F) Digifly Air: Integrated Vario-GPS
Thursday, January 23, 2014 at 13:53 
Paraglider pilots searching for a one unit simple solution for all their flying needs, should consider a purpose built, dedicated Integrated Vario-GPS.
After three years of development, Italian style designed by Daniel Valsesia, Digifly is pleased to introduce: the Digifly Air, conceived for competitors, it is the new top of the line, high-resolution display integrated vario.
Its shape is optimized for peak performance: the display offers the best visibility in bright light conditions; and the four big operative keys ensure the best accessibility even wearing gloves.
The Digifly Air is sold in a single full function version, with only two optional choices:
- Pitot Tube Option: hang gliding pilots can ask for the installation of a pitot tube within the unit
- GSM-GPRS Module Option: needed for the internal Live Tracking, although this is not essential, as the Digifly AIR is equipped with a 4th generation Bluetooth processor able to communicate with every current mobile device, e.g. a smart phone on which you can install, for free, the Live Tracking app XC Soar.
Air is entirely designed, engineered and manufactured in Italy; it uses state of the art processors and sensors, including a 99-channel anti jam GPS unit updated 10 times per second.
Air features a new inertial platform that provides an even more accurate evaluation of the wind direction, improves the sensitivity of the variometer, acts as a G meter for acro pilots and allows to get more precise information from the magnetic compass even at high bank angles of the wing.
Air has a high-visibility gray scale display, with a new design that makes it easy to do 5D task management. The 5D (Digifly trade mark), is based on an ingenious graphic design and comes from the fusion of 2D and 3D visualizations, allowing the pilot to check at a glance the needed glide ratio and best go to glide during the task. This new graphic design will also help the non-competitors to have an immediate idea of the needed glide ratio to reach the nearest safe landing.
The display layout is fully customizable through PC-Mac by simply dragging and dropping the preferred functions, or even transferring them from a micro SD card or via BT from AIR to AIR. The Digifly web site will enable downloads of the new free VLTools AIR software to manage the AIR tasks, waypoints, tracks and display configurations.
The fast, efficient and full option AIR software, comes from the Digifly know-how gained during years of competition support. It is designed in distinct blocks that facilitates setting up the instrument, entering waypoints and setting tasks.
The high resolution display, the large internal memory space and the surplus of computing capability, will allow user feedback and to put into practice all the tips that will come from its users. As with all Digifly instruments, every one of the future free firmware updates will provide to the AIR pilots a finely tuned AIR-tool.