FAQs

Welcome to our Frequently Asked Questions section!

Below you will find a series of questions our customers have asked us for you to have as reference. They are not in alphabetical order so we suggest you use the "Find" function to look up your topic: click anywhere on our page, then use Ctrl + F  for PCs and Command-F for Macs, then type in a key word in the "Find" find and this make your search easier!
When you find your question, click on it to see the text and you can click on it again to hide it back.
Note:The "Hide & Unhide" and the "Find" functions, may not work on your mobile device. 

Thank you for your interest in upgrading to a Digifly!

The order process is quite simple:

- Send us an email with the items you would like to purchase.
- Include your name, shipping address and phone number.
- After you get our confirmation email with payment details, you may proceed to pay for your goods.
- Once we have received payment, we will ship your package out and provide you with a link where you can track the shipment.

- Done! Easy, isn't it?

Feel free to contact us for any questions you may have.

Also, keep in mind that we are constantly traveling, going from comp to comp or visiting sites and events, and we may go near your place and could bring you the instrument and give you some customer support!

You need to use a microSD card, formatted FAT32, class 10 and a from 8 to 32GB. Recommended memory capacity 8GB.
See "Owner's Manual" - Chapter 14.

To create your map all you need is to have your AirTools program installed and internet connection; this service is offered to you by Digifly for free!
First choose a coordinate (in decimal degrees) of the place you want as the center of your map; if you don't have it, you can use GoogleEarth to get it.  Open your AirTools and go to the "Maps"tab, insert the coordintaes (use the symbol "-" for S and W), select your radius and hit "Create". The program may prompt you to accept downloading some information from the Digifly website, select "Yes" and just wait for AirTools to create your personalized map! You can also create adjacent maps to cover a larger area.
We suggest you "Save to file" on your computer first, then to your SD card. Simply save it on the SD card without creating any special folders. This way, from your home you can create the maps of the places you are going to fly and have them ready in your SD card; anytime your Digifly gets GPS coverage, it will immediately search the SD card for a matching map and load it to the screen(s) with the map instrument on it and use it to provide you with valuable information.
Make sure that your ELVM parameter on your instrument is set to either "2" or "3" in order for the map to be visible.
See "Owner's Manual" - Chapter 12.

You can do a lot directly from your instrument going to the "Menu" page going into the "Main Setup", "Advanced Setup" and "Variometer Setup" sub-menus.
Another efficient and great way to do it, is using the free Digifly software programs that come with your Digifly: AirTools, AirPages and AirUpdater!
AirTools will get you to all your customized settings, manage your maps, your airspaces, your "Help" texts, your waypoints, your flight log, etc.
AirPages is for creating your own pages and uploading them to your AIR.
The information you create on these 2 programs, you can also save directly in your computer; we suggest you to do so because you will always have it there if you want to make any changes, you will have a backup and you will also have it available to share it with your friends!
AirUpdater is the program that enables you to carry out our free firmware updates really easy and keeping your settings intact!
See "Owner's Manual" - Chapter 16.

Your vario comes with a parameter AUTV that, by default, is set so that it does not beep when you are on the ground. This means that when you are on take-off, waiting in line or anywhere else, it won't beep and not disturb at all. Once it understands it's flying (speed/altitude change) it will begin to beep. It is so sensitive, that you don't even have time to notice any of this because as soon as you are airborne, the Digifly will start singing to you!
If you'd like to hear it on the ground, maybe when you are playing around with the sound profiles, just go to the MENU page, VARIOMETER SETUP and scroll all the way down (or try going upwards, it will be faster) to AUTV, hit OK to enter, use the ARROWs to set it to OFF and hit the "Back" button (same as MENU, with the back arrow) and you are all set!
If you don't mind, don't forget to turn it back on before going flying; unnecessary beeping on launch can sometimes be distracting, so we like to help maintain a quite atmosphere on launch!
See "Owner's Manual" - Chapter 4 (4.2.10).

The Digifly AIR comes ready to store up to 500 CTR files directly in its internal memory. It does not deal with Airspaces on the SD card, in order to ensure that it will always have these important files available by deleting an extra step (always going through the SD card to get the info).
Once you have downloaded the Openair file (.txt format) onto your computer, go to AirTools, then to the "AirSpaces" tab and use "Load from file" to get the airspaces on AirTools. On the lower right hand side you will see a window with a list of all the types of airspaces where you can choose which ones to upload and then, simply hit "Upload to Air". Keep in mind that the Digifly's memory capacity for airspaces is enough for most any country; however, you cannot upload the complete airspace file for the US. We suggest you take the OpenAir file and filter out the state you will be flying in and save it separately, then follow the standard procedure. We have files for different states and it has worked out just fine.
See "Owner's Manual" - Chapter 13.

The Digifly AIR comes with 2 separate waypoint banks. The idea behind it is that, you should never worry about having to get rid of your home waypoints! No matter how many places you go fly, you never have to delete the waypoints you use the most; the waypoints of the new places/competitions go directly to the COMPETITION bank. Also, you don't have to worry about getting to launch back at your local site and having forgotten to upload your home waypoints after a trip, because they were always there...
Each bank holds up to 187 points and, when you create a route, you can insert a point from either bank.
See "Owner's Manual" - Chapter 7 (7.1).

While on the Internet, first try connecting your Digifly AIR directly to your PC or Mac with the USB cable to see if your computer will do the automatic driver download.
If this does not work, then you can do a manual download. Disconnect your Digifly, go to our "Links & Downloads" page and click on "Download USB Drivers". Look for your computer system on the chart and click on the driver that is on the far right-hand side column (under "comments") and follow the prompts/instructions.

Restart and reconnect your computer to try it again. Your computer should now be ready to talk to your Digifly AIR! For Digifly Programs, select the "Autosearch" under "SET COM" and on GPSDump, under the "Misc" tab, go to "Set COM port" and first try the port with the highest number.
See "Owner's Manual" - Chapter 15 (15.1).

First of all, it is important to tell you that the Polar values that are inserted to the Digifly AIR do not correspond to fpm or mph; these values are calculated by AirTools and its "Polar Curve Editor"
The polar is calculated using a formula developed by Digifly, several years ago, which they have worked on and improved since then (Digifly is a company with 25+ years of experience in flight instruments). This is why, in order to have a more precise and complete curve, we are using 3 points to calculate the polar and, to make it user friendly, we have the Polar Curve Calculator in AirTools.

Just in case you haven not yet found the Polar Curve Editor:
To get to the Polar Curve Editor, open the AirTools program and go to the CONFIGURATION tab. In this tab you will find ADVANCED SETUP (just like in the instrument), go down to the P1 (P2, P3) and on the right side of it there is a box with -2 dots- that will open the polar curve editor - Kz, Kb, Kc (click HERE to see what the Polar Curve Editor looks like).

The Ka, Kb and Kc values are the variables that the Digifly AIR uses to create the polar curve of your wing. These values are not just a simple division. It is a much more complex and complete formula to obtain a more precise polar curve for your Digifly AIR to work with. Basically, the Ka value is the glider's minimum sink; Kb represents the best glide (tangent to the curve of the line starting at the 0,0 point of the graph) and Kc is a high speed point that you choose, where the glider is really flying with a pretty bad sink rate.



The Digifly Polar Values can be manually inserted directly in the AIR, by going to MENU \ ADVANCED SETUP \ Px (1, 2 or 3) and make sure that the POLA parameter (just above this) is set to the corresponding Px value of the values you inserted in the parameters below this one.
You may look at pg.11 in your instrument (the standard page, not the user page) to see the polar information after inserting the K values in it. For now, these will come up in km/h and m/s even if you have selected miles and feet as you units.

In case you'd like to calculate other Polars yourself, here are a couple of tips on how to enter the data in the Polar Curve Editor:
- for speed, use the numbers without the decimal point
- for sink, use the numbers in m/s only (for now). Don't include the "minus" symbol and use the regular decimal point (for ex. 0.85m/s).
- you need to type in the data for all 3 points before hitting "calculate"
See "Owner's Manual" - Chapter 4 (4.4).
The Digifly's padded protective cover bag may be washed in a washing machine making sure you do not use any products containing bleach, wash it in cold water and do NOT put it in the dryer machine, but let it dry out naturally.

Now, as far as the Bluetooth goes, the second part of this answer concerns older versions of the Digifly AIR and older firmware versions (see below). The newer Digiflys (serial# 4000 and higher) have a dual Bluetooth module operating in "Classic" and "BLE" modes. The latter will allow connectivity between a Digifly and an iPhone. For more information on how to connect to an iPhone, check our User's Manual. Note for older versions: the system on the Digifly AIR is fully functional; however, in the case of the iPhone and other Apple devices, Apple had some restrictions for its Bluetooth connectivity allowing it to connect other Apple devices and/or ​certain products​ ​they have selected only. If you look this topic up (e.g. cannot connect my iPhone via Bluetooth or something along those lines), you will find many posts and information on the subject. Moreover, it seems that every IOS update restricts the Bluetooth use on the iPhone and other Apple devices.
As you will see from the information on the web, the only way to be able to freely connect using an iPhone's Bluetooth, is to perform a jailbreak. We are not recommending anyone to do this, we are just saying what the Apple users have reported.
Find 2 links below of sites where you can find information on getting your iPhone to communicate via Bluetooth with devices that are NOT apple:
http://www.roqy-bluetooth.net/wp/?page_id=321
http://www.howtogeek.com/70134/how-to-use-an-external-gps-device-with-your-ipad-or-iphone/

Open AirTools in your computer and have your USB cable ready.

Set your COM Port to "Autosearch" if you are not sure which Port it will use or set the Port you know your computer uses to communicate with your AIR. 
Go to the "Flights" tab and you are ready to connect your AIR.
Turn your Digifly AIR on.
Connect your AIR to your computer using the USB cable.
Go to MENU \ AIRTOOLS \ OK (select "OK" to allow your AIR to establish communication with your computer via USB cable). 
Once the AIR is connected, click on "Download from AIR" in the AirTools window and a pop up window with the list of flights in your memory will appear. 
Select the flight you'd like to download (for several flights, you do one flight at a time) and click "Download".
Once the flight is downloaded (message on the bottom of the AirTools window will say "flight download finished" and you will see the flight stats on the main AirTools screen), click the "save to file" button on the right.
A window will pop up and you will select the file location from the drop down menu on the top of the window (usually opens up the "flights" sub-folder in your Digifly folder).
Select the file type from the drop down menu on the bottom of the window; we suggest one of the two following formats:
-KMZ (Google Earth KMZ files): to open your flight using Google Earth.
After selecting this format, simply type in the file's name and click on "save".
-IGC: to submit files to a competition scorer, to the FAI/CIVL, etc.
After selecting this format, click on "save".
A pop up window will ask you to input Pilot name, glider, etc. (if it is already stored in your Digifly, it will automatically upload it), write at least your name and click "save".
Another pop up window may also ask you for the ID or serial number, fill out 3 numbers (usually the last 3 digits of your instrument)  and click "save".
Done!

Press the "M" (exit) button on your AIR 3 times to return to the regular screen and turn your instrument off if you are finished.  
You can also clear your logbook to free up some  memory once you've downloaded your fights on your computer.



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