Creating Profiles

Once your account is activated and your units are properly set, you should create a few profiles to make it easy to drill down into the locations and information you quickly want to see. Profiles are shortcuts to saved locations and parameters. If you travel for soaring, or just want to keep tabs on other flying sites, creating profiles lets you explore detailed scenes with a single click.

Take this XC Map screenshot, for example:

This scene contains all of the following:

  • Location. Centered around a local flying site zoomed in enough to see the general conditions in the surrounding area, but not too zoomed in.

  • Forecast model. The forecast model selected is NAM 12km. This is a higher resolution local model for much or North America run by NOAA.

  • Map layer parameter. The "Top of Usable Lift" is selected to show the potential height of thermals and general instability. Units are in feet and colored by groupings of 1,000 ft for easy reference.

  • Wind barb overlay. The winds at the "Top of Lift" are selected using the common wind barb. The direction and speed are indicated, with speed in MPH.

This single profile is communicating a wealth of information after navigating the map and selecting certain features. Once you have a similar state you want to save, you can click on the Star icon in the menu to save your profile.

Click on the green "New profile" button and fill in the details of your new profile.

Setting the profile as your default will automatically show this exact state of the map the next time you visit XC Maps. The profile section now looks like this:

It's that simple.

If you want to update or delete any profile, simply click on the "Manage profiles" button. From there, you can delete old profiles or update the existing profile.

Next: saving routes and point forecasts to profiles