Here is an example of the lovely airfield/picturesque town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber EDFR Web site https://stephanzorn.jimdofree.com/visitor/vfr-approach/ giving access to a pdf link of their Approach Plate.
Maybe a mix of different things here. A VAC is after an ICAO “standard”. Anyone can make their own charts, label them “official” and place them in the public domain. This is in fact what most small un-public/private fields do. This is not a VAC though.
Yes, but that’s neither AIP or Jeppesen. The themselves (the local club there) has redrawn it in order to be able to put it on their website.
But yes, a few airfields still have copyrighted plates on their website.
Sounds like there is a case for having georeferenced VACs, as a GPS moving map. How would one obtain that? Presumably whatever happened to Jepp MFDVFR had that; the €300 sub included the German VFR AIP.
Both Skydemon and Foreflight do this along with helpful pilots notes from previous visitors along with so much more – EDFR as in the example above
Peter wrote:
According to some pilots, German airfields who put the VACs on their website got pursued by the DFS (or LBA?) to remove them.
<shrug> Pilots can get them for free by email by phoning up the German AIS anyway.
If you are charging 100+/year and pick up a few k subscribers, then you can pay a “slave” to draw these up Especially if you pass on the DFS fee directly, as SD does and possibly FF does also.
An awful lot of people have a “source” for the Jepp stuff, including “VFR Europe” which includes all of this.
IIRC, MFDVFR had the Jepp “VFR Europe” package. That is super neat; a uniform style for all the Europe.
100+ a year, as you put it, is nothing in aviation terms – I’ve spent that on a Shoreham landing fee and lunch.
Must have been a £70 lunch in town, or you fly an Antonov
Sure, 100 quid is “nothing” but 100 quid here, 100 quid there, it all adds up, and this is critical data to avoid the pilot getting into trouble. Not because he can’t fly but because he upset some nimbys. And Germany has decided to make this a profit centre.
I pay $450/year for my GPS database, which I regard as reasonable.
LeSving wrote:
This is not a VAC though
True – obviously due to copyright reasons they can’t just publish the VAC. The pic on this webpage, however, shows the prescribed traffic circuit exactly as it is shown on the VAC.
EDFR is a good example of what you have to expect in Germany, as it has one specialty that you find also in few other places: You have to join the pattern from the outside (in this case from southeast) in about the middle of the downwind leg. An overhead join or a straight in approach is explicitly not allowed (and can’t be allowed by the “Flugleiter” either) – unless obviously in case of emergency where one can do everything to get to ground safely…
Peter wrote:
and possibly FF does also.
The FF circuit info on the above screenshots is a standard part of the Europe subscription coverage. No need to pay any extra “DFS” charge to get it.