Cross Country Planning

[rob999]

I don't know if others use something similar for planning XC routes, But I found this:

http://gb.mapometer.com/

Seems easy to use and very handy.

[Guest]

Seems to be lacking the vital airspace charts for flight planning?

SW

[pete_b]

Cross country planning is easy

1 check air space on your route if there is any route around it.

2 Height to fly at and landing options at all times.

3 Distance to refuel and landing take off options.

4 Check the weather along your route

5 check Notams

6 Check the weather along your route

7 final check of all kit

8 Check the weather along your route

[rob999]

Seems to be lacking the vital airspace charts for flight planning?

SW

I agree, but I have a proper map for that and most of my County is restriction free...

I just use the above for getting mileages between points that's all.

I guess there are proper sites for such things, this is just easy to use..thought I'd share..

[Guest]

It is a cool site mate. It would not take much for them to add vector files of the uk airspace either..

SW

Sent from my iPhone using PMC Forum mobile app

[FERRYAIR]

For those of you who do some serious Cross Country Flying.

Skydemon is considered to be the best Flightplanning program out there at the moment, it isn't a cheap program to buy but it is Superb tool to have that also doubles as a REAL TIME GPS WITH WEATHER ( if you have wifi whilst flying ). It does have a yearly subscription after year one but more about the costs later.

A 30day trial is available for anyone to try before considering buying

http://www.skydemon.aero/start/

SkyDemon Flight-Planning Features

The flight planning features in SkyDemon are all designed to make planning a flight less tedious and more interesting, by bringing the very best aeronautical briefing information directly to your fingertips in real time as you explore our charts and experiment with potential journeys.SkyDemon will help give you the confidence to fly further and to more interesting places. Plan a journey, brief yourself on potential hazards, prepare for flight and analyse your track logs. Live briefing data includes NOTAM, airfield documents and maps, TAF, METAR and wind forecasts at altitude.

Dynamic Vector Charts

The main SkyDemon flight-planning interface on a PC Our charts are widely recognised as being the clearest aeronautical charts available. They are entirely bespoke, created by us every 28 days (at least) directly from raw aeronautical data published by the countries we cover. This means that wherever you fly, the look and feel of your chart is consistent.Comprised of many individually selectable layers and adjustable to your preferences, they show you only what you need to see and nothing else. Unlike printed charts, a SkyDemon chart is aware of your plans and can dynamically hide airspace and other features not relevant at the levels you are flying. This makes it much easier to interpret, and as a result, safer.There is a high level of interactivity in our charts. Many details which might in the past have been written permanently on your map are now completely hidden until asked for, by simply moving the mouse or touching with your finger. Practically every charted item can reveal extra information, whether it's the vertical boundaries or activity times of airspace, the frequencies for an airfield or the height of a ground-based obstruction.Best of all, because our charts are created by us, we include access to all of them as a standard part of your subscription (except Australia).

Route Planning Made Easy

Planning a route with SkyDemon is as simple as clicking on, or touching, consecutive waypoints on the map. This intuitive method of route planning was pioneered by SkyDemon and is one of the hallmarks of our software's simplicity of use. Once configured, the route can easily be adjusted by dragging legs to create diversions. In this way you may find yourself planning many fantasy flights of the future.As you plan, SkyDemon obtains all the briefing information necessary for your flight in real time (more about that below) so that accurate readings of total distance and time are always available. Some of this information is used to create the Pilot Log, which you can view or print at any time and includes essential information like which headings to fly and your minimum safe altitudes. It also includes enroute frequencies and radio navigation aids you are likely to use.You will see warnings displayed in real time as you plan. Warnings include penetration of controlled or dangerous airspace, a temporary restricted area created by NOTAM, and planning to fly a leg lower than is safe. As with our charts, the types of warnings shown are configurable to your own preferences.

Virtual Radar

Virtual Radar in action Invented by us, Virtual Radar supplements the way you visualise a route you are planning by adding a new dimension of output, and is an essential companion to the main chart. It shows a side-on view of your route as if it had been straightened out, so you can relate each leg to nearby terrain, airspace, obstacles and other features of interest. At a glance you can tell what sort of adverse (or beneficial) weather conditions are likely to affect you.

NOTAM Briefing and Depiction

NOTAM are visible on the map and in a comprehensive narrow-route briefing SkyDemon has been built around the NOTAM system from the outset, and nobody does NOTAM better than we do. We work closely with Eurocontrol to ensure our subscribers have access to the very latest aeronautical bulletins for every country in Europe and beyond.While planning a route you will see a NOTAM briefing updated in real time. This is the safest possible way to brief yourself as it dynamically selects only those bulletins relevant to the journey you are planning. They are colour-coded, easy to interpret and you can even hide those you deem irrelevant, so they will not appear in future briefings.With the inception of SkyDemon we invented technology that enabled us to graphically embed NOTAM into the main map, leading to greatly enhanced awareness of how a temporary notified situation could affect a potential flight. We have continued to develop this technology and our NOTAM depiction is now even better, allowing us fine control over the depiction of the most intricate of restrictions.

Aviation Weather Integration

Route forecasts are drawn on the map alongside icons depicting TAF, METAR and Winds Aloft SkyDemon downloads and combines TAF, METAR and winds aloft forecasts in order to bring you the very best aviation-specific weather information. You will see the weather conditions within your chart as you plan: all airfields near your route will be annotated with simple colours indicating good VMC, marginal VMC or instrument conditions as defined according to your own levels of comfort.TAF and METAR are decoded for convenience, and can be subscribed to for any airfield in the charts you have installed. A wide area overview can also be requested for an entire country, giving an instant picture of the best places to fly. The Virtual Radar view of your flight will show weather conditions in detail, right down to individual cloud layers and any precipitation coming from them.Forecast winds aloft are integral to the calculations SkyDemon performs to give you the correct headings to fly and an accurate prediction of fuel consumption. You can even perform a wind analysis, which models your planned flight at all altitudes and reports the most optimal level at which to fly.We also include GAFOR route forecasts in Europe, where available. These display forecasts for entire routes through mountainous terrain and are essential for mountain flying. With all SkyDemon weather, you can intuitively slide forwards and backwards in time to switch between observations and forecasts, and see how the conditions develop.

Airfield Documents

SkyDemon lists all available documentation for airfields involved in your route as you plan. You can download and view a document from our library with one touch, and the document is then cached for subsequent offline retrieval. We license all European national AIPs for inclusion in our library as a standard part of all subscriptions, and there are many popular third-party publications containing a wealth of local knowledge available as optional extras.Many countries publish detailed visual approach charts and runway/taxiway diagrams for airfields as a standard part of their AIP. Most of these are georeferenced by us so they can be seamlessly embedded inside the SkyDemon enroute chart, giving the maximum amount of local detail.

Eliminate Tedious Paperwork

With SkyDemon you can say goodbye to much of the paperwork associated with flying, from weight and balance calculations to flightplan forms. Every flight you plan is modelled in real time, taking into account the performance characteristics of your individual aircraft and the precise weather conditions for the time of the flight. This yields fuel consumption figures far more accurate than a quick paper-based calculation and a realistic idea of exactly how long a flight will take (and how much it will cost).The various loading points in your aircraft will be defined when you first start using SkyDemon, so for any flight you simple enter the weights of your passengers and luggage, and the software will automatically fill in the weight of the fuel you have elected to carry. A quick reading of the total weight of the aircraft and its centre of gravity, and whether those figures fall within the acceptable loading envelope, are only a glance away.SkyDemon can produce an ICAO flightplan with almost every field filled in automatically from your route and aircraft profile. We have partnered with EuroFPL to deliver instant filing of flightplans from within our software. Using a modern, internet-connected mobile device, you can even file your flightplan from your cockpit.When arriving in or departing from the UK mainland, sometimes a UK GAR (General Aviation Report) form is required. SkyDemon will let you know when this is the case and will facilitate the instant online filing of this information for no extra charge, for most light VFR flights.

Now comes the Costs : The initial purchase is £159.00 for the Software download & year one subscription,all following year's subscriptions are £89.00 The GOOD NEWS IS : If there are 8-10 people interested in buying a subscription we can reduce the cost to £114.00 per Subscription.

[pete_b]

Runway HD, even better.

[Guest]

I agree, having spent time using both.

Runway HD is THE app at the moment In the UK it is now used by the Met Police Air Support Unit and almost all of the air ambulances.

It is also used by military and display pilots world wide

On top of that, I just found it faster and simpler to use than any alternative. (personally)

SW

[FERRYAIR]

I agree, having spent time using both.

Runway HD is THE app at the moment In the UK it is now used by the Met Police Air Support Unit and almost all of the air ambulances.

It is also used by military and display pilots world wide

On top of that, I just found it faster and simpler to use than any alternative. (personally)

SW

I have tried Runway HD and found the loading of the charts a mystery. Not to mention having to sign up to cyberspace in the form of an account called "Thundercloud" even when I jumped through all the hoops I could not load the charts (or even decipher which descriptions refered to which charts and what I had paid for and what I hadnt ?) I had to then email Airbox (who were very helpful in helping "reload" some charts (Which, I still know not, except I can use the UK bit )

After that, trying to figure out how it works ? Its probably easier to do the Rubik Cube backwards ?

Instructions are limited to a pretty useless you tube type video that shows how to fly a line that fits within the screen, a longer flight than that seems impossible to plot.

I have taken the loss of the charts cost in the name of sanity and trying Sky Demon on a Full Subscription.

SkyDemon was £179.00 when I first looked at it & I just couldn't justify the cost ( even with the discount price of £129.00 offered me ) but when they reduced the price to £159.00 & put the discount price at £114.00 I just found I had to buy it

I have quite a few Nav products but Skydemon is always improving and every update brings something better every time.

[pete_b]

I found Runway HD pretty simple and straight forward to set up.

[Guest]

And thats saying something!

SW

[pete_b]

And thats saying something!

SW

It is

[FERRYAIR]

I guess it is " Horse's for Course's "

My preference is SkyDemon because it suits my needs

Over the years I have seen many different navigation programmes some of them are very user friendly & some are very complicated. I am a very GPS orientated type of pilot & possibly put too much faith in my GPS units in the past.

I set myself the task of doing a fairly long cross country without the use of GPS & Skydemon or Navaids & the result was eye opening, now without sounding conceited I am someone who flies long distances regularly so I was really surprised when I couldn't navigate precisely without my trusted GPS etc.

I just cannot get to grips with RunwayHD so for me I will stick to SkyDemon,but I am sure RunwayHD is as good as SkyDemon if you understand the set up.

So now with the latest idea of me wanting to get into Paratriking I am going to have to go back to Grassroots Navigation so no doubt I will have lots of questions about the different flying characteristics of a Paratrike over my usual 3 axis flying.

Hopefully you will bear with me when I ask questions, because some may sound like strange question's but I always go too deep into any flying subject.

[pete_b]

We fly alot slower so nav is easier as you have more time to do it.

[Vinnie8]

Ref SkyDemon: How do you set your aircraft as something equivalent to a paramotor ?

when I create a route and set my speed as per what a paramotor can expect to achieve, it comes up with a message that the chosen aircraft does not have sufficient performance for the route. 
is there a work around for this ?

[chrsfrwll]

You need to go into Settings > Aircraft and change the performance factors of the aircraft in your library. There are settings for climb cruise and descent.

[AndyB]

On 09/01/2015 at 20:44, FERRYAIR said:

Its probably easier to do the Rubik Cube backwards ?

Rubik cube is easy backwards, it just gets messed up. It is doing it the normal way that is difficult.

ps I use both Runway HD and Skydemon. I prefer HD.

[powerlord]

too fancy for me - I just use google maps - 'measure distance'. has the benefit it even works with airspace provided you use a link with the airspace overlays.

stu