HGFA Skysailor Magazine

SKY SAILOR 31 May | June 2019 Who is Mipfly? A Romanian company producing an excellent flight computer (available from Fly2Base), encased in a robust lanyard equipped case, with a screen protector and supplied in a quality travel hard case. It weighs in at just 276g (I weighed it myself). What’s in it? Running a dual core 1 GHz processor, high precision pressure sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer, it has integrated bluetooth, micro plus full sized USB which can be used to charge other devices and transfer data to android devices. It also has a 6800mhr battery and after a six-hour flight barely showed any use then took about two hours to recharge and from half full on a decent charger. The code is Linux based and open source, so anyone who can use C++ is invited to add what they want! Having flown several XC flights, a few hundred kilometres and some coastal with it, I can now give a review of what I have found. My review The Mipfly has a screen that is black on grey, high contrast trans-reflective (240x320px) and is easily readable even in direct sunlight – by far the most readable screen I have seen – it also appears larger than it is. Very configurable (with eight pages), using a simple online graphic user interface tool and lots of widgets to add or remove as required. Flying, I found the default screen easy and intuitive to use with the vario settings the way I like them – super fast, with fully configurable sound options. Being a flight computer, it has too many features to list here, however, some notable things are: ➲ ➲ multiple altimeters, ➲ ➲ glide without having to set a task, ➲ ➲ straight line distance from take-off, ➲ ➲ airspace maps and warnings, and ➲ ➲ topo maps. The thermal assistant page is something else – it creates a snail trail, indicating where lift was and where it is strongest. While I did not find this function very useful, it is fun and helped me re-focus when I typically lose concentration a few hours into a flight. It could be a big help to new thermal pilots. There are competition pages which I do not use, so can’t comment, but it looks good to me. The screen is not a touch screen; input is via tactile buttons that I found intuitive and easy to use with my gloves on. Flight recording is in an .IGC format with auto start and stop of flight if required. The bluetooth or micro USB can supply output data for flight trackers or XC track, etc., on your phone or suitable device. Support could not be better! I had a small issue with the supplied velcro backed mounting soft case: It was pressing on the side-mounted on-switch and an unexpected timer popped up as a result. The support response was immediate and decisive: A new cover was designed and photos supplied within days and an update done to ensure the timer would not operate if this happened again (the new case is on its way). Updating the software via a bluetooth connection to a mobile phone is easy. Missing is an airspace side view, which Mipfly say they can do, and is hopefully available in the future. The Australian maps in my view are fairly ordinary, I am told Mipfly only support their maps at this stage, but they are mbtiles. I expect there will be improvements. The screen orientation is top to bottom only, as far as I can see, so mounting it sideways like a lot of Oudie users do is not really an option. In summary For a fully fledged flight computer it is very well priced, and I believe would equally suit a beginner, XC pilot or competition pilot looking for something that can only get better as more people contribute to its development, it is clear that Mipfly is improving by the day. For budding C++ programmers it will provide hours of fun. For me and perhaps some other older pilots it is very easy to see and simple to use. Reviewing the Mipfly Flight Computer by Greg Holbut Photo: Greg Holbut