Thursday, January 6, 2011

Flytec's 6030 soon to have features of the Flymaster B1Nav!

Hey sportsfans - The folks at Flytec just announced there will be a significant firmware update for the 6030 very soon. It is being tested at the January HG comps in OZ and PWC comp in Columbia. If there are no significant bugs reported that cannot be quickly fixed they expect to release it at the end of this month.

Click for link to my magazine review
The "significant features" added include:

  • Optimized route.
  • Goal line finish
  • Speed to start cylinder
  • Nascent/near thermal tone
  • NMEA output over Bluetooth
Yep, the $1449 SRP Flytec 6030 will soon (maybe) have the same features as the $630 Flymaster B1Nav.

It's great that Flytec is adding these features.  I don't sell either instrument and I don't really care which is 'best' - I just don't like the big-guys using their influence to control the market and the price points of a niche business.  I especially don't like our limited publications allowing this control to be exercised in their pages.  When I mentioned these "significant features" in my review of the B1Nav, it was considered an unbalanced view ;-)

Tim

For additional background, see my review of the B1Nav - http://biggovtsucks.blogspot.com/2010/08/flymaster-b1-nav.html
and the reaction to it's publication:

2 comments:

Colin Hawke said...

That is strange I was about to send them an email to get route optimisation included like the B1 Nav as some of our comp cylinders have been getting big >5km which means that it makes a huge difference. NMEA output over Bluetooth I'm pretty sure works with my Bluetooth enabled 6030 anyway. Personally I'd also like it to 'reverse video' the 'wind speed' field when it has updated it - you have to do very(!) tight 360s which don't happen on every climb; although perhaps I should not depend on that field so much ...

Tim said...

Hi Colin -
I like your idea (the reverse video for a wind update)
Take Care -

Tim