ballooning Commission.
The purchased loggers may not be rented in pools to competitions outside the country of the owner. See details on the buy-a-logger page.

Newsletter

newsletterWith our lately introduced newsletter we will try to inform you more actively on new versions of software and new posts on this website.
Please use the registration field in the right column to subscribe with your email address. We will not send more than a few emails per year and certainly not give the address to any third party. You can unsubscribe anytime, see link in each email.
Don’t forget to also become a member of our Facebook Group.

Guidance documents

With the Scoring WG we agreed to post two guidance documents for working with the CIA loggers. The documents describe how logger handling errors were dealt with during the Europeans 2011 and give recommendations for fail-over procedures.
The documents will be discussed in the CIA forum and during the next CIA conference with the Scoring WG and eventually be included in the COH.

Logger fail-over procedures
Electronic Mark Errors

FAI Ballooning Commission votes more events with loggers

The FAI Ballooning Commission held it’s 2012 plenary on 23&24th of March in Birstonas, Lithuania.
All sanctioned and granted Europeans and Worlds (except Worlds 2012) intend to use the competition logger. It was accepted that the logger project is now officially out of development and test phase.
Additionally, it was strongly recommended that competition loggers should be used in all CIA Category 1 events in the future. A great confirmation and success for the project.

The following upcoming events have already confirmed to use the balloon competition loggers:

  • 2012, May – 1st FAI Junior World Hot Air Balloon Championship, Marijampole (LIT)
  • 2012, May  – 4th Stuttgart Linde Open – 24 hours gas balloon race, Stuttgart (GER)
  • 2012, July – World Balloon Trophy, Echternach (LUX)
  • 2012, September – 2nd FAI Women’s European Hot Air Balloon Championship, Frankenthal (GER)
  • 2012, August – 12th Debrecen Cup Int. Hot Air Balloon Competition (HUN)
  • 2013 – 18th FAI European Hot Air Balloon Championship, Wroclawek (POL)
  • 2014 – 1st FAI Women’s World Hot Air Balloon Championship, Leszno (POL)
  • 2014 – 21st FAI World Hot Air Balloon Championship, São Carlos (BRA)

If you need more information, don’t hesitate to contact us here.

Big success at the Europeans in Lleida

For the first time the loggers have been used in a continental championship. At the Europeans in Lleida 77 competitors flew 7 flights and 24 tasks. A total more than 500 tracks (>1000h) have been recorded. The loggers worked flawlessly. The off/on-problem is resolved. During the whole event no pilots GPS had to be downloaded and no data was lost! A big success and important milestone for the logger project.

A new screen might pop up: “New Flight?”

With the latest firmware upgrade of the logger a new question was introduced, that could show up at startup after entering QNH (See image).
Pilots, don’t get confused: The question is simple: Is it a new flight or not? If you start the logger before launch or at briefing and this question rises, the answer is yes. If you want to start the logger after the flight (e.g. at debriefing) to read your declarations, the answer is no.
When a new flight is started, the logger allows you to drop all markers again and also goal declarations disappear from the user interface. Be aware that in any way you cannot clear data from your tracks. The declarations/drops done so far will remain in the track, thus scoring will not be affected.

This functionality was introduced in order to allow to reset the logger in case something went wrong with clearing the so called declaration cache. Of course pilots are not allowed to use this functionality to redrop a marker that has already been dropped in flight. Doing this might be considered interfering with the logger.