Once Atmo is running — built into an Era 57 Gen 2, or switched on by the licence on a first-generation Era — it gives you two things in the cockpit: a live three-dimensional wind and a smart vario. This article shows where to find them, how to set them up, and what to expect from each in cruise, on thermal entry, in the climb and in manoeuvres.
The first minutes of every flight
On the ground Atmo shows nothing: with no airflow over the pitot there is no wind triangle to solve. Shortly after takeoff it restarts from the GNSS track, settles for a few seconds and then starts publishing. Heading — and with it wind direction — sharpens further with the first turns, so the first circles of the day are when Atmo is least certain and quickly getting better.
On the Wind page and the cyan needle, Atmo withholds a value rather than guess: an empty field or No data means not yet, never zero. The one exception is the SVAR navbox, which shows 0.0 until Atmo has a value.
The Wind page
The Wind page is Atmo's own page in the page cycle, next to the G-force page. Turn the PAGES knob to reach it; if it is not there, switch it on under Setup › Pages.
The page sits inside the vario scale. Two arrows start from the centre and point to where the wind comes from, relative to your track — straight up means a headwind. Their length grows with the wind speed. The same two winds are written as numbers, direction the wind blows from and speed, for example 265/19 km/h:
| On the page | What it is |
|---|---|
| Bottom value, blue arrow | The current wind, refreshed continuously in straight flight and in circles |
| Top value and arrow, grey | The average wind — roughly the last minute and a half, steadier through gusts |
The rows are not labelled. The speed is in the wind unit you set under Setup › Units. Before takeoff the page reads No data; the average shows --- until it has settled, a little after the current wind. A current wind below about 1 km/h reads calm.
How to read the two. The current wind tells you what the air is doing now: the shear at an inversion, the stronger wind above the ridge, the change of wind as you cross a valley. The average is the number to plan with, because it does not jump with each gust. On a long glide in smooth air both can drift until the next turn — the average smooths the current wind, it does not correct it.
What still uses the classic wind. Today Atmo's wind is shown on the Wind page and shared with second-seat instruments and flight apps. The wind indicator on the main page, the thermal assistant and the final-glide calculation still use the Era's classic wind calculation — so you can put the two side by side in flight.
The smart vario
A classic total-energy vario measures how fast the glider gains or loses energy. That is exactly right in a steady climb, but it also reacts to things that are not lift: a horizontal gust changes the airspeed and spikes the needle, and a pull-up or a push-over is never perfectly compensated by a TE probe. Atmo measures the airmass itself, so it can tell those apart.
The smart vario is one signal built from both, depending on what you are doing:
| Phase | What the smart vario shows |
|---|---|
| Cruise and thermal entry | What the glider would climb or sink at its current speed in the air it is flying through, computed from Atmo's measurement of the airmass — so a gust is not meant to move it, and a thermal shows the moment you fly into it |
| Established circling | The climb you actually achieve, from the instrument's total-energy vario |
| Hard manoeuvres | Its last trustworthy value, held instead of showing the manoeuvre as lift |
The hand-over happens once you have turned about three quarters of a circle in the same direction, and it is blended over a few seconds, so the needle never jumps. S-turns and dolphin flying never trigger it, and a short straight to recentre does not undo it.
Two things to keep in mind. In cruise and on thermal entry the smart vario uses Atmo's built-in glider model — the polar and wing loading of a typical standard-class glider, not the settings of your Era — so treat its absolute level in straight flight as approximate, especially in a glider far from that class. And stalls and hard pull-ups can still briefly produce a false reading, even though Atmo is built to hold the needle through them.
Three ways to use it
The second needle. With Atmo running, a cyan needle appears on the vario scale beside the familiar one. It is the smart vario; the original needle, its colours and its settings are untouched. Fly a few flights watching both. The difference is the point: in turbulence and pull-ups the classic needle moves and the cyan one stays quieter; on thermal entry the cyan one tends to move first. The cyan needle is hidden while it has no value to show and when the needle is set to show G-force.
A number. The smart vario can be put in any vario field: Setup › Indicators, choose a Vario NavBox or SC NavBox slot and select Smart Vario. On the screen it is titled SVAR. Unlike the needle, it shows 0.0 while Atmo has no value — on the ground and in the first seconds after takeoff — and it does not work on a second-seat instrument.
The sound. Under Setup › Vario/SC, tick Smart vario sound to drive the vario tone from the smart vario instead of the classic vario. It applies in vario mode; in speed-command mode the speed-command tone is unchanged. If Atmo has nothing to say — on the ground, in the first seconds after takeoff — the sound falls back to the classic vario automatically, so it is safe to leave on. Untick it to compare the two by ear.
In practice
- Final glide. Look at the average wind on the Wind page and compare it with the wind your final glide is using. If they disagree, plan with the more pessimistic of the two.
- Thermal entry. Watch the cyan needle as you fly into lift: it reacts to the air rather than to the glider's own energy, and it is built not to mistake your pull-up for the thermal.
- Ridge and wave. The current wind keeps updating on every leg, with no circling required, so you see the wind change along the ridge and across a wave band. On long, smooth legs treat its direction with some caution.
- Turbulent days. The smart vario sound is calmer in gusty air, because gusts change the airspeed and not the airmass.
Second seat
Atmo runs on the Era that carries the licence. A second-seat instrument on the same CAN bus receives Atmo's wind and smart vario from it and can show them on its own Wind page, as the cyan needle and in the sound — see Atmo 3D data: second seat, NMEA and your own software.
Where to go next
- Atmo 3D: calibration, accuracy and troubleshooting
- Atmo 3D wind: what it measures and how it works
- Why a vario feels slow, and what the filter really does: vario lag and total energy in LX Academy.