If someone is interested, here's my view of the situation with Jeppesen having discontinued their 1:500.000 paper charts:
This applies to those pilots who like touring Europe under VFR, but still prefer paper charts as their authoritative source for flight planning and in-flight reference.
The situation is particularly tricky in countries whose CAAs don't publish any VFR 1:500.000 paper chart at all or whose VFR charts are just plain unusable/unreadable.
In the first group, I am thinking of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro. For this reason, I just bought a copy each of Jeppesen's SE EUR-1, 2 and 3 charts (even though the newest ones are 2012!) before they run out out stock. Not ideal, of course, but better than nothing. Likewise, I have the 2011 versions of Baltic 1 and Baltic 2. Poland's CAA published charts are also poor and currently, DFS only covers the western half of the country. Time will tell... Anyway, I have a set of 2012 copies of EP-1, 2, 3.
In the second group, I am thinking particularly of Spain and Italy. Both countries do publish 1:500.000 VFR charts, but they are almost totally unusable. As Peter often states, these charts are simply not "made by pilots for pilots". As a consequence, I just bought a full set of 2013 Jeppesen VFR charts for both countries. Again, not ideal in the long run of course, but better than nothing.
For France, UK and Ireland, the respective CAA's VFR charts are OK. For someone not used to them, they all need a little getting used to, but they are not too bad, so one can use these in the future. Opinions may differ, obviously.
For most other countries (Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech, Austria, Switzerland) there really is no need to worry, as DFS publishes very good paper charts for them, and they have no reason to stop, now as the market is almost all theirs... I sure wouldn't mind if they added Italy, Spain and the Balkan region to their offerings.
What else? Jeppesen never had any charts for Norway, Finland and most of Sweden, so no change there - have to use the ICAO charts (those for Norway are expensive, BTW).
Anyway, somehow the feeling is that a product has been pulled from the marked too soon and well before the end of its life cycle, which seems weird...but again, it's a business decision made by Jeppesen so one cannot argue with that.
One last note, yesterday, an employee of one of the major pilot shops in Germany told me that - according to customer feedback - they estimate that as of today, the very vast majority (90%?) of all private VFR pilots still prefer paper charts over an ipad...
I have probably said this before, but the way forward, especially for those countries (whose airspace isn't going to change much from one year to the next) is to run DIY-updated versions of today's maps, scanned and georeferenced under some app like Oziexplorer if you want a GPS moving map.
It's easy to add changes with Photoshop, etc.
If you want to provide a printed map, you will be paying some money to a print shop with a large format inkjet printer, and Jepp probably will have a few things to say about it if they see it happening a lot, because you will have to charge for it...
The Greek helicopter outfit that marked-up the 1998 ONC charts to create a Greek VFR chart (in 2 parts) sell the two for about €100 total. There is NO copyright issue with those, but the print shop they use probably charges a packet. The shops tend to double the price when they think it is copyright material...
For most other countries (Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech, Austria, Switzerland) there really is no need to worry, as DFS publishes very good paper charts for them, and they have no reason to stop, now as the market is almost all theirs...
The market is not entirely theirs, as many of these countries publish very good charts of their own. Denmark also offers their ICAO chart online for free download; Czech Republic offers the aeronautical layer but not the topo base, and only for a short period after issuance of a new edition.
If you want to provide a printed map, you will be paying some money to a print shop with a large format inkjet printer
I tried to print charts for myself and came to a conclusion that large format isn't really needed - I print out a partially overlapping mosaic of A4-sized sheets on a colour laser printer and carry them on a clipboard or in a binder filled with sheet protectors. Leafing through individual sheets is actually easier than refolding a big chart.
As far as I heard, the new EU legislation on public access to information prescribes member countries to make regular topographic charts and many other types of mapping information available through national GIS portals - and indeed, some EU countries already do. I wonder if any lawyer with a pilot license would be interested in convincing the European Commission that ICAO charts are part of public transport infrastructure information.
I had a lawyer research this for me some years ago.
The airspaces, restricted areas and so on CANNOT be copyrighted, and actually ANYBODY can make such maps without any legal problems. The same is true for approach charts - but you cannot simply copy a Jeppesen map. But if you take the published information, coordinates etc. you can probably draw, print and sell your own approach charts.
Of course this makes no sense because you need a huge and complex operation to constantly update these charts ... But in THEORY it's possible. Jeppesen has a copyright on their charts - but NOT on the information on the chart.
In an extreme case you would copy a mistake on a Jeppesen chart and they could prove that you infringed their copyright this way.
In that case, how/why did Jepp get sued by the Australian CAA, a few years ago?
It was settled out of court, under an NDA. But the basic issue was (publicly) that the national CAA(s) own the AIP information.
Maybe the EU is different - Australia is not in the EU.
There are, allegedly, extra complications in the UK, where the topo basemap is Govt copyright, and the CAA use that data for their VFR charts, and, allegedly, they pay a lot of £££ to the Govt (Ordnance Survey) for its use.
I tried to print charts for myself and came to a conclusion that large format isn't really needed - I print out a partially overlapping mosaic of A4-sized sheets on a colour laser printer and carry them on a clipboard or in a binder filled with sheet protectors. Leafing through individual sheets is actually easier than refolding a big chart.
I agree; that's what I do too. But for this to work for a pilot population would imply a website which carried the charts and via which one could print off strip charts - or some similar arrangement.
Yes, I was speaking about German copyright law. It was pretty clear that the information itself cannot be copyrighted. Just like the "100 km" for a speed limit on the Autobahn. Only the creative work can be copyrighted.
The problems start when Jeppesen proves that you used their chart as a template. There is a very thin line here ...
Alexisvc, thanks, this is important to have confirmed, but it's the more evident part of it. The less evident one is whether individual EU states can now (under the new, fairly recent legislation) be compelled to provide the airspace, approach and aerodrome information to the general public free of charge. In particular, I am talking of VFR AIP in Germany.
where the topo basemap is Govt copyright
This is presumably no longer an issue, as the OS mapping data (at least some) are freely available on data.gov.uk.
But for this to work for a pilot population would imply a website which carried the charts and via which one could print off strip charts - or some similar arrangement.
That's exactly what I am talking about - whether a team of lawyers and lobbyists could get this thing mandated on the EU-wide level, forcing the inclusion of aeronautical charts into the scope of publicly available data.
Skydemon? Print out what you need, to the scale you need, and knock off flight logs, plans, W&B to your aircraft's requirements.
For VFR we've never found anything which approaches SD in terms of value/cost and the regular updates, plus live weather/notams/flight plan submission
Skydemon? Print out what you need, to the scale you need, and knock off flight logs, plans, W&B to your aircraft's requirements.
SD doesn't have a good database for some countries - see e.g. here. That is relevant for pilots who fly around Europe.
I was actually astonished that SD say openly in their support forum that the Italian data is not easy to use so they just leave bits out...
This is presumably no longer an issue, as the OS mapping data (at least some) are freely available on data.gov.uk.
They did release some of it, yes, but only some.
One problem facing anyone doing map distribution properly is that they need to charge for it (to maintain a server, etc) and then you are a commercial service, and most of the "free from the State" products exclude commercial use. Take Eurocontrol data for example.
