Here is a detailed explanation of how to submit your flight claim to the OLC contest for Canada. The procedure is virtually identical for any another country. Doug Keller was the winner of the 2003 and 2004 contest year. Check out his longest flight entry for 2004..

The rules for the On Line Contest are available here as an Adobe Acrobat file. Another document of interest is this one.

The main contest page is available at http://www.onlinecontest.org/holc.

The US contest page is available at Davis Straub's site.

The CompeGPS program will automatically calculate the best score for your flight, and save it in a format for the OLC.

It is actually preferred to use a program like MaxPunkte, developed for the DHV (German and English versions available), to download your tracklog and save it in a .igc format for submission to the OLC, since it adds the G security record automatically. It will also save your flight and all personal data into a .olc file, which greatly simplifies uploading of your flight to OLC. You can get the latest copy of MaxPunkte, as well as the english-language settings file MaxPLanguage.ini. Other alternatives are GPSDump and G7ToWin, to which you can find links on the HOLC page. Note that whatever program you use, you must send the tracklog directly from the GPS to an .igc file, and save it with the 'G' security record. If you first save the file on your computer's hard drive, and later open it from there and try to then save it as an .igc file, the software will refuse to attach the G Security record.

The figure below shows MaxPunkte in use, displaying the track log for a flight I made in Brazil. The contents of the .igc file appear in the bottom left.

Any tracklog that has been saved in an .igc format with the G Security record attached is proof against tampering or alterations. Conversely, and file that does not have a G Security record attached can potentially be tampered with, or may have been altered in some way. If you file a file with OLC that does not have the G Security record attached, another competitor could challenge your flight, and it would be disqualified. Most flight verification software programs that can generate .igc files also have a companion vali.exe file that is used to check the .igc file for tampering. The one for MaxPunkte is available here.

The figure below shows a tracklog in .igc format being tested by Trackview (German only). The red text in the Flugdaten window on the right side is indicating that the G Security record is either missing or has been altered.

More information? Write me at the address below.