Flight Planning Archives - Golf Hotel Whiskey

Three top PC flight planning tools

I have been using Jeppesen FliteStar for about ten years for my VFR and, later, IFR flight planning. It takes a bit of learning but it is a powerful tool for flight planning and viewing instrument approach plates.

However, there are two big problems with it. First, it is hellaciously expensive. For VFR and IFR planning with digital IFR and VFR plates for Europe, it was costing me around €1,800 a year. Even in the context of an expensive hobby, that’s a lot of money. Bill Gates thinks that’s a lot of money.

Second, their billing is so obscure and their accounts department so incredibly unhelpful that it is impossible to change plans or figure out what, exactly, you are paying for. Or at least, that was my experience. For example, when I changed plans last year (it took three months to do this), they kept sending me an invoice even though they actually owed me money.

As a side issue, I was using Homebriefing.com to actually file my flight plans. I can’t get my head around AFPEx (even though I work with computers all day). Also, it doesn’t work on my iPhone which makes it useless if I’m abroad. Homebriefing is great and they have helpful people at the end of the phone to sort out problems but for an infrequent user, it feels like you have to hand over money every time you log on. Either my annual subscription has expired or I have run out of coupons for flight plans. Arghh.

So what am I using now? I looked at a few things but here is my plan from now on:

VFR Flight Planning

I’m going to use SkyDemon. It’s easier to use than Jeppesen, integrates NOTAMs and weather to produce a lovely trip kit and really attractive maps that filter out information you don’t need (e.g. airspace above your planned cruising altitude). It includes charts for most of Europe and they look very clean and easy to use.

Map view from SkyDemon

It feels like a simple, quick, efficient way to pull together everything you need for a VFR flight without wasting time or hopping between programs. It costs £119. You can (optionally) renew your subscription to charts etc. for £59 a year after the first year.

IFR Flight Planning

I’m going to check out RocketRoute. It combines IFR route planning with plates and online filing for flight plans. It is like a combination of the functional bits of Flitestar, Jeppview and Homebriefing.

Jeppesen’s tool for automatically planning an IFR airways trip never really worked very well and I often ended up refining them manually. This is why I really like RocketRoute’s AutoRouter. It produces valid routes between airfields quickly and then automatically validates them with Eurocontrol (which Jeppesen did not do). I think I’ll need to buy Jeppesen paper airways charts in case it generates routes that don’t work for my circumstances but that’s not a big expense – £10 a year or something. Once you have set up your aircraft, you can reuse them in flight plans cutting down on the amount of time it takes to file plans in future.

RocketRoute

RocketRoute supplies two types of plates: Pooleys iPlates which are the familiar VFR plates in electronic form. It also grabs the latest IFR plates from the various European AIPs. This is less satisfactory than using Jeppesen plates because they do not share a standard format from one country to the next. However, they are free, in English and usable. Since the planes I fly have glass cockpits with Jepp plates onboard, these printed plates are belt-and-braces (and a legal requirement).

Once you have filed your plan, you can download or fax a briefing pack with a plog, ICAO flight plan, METAR/TAFs, NOTAMs and plates. Print it out and away you go. It really couldn’t be much easier. I can also access it via my iPhone to send delay notices and change flight plan details overseas.

It costs €144 a year for up to 50 filed flight plans plus €35 for online access to Pooleys VFR plates. Trip support (e.g. telephone filing of flight plans, slot booking etc. costs €5-€35 depending on what you ask them to do. It would be useful to have this to fall back like a personal flight department.

Easier, faster, cheaper

So, I’ve ditched Jeppesen, saving €1800 a year and picked up a VFR and an IFR flight planning system that costs me about €300-ish this year and a bit less next year. That’s a big saving and I think the end result is, actually, a better, more flexible system.

What’s your preflight routine?

For pilots, state of mind is as important as engine health or electrical power. Accident reports are full of stories about pilot error: fatigue, inattention, distraction and, yes, chatting about crew rosters and missing their destination altogether.

When it comes to single-pilot GA flights, your mental state is even more important. There is no ‘spare pilot’ to catch your mistakes.

It’s a big topic but I’d like to focus on one area where we have the greatest level of control. It’s often overlooked but I think it is very important. It is the time between leaving the house to go flying and the time you start up the engine and begin taxiing.

Your preflight routine can make a big difference to the safety and success of a flight and yet it is almost completely overlooked as a critical stage of flight. So, what can go wrong?

Stress. Traffic delays, passengers who don’t show up on time, planes that have been left in a bad state by previous pilots etc. I read one accident report about a British student pilot who was a doctor. At the airport before a solo cross-country flight, he was called over to help with someone who had fallen ill. The poor chap died and yet our doctor continued with his flight despite having experienced a very stressful event.
Forgetfulness. On my second flight into Amsterdam Schiphol, I arrived at the airport without the approach plates. Ouch! Luckily, TAA UK were able to print out the basic plates in time for my flight. But this kind of thing is best avoided.
Plane problems. I fly a shared group aircraft. This means that I often find it low on fuel, strewn with garbage or with small tech problems that require a check in the MEL or POH to be sure I’m legal and safe to fly. Just taking the wing and body covers off can take a while.
Passengers. Nervous or first-time passengers need extra time and help. I’ve also taken some friends flying who thought that they could arrive any time they liked since it was a ‘private plane’. They were nearly two hours late and I had to repeatedly refile my flight plan etc. for the Isle of Man.
Weather. I occasionally find myself sitting in a crew lounge or the flying school at Denham waiting for fog to lift or rain to stop. My home base is VFR-only and just inside the Heathrow control zone which puts special restrictions on my ability to fly there, even with an instrument rating.
Slot times. Eurocontrol and ATC can play havoc with a well-planned departure. I’ve been sat on the ground several times at French airports waiting for a delayed departure slot or for a controller to find a ‘missing’ flight plan. For VFR trips, fast-approaching night time can also be a restriction. Nobody enjoys night landings at Denham. I think carrier pilots could use it for night training.

How avoid the problems?

Leave earlier. Just as there are fuel margins for a possible diversion, I like to give myself a time buffer. I like to be at the airport an hour before my planned departure, especially if I have an airways flight and slot time booked.
Park passengers. I prefer doing my preflight inspection and cockpit preparation alone so that I don’t get distracted by questions or interruptions. Passengers prefer staying in the lounge until the flight is ready. Frequent flyers who can help or who know how to sit quietly can join me but generally, I like to park my passengers until I’m ready for them.
Leaving home checklist. I have a pre-flight planning checklist that I use to make sure I’ve done everything I need to do with the flight plan etc. But it also includes items such as: passport, Euros, camera, charts etc. so that I don’t leave home without them.
Go bag. I like to repack my flight bag after each trip so that it is ready for the next one. I also get my charts – I print them out from Jeppesen Flightstar – bundled up with all my other flight documents such as the weight and balance schedule and put them in the pocket of my flight bag the day before. That way, it’s very hard for me to forget them.
Risk analysis. I put together a risk analysis table that takes account of currency, weather, airport familiarity, type of approach etc. to give me a quasi-objective ‘read’ on whether the proposed flight is routine, requires extra care and planning or whether I should just go back to bed. Because I can easily get myself in an indecisive funk about the weather, this helps me take the stress out of the decision.
IMSAFE. This acronym – illness, medication, etc. – is built into the MFD on the Cirrus and it’s a useful reminder to check in with yourself before committing to a flight.
Remember, it’s just a hobby. My biggest problem comes from the feeling that I need to complete a flight once I have committed to it, especially if I have passengers. However, the flight must be safe, legal and FUN. It’s very important to remind yourself that you can always go flying another day.
iPhone. My lovely iPhone has changed the way I fly. With Homebriefing.com, I can amend flight plans or send delay notices. With Avbrief.com and meteox.com, I can get accurate, up-to-date weather and rainfall radar information. When I’m overseas, easy access to this information is invaluable especially in that short window before you take off when you really need to be up-to-date with the latest information.
Timetable. For each flight, I compile a single sheet with the timetable for the day with everything in Zulu, London and local time. This makes booking restaurants and taxis easier. In the past, I’ve been on too many trips where I haven’t planned carefully enough and found myself turning up at restaurants for lunch at 2.30pm or having to rush back. I also put the main phone numbers for the day on the sheet – passengers, handling companies, restaurants etc. This means that I have everything to hand when I need it.

By using checklists and procedures in the hour or two before the flight just as we all use them in the air, you can reduce stress and enhance safety.

Jeppesen FlightStar and JeppView

I use FlightStar and JeppView to plan my trips. The software is easy to learn, although there are some power user features that take more time and parts of the interface are idiosyncratic. With the optional weather downloads and JeppView software, you can set up an aircraft, plan a route and print out a complete trip kit with approach plates, enroute charts and pilot log.

It can display Jeppesen-style VFR charts and airways. You can also view VFR plates for airports and IFR approach plates. These charts are updated automatically over the internet. It’s powerful stuff and good enough for a corporate flight department. The only downside is the price. For the IFR version with European charts, it costs me around €1700 a year.

Cheaper (possibly free) alternatives include Autoplan IFR for planning airways trips and Tony Griffiths’s Cross-wind, which is a comprehensive VFR flight planning program.

Jeppesen FlightStar airways

Top tips for flying in the UK

I fly Cirrus SR-22s out of Denham Aerodrome in Northwest London. Vincent has asked me to write an article for Plastic Pilot about the eccentricities of flying in the UK.

I wrote an article for COPA’s Cirrus Pilot about flying in Europe a while ago and I opened with the good news: the laws of aerodynamics are the same on this side of the channel. However, many other things are different. This article is only an overview. I recommend plenty of ground school and a flight with an instructor.

Pre-flight

Weather information. The Met Office has a free basic weather briefing service for GA but you have to register for it.
Airfield information and NOTAMs. You can download free approach plates, airfield information and NOTAMs from the NATS website. Again registration is required. Most pilots use an airfield guide like Pooley’s. You can also use my site, GolfHotelWhiskey.com, to look up airport reviews and find interesting places to visit.
Charts. The CAA publishes very good GA charts in 1:250,000 and 1:500,000 format. They are available from aviation shops and most airports and FBOs. Many foreign pilots prefer to use Jeppesen charts which are consistent wherever they fly and these are valid too.
Busy areas. The area around London – especially Luton, Stanstead, London City, Heathrow, Farnborough and Gatwick airports – and also around Manchester are very busy with narrowly defined VFR corridors and class A airspace at low level (sometimes down to 1,500 feet). These areas need careful study before you fly into them to ensure you don’t bust controlled airspace. See Fly On Track’s tips for avoiding infringements and their excellent guides to busy areas.
Restrictions. Call 0500-354802 (+44 208 899 2401 from abroad) to get a daily briefing on temporary restrictions (e.g. royal flights, Red Arrows displays etc.)
Flight plans. My preference is to file flight plans online via Homebriefing but many pilots will file them at their departure airport. You need to give at least an hour’s notice. Flight plans are optional for most flights within the UK.

Radio

Radio. ATC in the UK is usually efficient and professional, especially when dealing with larger airports and military radar services. You can download a free copy of the official guide to R/T from the CAA (PDF). Appendix one contains a list of differences from ICAO standards. I have often heard foreign pilots (including American airline pilots) struggle with routings to unfamiliar places so it pays to study the map before you leave and familiarise yourself with the main navigation waypoints and their names.
IMC outside controlled airspace. The UK issues IMC ratings which allow PPLs to fly in IMC outside Class A airspace and fly instrument approaches. It’s a bit like a simplified instrument rating. This leads to a peculiarity whereby pilots will fly in IMC without filing an IFR flight plan. I don’t know how this affects foreign pilots with instrument ratings but I guess they could do the same.
ATC services outside controlled airspace. The rules and services changed very recently. The Flight Safety Initiative has a video that explains the new rules.
LARS. The Lower Airspace Radar Service covers most of the UK. It is provided by a mix of civilian and military ATC units. It can provide a Deconfliction or Traffic service which is especially useful for flying in IMC. The controllers can choose whether or not to provide the service depending on how busy they are and some sectors become congested, especially on weekends. However, it is a very useful service and popular with UK-based pilots.
London Information / Scottish Information. On your UK map you’ll find frequencies for London or Scottish Information. These services provide a basic service but they can be very useful. For example, UK-based pilots will often use them to join airways outside controlled airspace (they’re in the same room as en-route controllers) or for VFR cross-channel flights. I have always found the service to be immensely helpful and professional. Of course, the emergency frequency 121.5 is also available and provides a wonderful service for people with problems or people who get lost.

Procedures

Overhead joins. This form of VFR arrival can cause confusion, even to British-trained pilots. Full details are in the AIP but the principle is that, if instructed to fly an overhead join, you (a) Overfly the aerodrome at 2000 ft aal; (b) descend on the ‘dead side’ to circuit height; (c) join the circuit by crossing the upwind end of the runway at circuit height; (d) position downwind. I always find drawing a diagram helps to work out where the deadside of the airport is and how I’m going to fly the approach. You can usually ask for something simpler like a straight-in or base leg join if that is going to be safer. In general, however, aircraft in the UK do not practice the mid-downwind join favoured by US pilots and so asking for a downwind join is much less common.
Joining Airways. Many small airfields in the UK have special arrangements for flights departing into the airways system. It’s worth talking to air traffic to find out what the recommended procedure is. If there is no procedure, the best way to get an airways join is usually to call London Information or a LARS service while remaining clear of controlled airspace. They can open your flight plan and get you into the airways system. In many parts of the UK, class A airspace descends down to 2,500 or even 1,500 feet and it’s important not to fly into controlled airspace until you have an explicit clearance to do so.

In my experience, pilots everywhere in the UK are delighted to welcome visitors from overseas and happy to offer advice and make allowances for language difficulties. So, come on over. I’ll buy you a drink!

Cool tools: goFLYING

Sliderule Trip Computer

goFLYING has a couple of useful features. The first is a mashup that lets you plan flights using Google maps and then input wind direction and speed, fuel burn and so on to generate a navigation log. It will save these out in A4 or kneeboard format for use in-flight. Thanks to Google’s satellite maps, it’s very easy to pick out waypoints and the database seems to have all the airports in it, so you can just search for, say, Denham, and it’ll make it a waypoint.

This is likely to be most useful for VFR pilots, helicopter pilots trying to find landing spots and for familiarising yourself before a flight. However, it is very easy to use and could be a good substitute for commercial VFR flight planning software. It is, after all, free.

You can also import your GPS track file and see your actual flight track superimposed on the map.

The second is a tool that calculates sunset and sunrise in different places at different times of year. This is very handy for working out official night.

Digital VFR charts

VFR flight planning can be a chore. All those chinagraph pencils and rulers. Plus your map is always in the plane when you need it at home to check something. Memory-Map reckon they have the answer: software that runs on PCs and PocketPCs that displays CAA VFR charts in all their glory. But how does it work in practice?

Installing the software is easy. Pop in a CD to install the software and then select which maps to install. Activating the maps means going to the Memory-Map website to get an activation key but it’s painless, especially compared with activating maps on other software. I got myself in a real pickle updating Garmin maps once and getting TomTom Go onto my PocketPC tooks four hours.

So far so good. Once you open the software, it’s obvious this is a program that is designed to please different users. There are demo OS maps for walkers, Admiralty charts for sailors, aerial photography and terrain elevation data for, well, people who like that sort of thing. However, these charts are restricted – the package I received only display CAA charts for the full coverage area.

Selecting CAA charts gives you a choice of the normal 1:500,000 maps or each of the four 1:250,000 charts that covers the South of England. Both display very clearly and scroll smoothly. Zoomed out they look busy and pixellated but at 100% zoom they are look looking at the real thing. The 1:250,000 charts are a revelation – the detail is incredible and I can imagine they would be a real boon for visual navigators.

I’m not sure how valuable the terrain or aerial photography data is for pilots, especially when most of this kind of information is available for free on Google Earth. But the ability to display maps side by side and the delightful way it ‘flies’ through a route in 3D could be useful for some pilots, for example helicopter pilots scouting out a new landing place.

It’s easy to draw a route onto the map. It would be helpful if the search function could find navigation beacons, VRPs and airports but they’re easy to track down visual. After all that’s what you do with a paper map.

I’m slightly nervous that you would have to buy a new version of the software each time the charts were reissued if you planned to use this as your main planning tool. An update costs £49.95 which is a good deal compared to the price of all the different chart variants but if you’re accustomed buying just the 1:500,000 charts it’s a bit of a price rise.

Airfield charts drawn from the AIP are an added bonus. You can also download the application and map data to a PDA or Smartphone (it worked very well on my iPAQ and Orange C600 phone). This is a neat trick and could be useful in some circumstances, especially if your PocketPC had a GPS receiver. Oddly, though, although my iPAQ does have one built-in, it is not supported by the software, at least as far as I could see.

Although Memory-Map sells waterproof A4 paper and it’s possible to print out maps, I suspect that this product is most useful for people with PocketPCs and GPS devices who might use it as a kind of moving map and upload tracks after the flight to evaluate their performance. For this, I think it would be very useful. Most of all, Memory-Map points the way to a world of paper free cockpits and planning.