SkyDemon is without any question the best tool for VFR flying in Europe. Take a look at the worst chaotic base map you can get: ForeFlight. It’s a pain for your eyes and the right frequencies are hard to find fast. Maybe they have better data from Jeppesen, but if the display is so worse, it doesn’t bring anything good. Btw.: SD gets its data directly from the AIP, and not via a third-party data source. Maybe someone has experience with PocketFMS (EasyVFR)? They have also very reliable data…
@dublinpilot will know about EasyVFR. I have it but have not used it anywhere near enough to be proficient.
I thought all satnav apps could display all airspace classes, with declutter options of course.
Hiding Class E on the basis that your customers don’t have an IR is just arrogant.
It really isn’t. It merely means that a lot of thought has gone into designing the product. Compare with ForeFlight and Garmin, which just throw all the data from the AIP at you, and say “there you are”.
If SD did show the class E airways, the VFR chart in the northeast of France would look more like this, and it would be unusable for VFR:
Doesn’t Class E need a clearance for VFR at night (at least in France)?
No. It is possible this used to be the case in France before SERA, but that’s a long time ago now. Germany even used to require a clearance for VFR Night in class G (!) airspace…
SD’s approach to this is still wrong, as was Jeppesens and others.
Airways published in the corresponding AIP section have implied airspace when not wholly included in other airspace such as a CTA or TMA. In the UK this is class A, in France this is class E.
Just imagine SD took the same approach to class A in UK airways.
And no, class E is NOT irrelevant, there are higher VMC minima in class E compared to class G.
Yes that has been a long-standing problem, with all the GPS products in Europe, and AFAIK it was never fixed. The UK CAA 1:500k VFR chart shows all the airspace correctly but the portables continue to show a useless mess of lines because they don’t merge same-class airspace. No idea what a G1000 etc shows.
The basic issue is that the makers import data from the AIP (by scraping the PDFs; AFAIK it isn’t available in a machine readable format) and then don’t merge same-class airspace because it would make the software harder. The “US implied airspace” thing is another factor which is not appropriate to Europe.
IMHO “airways” is a useless word. What matters is the airspace class. The result of the use of “airways” within the training sausage machine to scare the hell out of PPLs, and to denote airspace dedicated to “professionals” is just elitism, which has done a lot of damage to the understanding of airspace. Even today you see posts on forums like “can a PPL fly in French airways” which shows a total lack of understanding of airspace class.
Depicting Class E would not render a satnav product useless, IF it offered appropriate declutter options e.g. “show CAS applicable to VFR” flight would suppress Class E (but with an option to show it). This is no rocket science. Maybe the problem is that SD’s author doesn’t fly (he had a PPL at one time, AFAIK) and the product has always been suspectible to “excessive customer feedback” resulting in an overload of options.
Cobalt wrote:
And no, class E is NOT irrelevant, there are higher VMC minima in class E compared to class G.
It’s easier just to assume the higher VMC-minima apply (everywhere where in doubt) than having a useless/unreadable chart for navigation. Totally agree with boscomantico.
europaxs wrote:
Cobalt wrote: And no, class E is NOT irrelevant, there are higher VMC minima in class E compared to class G.It’s easier just to assume the higher VMC-minima apply (everywhere where in doubt) than having a useless/unreadable chart for navigation. Totally agree with boscomantico.
Depends on your weather! :)
In the UK it is definitely not the case…
In that case switch off class E.
If SD generated class E airspace areas implied by airways and then removed internal boundaries at the same altitude, the chart would actually be less cluttered. Many of the little “fillets” in France close class E gaps between airways, and if amalgamated you would see the reality – that there is a continuous area of class E airspace – rather than the misleading and incomplete picture you see now.
arj1 wrote:
Depends on your weather! :)
Makes it not better to have an unreadable cluttered chart to deal with in marginal weather 
Either show all of Echo or remove all of Echo, otherwise I can’t see the logic on what is relevant and what is not?
I agree they made the same choice as IGN chart but I expect SkyDemon to be more useful than the paper map, for instance, the IGN map does not show graphical NOTAMS, VFR “mandatory routes”, circuits, noise areas, arrival/departure paths but SkyDemon does it in clever ways and it helps to know where other traffic sits
Anyway one need to know if they are flying along published ATS routes (you know things like SID, STAR, ATSR, IAF, IAP) that are outside controlled zones (CTR, CTA, TMA) and what class of airspace they have around, even if it’s Golf, it’s high likely you need radio contact to fly them, also you need to see TMZ/RMZ, it’s part of good “situational awareness” or better put: know where a hit from IFR is likely to come from 
I expect anyone who flies high VFR, low IFR on day/night including near weather to be more “savy pilots” than those who fly VFR at 2kft agl OCAS in CAVOK or those who fly FL200 IFR fully in CAS talking to ATC
Peter wrote:
Doesn’t Class E need a clearance for VFR at night (at least in France)?
You need to maintain two way radio com for NVFR, but you are likely to fly the mandatory routes in Echo
