#paragliding.
Posts on the Alpisto engineering blog filed under #paragliding.
- 01#flybeeper #fanet #ads-l
One radio, two networks: how a FANET vario shares every second with ADS-L
My vario has one radio and two networks to serve. Every second it decides which one to listen to and when to speak, and that choice decides who you see on the map. The numbers from the bench: listen to ADS-L for the whole second and FANET goes to zero; stop listening to ADS-L and FANET comes back 40 to 140 % stronger; cut the ADS-L window from 550 to 300 ms and another maker's transmitter drops from 61 % of its seconds heard to 34 %.
12 min read - 02#flybeeper #fanet-vario #fanet
The lift does not fade: where 11,046 competition thermals end, and how to know before you get there
The usual advice is to leave a thermal when it weakens. In 11,046 thermals from competition tracks it hardly weakens at all: pilots climb at full rate to within a hundred metres of the top, and the last fifty metres still give most of it. The top is a ceiling, and your own vario cannot see a ceiling coming. The pilots around you can: the ones who have already left, and the tops of the day's earlier thermals, tell you how much is left to within about a hundred metres, a minute before you get there.
9 min read - 03#flybeeper #fanet-vario #fanet
The thermal leans, then it drifts: 8,409 thermals rebuilt from competition tracks
Every pilot knows a thermal drifts with the wind. How much, and in what way, a single pilot cannot tell: climbing and drifting happen at the same time. A competition gaggle can — a hundred pilots in one thermal at different heights in the same minute. From the published tracks of 28 competitions on 18 sites I rebuilt the axis of 8,409 thermals. In the mountains, near the ground, the column stays put and the wind lays it over at 45°; over flat land, and higher up everywhere, it stands nearly straight and the whole thing drifts at two thirds to three quarters of the wind. And the radio a FANET vario already listens to is enough to see it from the air.
21 min read - 04#flybeeper #fanet-vario #sun-vario
The note that never sounds: what a piezo vario actually plays
Small varios beep in a way nobody would call pleasant, and it is not because nobody cared. A piezo disc is a bell with one note of its own, and a vario plays a tune on it by feeding it square waves and letting the bell pick what it likes. I put one in a desk drawer with a microphone: at 1000 Hz the note that was asked for comes out 33 dB below its own third harmonic, loudness swings 16 dB across the tone table, and the obvious way to soften a beep turns out to make it sharper.
17 min read - 05#flybeeper #machine-learning #paraglideml
How far, not whether: training a flyability model on five million flights
The technical story of the Flyability forecast on the FlyBeeper map: five million XContest flights, GFS weather, cumulative XC-distance probabilities, confident learning against self-reported logs, isotonic calibration, and an honest evaluation protocol. From a binary classifier and an attention network to three gradient-boosted trees that ship inside the package and refresh a map layer four times a day.
21 min read - 06#flybeeper #sun-vario #variometer
Fourteen metres that were never there: a soldered barometer's thermal drift
Everyone who builds these devices knows you must not solder near the barometer, and that the third rework kills it. Nobody says by how much. This one came off the bench at 470 Pa/K against a rated 0.5, inventing 14.5 metres of climb while sitting still. Thirty lines of firmware removed 95 % of that and every bench test agreed — until somebody picked the device up and the vario went the wrong way. The number behind the folklore, and why the fix helps an altimeter and provably cannot help a variometer.
24 min read - 07#flybeeper #fanet #ads-l
Teaching a LoRa vario to hear ADS-L — and finding the time to do it
Every ADS-L receiver takes its clock from GNSS. My vario has no GNSS by design — the position comes from the phone in your harness. So I took the UTC second from the phone too, over Bluetooth, and measured how bad that channel really is. Good enough with room to spare: the share of frames the device caught went from 15 % to between 50 and 100 %.
16 min read - 08#flybeeper #sun-vario #variometer
FlyBeeper SunVario: the vario you never charge
A solar audio variometer the size of a matchbox that runs off a lithium-ion capacitor instead of a battery. Thirty minutes of morning sun fills it from empty; a minute on USB-C is enough for a flying day. 29 × 34 × 12 mm, 9.8 g, one button, Bluetooth to your phone.
7 min read - 09#flybeeper #sun-vario #variometer
A 10-farad vario, measured: where every microamp goes
Eight hours of discharge logs on a solar variometer running off a 10 F lithium-ion capacitor. The current isn't constant, the buzzer isn't the main consumer, the barometer is — and the runtime formula that falls out of it. Plus what the enclosure had to become once the electronics stopped changing.
18 min read - 10#flybeeper #fanet #flarm
FLARM, FANET and ADS-L — where the line actually is
Why I won't ship FLARM on hardware that could technically transmit it, what the licence actually permits, why FANET's adaptive interval matters in a gaggle, why LoRa means FANET can never be the EU conspicuity standard — and why ADS-L is a better bet than it looks.
8 min read - 11#flybeeper #variometer #barometer
Why I don't put an accelerometer in my vario
A phone's barometer isn't bad — it's read badly, and that's most of why phone-only varios feel laggy. Why I poll a dedicated baro at 60 Hz instead, why an IMU costs more than it gives, how it lies to you in a spiral, and where sensor fusion actually belongs.
7 min read - 12#flybeeper #fanet-vario #fanet
See and be seen — a solar FANET vario you never have to charge
The FlyBeeper FANET Vario is a wireless, solar-powered FANET beacon and barometric variometer in one. No GPS inside — it reuses your phone's, works as a plain radio driven by the app, and puts you on the map for nearby pilots. Full app, BLE protocol and specs. A quiet pre-order at €149 with free shipping.
13 min read - 13#flybeeper #machine-learning #reinforcement-learning
Machine Learning for Thermal-Soaring Optimisation: a Survey of Approaches, Architectures and Open Problems
A survey of deep learning and reinforcement learning for autonomous thermal soaring — LSTM/GRU/TCN/Transformer architectures, POMDP and PPO/TD3 formulations, Kalman + ML hybrid filtering, and a concrete five-stage plan for an on-board AI co-pilot for paragliders.
17 min read - 14#flybeeper #fanet #lora
FlyBeeper FANET: a Bluetooth Bridge to the FANET Radio Network
An always-on BLE bridge to the 868 MHz FANET data network. No on-board GPS — the smartphone provides position, the device just radiates. Solar-powered, years of standby, full radio configuration over GATT so apps can transmit FANET, ADS-L or anything else on the same radio.
6 min read - 15#flybeeper #tas #airspeed
FlyBeeper TAS: a Bluetooth True-Airspeed Sensor with a Purpose-Built Pitot Tube
A purpose-built BLE true-airspeed sensor for paragliders and hang gliders up to 103 km/h IAS. Custom CFD-designed pitot tube with a 4% correction coefficient versus 50% for hobby tubes, four PCB revisions ending in USB-C supercap charging, and standards-compliant BLE GATT services.
9 min read - 16#flybeeper #ps1 #pressure-sensor
FlyBeeper Pressure Sensor: an Always-On Bluetooth Barometer for Flight Apps
An external BLE pressure sensor for paragliding flight apps like xcTrack and SeeYou Navigator. Always on, pair once and forget — wakes the moment the app subscribes to ESS pressure notifications. ±2 cm/s vertical-speed resolution from an SPL06, 5-year standby on a single CR2032.
5 min read - 17#flybeeper #rc4 #remote-control
FlyBeeper Remote Control 4: a Bluetooth Four-Button Remote with Multi-Year Battery Life
An always-on four-button BLE remote for paragliding flight apps. No power switch, deep-sleep when idle, automatic wake when an app connects — battery life measured in years from a single CR2032. Built on Nordic nRF52, exposes the standard Automation IO Service.
3 min read - 18#flybeeper #mini-bt #variometer
FlyBeeper mini BT: a Tiny Bluetooth Variometer Built on Zephyr RTOS
A dwarf-sized BLE 5 variometer on nRF52 + Zephyr RTOS, exposing pressure, temperature, altitude, four-button remote and OTA updates through standards-compliant GATT services. The entire stack — GPIO, SPI, PWM, ADC, FLASH, OTA, DFU, BLE, GATT, plus the OS — fits in 200 kB.
18 min read - 19#flybeeper #f1 #test-flight
FlyBeeper F1 Field Test Report (May 15, 2022)
Five hours, three F1 units, two GPS antennas, one RF interference incident over Cividale. Notes on GPS lock quality, vario behaviour, BLE companion app, and a Tagliamento-crossing flight across the Julian Alps.
3 min read - 20#flybeeper #f1 #fanet
FlyBeeper F1: a Compact FANET-Capable Flight Instrument
A pocket-sized paragliding flight instrument with GNSS, barometer, 868 MHz LoRa FANET, BLE 5.0 and on-board logging. Built as both a FANET tracker and the main vario, with a long development log covering hardware, firmware, FAI-recognised IGC validation and a Web BLE configurator.
8 min read - 21#flybeeper #horn #variometer
FlyBeeper Horn: a Variometer-Whistle for Paraglider Pilots
The smallest variometer in the FlyBeeper line, doubling as an emergency whistle and acoustic distress beacon. A demanding miniature project that combines tight PCB design, a composite CR2032 holder, and a 3D-printed enclosure that has to actually whistle.
2 min read