going digital for hopefully the last time by Joe Zvada / Balloonpong
M
y affection for the paper map instead of an electronic map has been well documented, but it hasn’t been for lack of trying the electronic options. Several attempts to go digital have only resulted in poorer flying performance and always led me right back to the old trusty paper. I have never been able to strike that balance with an electronic map where the benefits outweighed the potential costs of an untimely computer crash. The simpleness of the paper and pencil gave me a sense of security that allowed me to focus more on the flying. All that may change, though, with a new tool that may tip the balance in favor of the electronic option. oziTarget is a tool developed by Australian Sean Kavanagh that is an add-on program to the popular mapping software, OziExplorer. As a long time competitor, Kavanagh designed and built Target specifically for modern day competition ballooning, featuring user friendly ways to do some of our most important tasks like plotting a flight line or drawing scoring areas among others. To accompany the software, Kavanagh has made considerable effort to create educational documents and YouTube videos about the software and about his personal procedures and preferences. The existence of these educational materials is what has recently convinced me to make another attempt at going digital and after viewing just a couple of the YouTube videos I was optimistic that oziTarget may finally be the answer to replace my paper map and perhaps even do much more. But in past trials, the computer itself has often been the biggest liability. Finding a reliable and powerful laptop that is the right size and price has always been 44 Ballooning
a challenge. A computer may work for a while, but then at the most inopportune moment would crash and send me scrambling during a flight. For this new attempt at electronic mapping I’ve settled on the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet as a potential solution to the computing problems, in part because it is the machine that Kavanagh uses as his software testing and competition platform. Like any tool one adds to their flying, it takes time to learn it and learn how it will fit into your own personal flying style. I identified three main functions that I need the computer to do efficiently and reliably in order to replace my paper map; waypoint creation, plotting flight lines, and creating scoring areas/PZs. In past attempts at electronic mapping, I was never able to make these tasks easy enough or quick enough on the computer to justify not using the paper. Waypoints – In oziTarget, it is surprisingly simple to create a new waypoint. The easiest being to simply use the “Pick Wpt from map” tool
which allows you to place a waypoint on an intersection with just the tap of the stylus. The second method is to manually input waypoint coordinates, but oziTarget allows the input of only the four digits given on the task sheet as opposed to entering the whole seven or eight digit coordinate required in previous mapping softwares. Plotting the waypoints quickly like this allows me to spend more time visualizing the tasks and trying to understand how the Director conceptualized the flight with the given weather. Plotting Wind Lines – I’ve never found an efficient way to do this electronically until oziTarget. Plotting the wind line is crucial for me in choosing PDG and FON tasks and has always been easier and quicker to do by hand on paper. The oziTarget feature called HDG Hold can be used to quickly draw a line on the map on a desired degree line just by inputting the degree and selecting a point on the map. Scoring Areas – oziTarget’s Scoring Area tool provides two ways to draw a scoring area on the map. The first is to
Creating waypoints in oziTarget requires the user to enter only a 4-digit coordinate
www.bfa.net
free-hand draw a scoring area (or pz) on the map and by simply selecting the scoring area border on the map. The second is to input grid lines in which to draw a scoring area line on the map. Both are very useful depending on the type of task or situation. Circle shapes are applied to the map using the Task Rings tool which makes efficient work of the task with an intuitive interface to choose the radius of up to four different rings per waypoint. Mastering these first three skills are my priority as I move forward with my transition to digital. I want to be as comfortable doing these on the computer as I am currently on the paper map. Looking ahead though, there are features in oziTarget that have the potential to totally change my inflight basket management, which I’ll of course write about as I learn them. As I progress through this change I will be constantly mindful about a computer fixation problem that I’ve caught myself being guilty of during past electronic mapping attempts. I fly best when my eyes and my focus are outside the basket, reading subtle changes in the wind and observing other balloons ahead of me. When a moving map is available to me in the basket I have had the tendency to stare at it too much and ultimately fly poorer because of it. Similar to the advent of the GPS in competition ballooning, the large adoption of electronic mapping software could change the way we compete. The creation of a purpose-built ballooning program like oziTarget, and the proliferation of knowledge that Kavanagh shares is tearing down the barriers to competition that may have kept people out of top level competitions in the past. In an article on his website he writes that if you put in the effort to learn the software “flying with a digital map can give you more time to connect with your flying.” This statement has become my goal and with Kavanagh’s educational material, I see, for the first time, a training roadmap to guide me to the digital promised land.
Plotting a wind line is as simple as entering the degree and the tapping a center point on the map.
Creating a scoring area or PZ can be easily done by freehand drawing.
•oziTarget - www.ozitarget.com •OziExplorer - www.oziexplorer.com •Sean Kavanagh’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/seankav1 Up to four rings can be placed around a target by use of the Target Rings tool.
May / June 2016
Ballooning 45