http://www3.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/


The HOLC is a version of the OLC (the on-line contest) that was originally just
for sailplane pilots. A few years back it branched out to hang glider and
paraglider pilots in partnership with the DHV. Now the DHV has gone its own way
(and we'll look at that soon enough) but the HOLC is still there with a
different looking user interface.


The HOLC is the oldest and most highly attended OLC for hang gliders and
paragliders. If you want to know who has gone the furthest on their best six
flights since the start of the contest (October 10th, 2006) then so far the only
place to go is the HOLC. The other on-line contests do not have enough
participation of the top pilots to get these best flights recorded.


If you are going to have a world wide contest, then you might as well have
everyone in the world who wants to attend it there. Just picking up a small
group of pilots makes no sense. Of course, not all the world's pilots have
always been on the HOLC. The French, for example, had (have) their own system
(which apparently didn't rely on GPSes).


So the great strength of the HOLC is that it is the favored site for uploading
your flights. The network effect. The more people that use your site, the more
people want to use your site, because the other people are there.


But there is dissatisfaction on the part of some users. Sometimes there are
problems uploading flights. There are fixed rules about what counts in scoring,
for the world wide contest and for national contests. There is inflexibility in
designing special contests. The DHV wants certain features that it apparently
can't get. So this opens the door for other on-line contest providers, if they
can meet these needs.


Now, I am a partner with the HOLC. That just means I'm willing to help them out
and they asked me to help them out, after the DHV went its own way. I'm quite
willing to help out any of the on-line contests and I'm still the US
administrator for the DHV on-line contest also. All any of these guys have to do
is ask me. This series of articles is a way to help them out.


As a pilot who wants to upload his flight to the HOLC, you'll find the process
fairly painless (most of the time). The first thing that you do is register (or
update your registration from previous years). Click Registration, Contest
Registration on the right hand side of the menu. You are registering for the
on-line contest, not registering a contest (say a national or regional contest)
on the on-line contest.


If you belong to a club (that is not already on the list which you can see when
you register) you might want to click Registration, Club Registration and follow
the instructions there. You can update your registration for your club name
later with Registration, Update, Contest Registration Update.


After you have registered, you can log in (it is a good idea, but not required)
on the upper left hand side of the menu with your user name and password chosen
by you when you registered. That way when you log a flight it already knows who
you are. I use Firefox to keep track of my user names and passwords to
automatically put them in the proper places so all I have to do is click the OK
button in the upper left hand part of the menu.


Once you are logged in you can claim your flight. I find the easiest way is to
do a direct claim, which means just upload my IGC file (track log) which I have
downloaded to my computer from my Flytec 5030 using FlyChart 4.52. So click
Flight Claim, Direct Claim, then Browse to browse for your IGC file, then
Upload. Easy.


You will be asked for additional information after your IGC is uploaded. This is
because the IGC file doesn't contain everything that the OLC would like to know
about your flight. This second dialog box will ask for your take off location,
country, glider manufacturer/class and model (type) as well as other information
like pilot comments if you want to enter them.


The US region is called "US- SOARING SOCIETY OF AMERICA (SSA)." Of course, this
is wrong. It's the US independent of the SSA, especially for us. Ignore the SSA
bit and just choose US if your flight originated in the states.


Also, they have a hard time with hang gliders and paraglider when it comes to
manufacturers/class. Just type the first letter of your manufacturer and choose
something like "WILLS WING FAI Class 1." If your manufacturer isn't on the list,
choose something like " listed FAI-CLASS 1. Kind of a pain in the butt. Type
in your model of hang or paraglider in the small type field just below
"manufacturer/type."


If the times given for your flight aren't right, you can correct them in the
appropriate fields. You'll see the times marked with vertical red lines in the
altitude graphic above the time fields.


Click OK and your flight is ready to be viewed on the HOLC. We'll get into that
and other user interface issues in the next issue.


You can also upload an OLC file instead of an IGC file. An OLC file contains
your IGC file plus the additional information that you would be including in
this second dialog box. You need a program like SeeYou or MaxPunkte that will
create an OLC file for you in order to be able to do this. It's a matter of
personal preference which file type you wish to upload.


You in some cases also upload from inside your flight analysis program like the
latest version of SeeYou. It has the ability to directly upload to the HOLC
without you having to user the HOLC user interface. That means the programmers
over at TeamCU have to update SeeYou every time the HOLC changes. I used to
upload my flights this way, but now I'm preferring to use the HOLC interface, as
it is much easier than it was last year.


The HOLC does the flight optimization and scoring (based on its rules), but, of
course, SeeYou can also do that for you. Either is fine.


The HOLC rules state that you have to upload your flight within one week of
actually flying the flight (click Rules). The flight is also supposed to be
validated by the HOLC. This means that it is supposed to check your G record in
your IGC file to see if the file is corrupted (during download or upload) or has
been edited after uploaded to your computer. It used to do this, but there seems
to be some indication that it might not be doing that now (I'll discuss this
later).


This can be a source of a lot of problems if your file isn't valid. This happens
often if you download with SeeYou from your data logger (GPS or flight
computer/vario/bario) to your computer as SeeYou doesn't do a proper check.
That's why I emphasized using FlyChart 4.52, which does a proper job. Other
programs will also do it correctly for other instruments. This is probably the
biggest source of user unhappiness with the HOLC (and other on-line contests).


I find the HOLC easy to use and without any real problems. As the most popular
contest it is head and shoulders over the other ones that are trying for its
crown. I'll write more about it in the next article, before we go on to the
other contests.