The ZIP was a previous implementation that was active only for a day. Now we generate the integrated PDF.
Regarding geo-referencing the plates. We have thought about this. It would not be difficult and could either be done in a peer to peer fashion (users do it themselves with an easy to use web interface and in return for submitting plates, they get the right to download plates, with some sort of peer review for quality control) or using cheap labor via odesk and similar.
I believe SkyDemon have done work on this in the past and I know that Moving Terrain have done this for years. The main hurdle would be how users could make use of such geo-referenced PDFs. There are no really good and universally available applications on the mobile platforms and we don’t really feel like writing Android/iOS/etc. software.
Still an interesting idea that I haven’t given up on yet. Just needs to be thought out better.
Achim,
I have once gep-referenced all german VFR approach charts for an App … no, it’s really a simple thing to do, The problem is the amount, and to keep them up to date. If you let users do it you wll have too many mistakes… but if it was done in some kind of “Wiki” … It would definitely be a service many would pay for. There is no good reason to do all this work for free …
If you let users do it you wll have too many mistakes
There are simple ways to do quality control. One is peer to peer (a plate needs to be approved by x other users before it becomes available) and there are several automated ways that can help. One could do the workflow so that every navaid has to be marked on the plate and given that we know the navaids’ position, we can automatically check the geo referencing for consistency. Same with airport ARPs.
It would definitely be a service many would pay for. There is no good reason to do all this work for free …
It’s amazing how much people are willing to do work for free. I have some experience in past projects where I had volunteers contribute tens of thousands of hours of free work, just for the greater good. A lot of people derive satisfaction from doing good things. Obviously the work product should be available openly. I see no reason to monetize it. Look at Moving Terrain, they were by far the first to do IFR route generation, mobile filing, geo-referenced plates but they are cornered in a minuscule niche, they have completely missed the mobile device revolution and nobody knows them.
I’m fairly confident how the workflow could be done, it’s no problem to get all plates geo-referenced and keep them up to date. It’s the use of the plates that I haven’t figured out. But how to get them onto all mobile devices in a useful way?
I am in the middle of developing another pilot app. But once i am ready with that I am willing to help.
To “monetize” something is one thing, but to pay a fair low price for a great service (and it’s maintenance, further development) is a different thing.
Not to be misunderstood: I find the idea to do something like you do for free great. Not everything as to be a bout money, i agree.
I guess you will need to develop at least a simple GPS driven app that can open and display the charts. I don’t think that’s a big deal for an iOS/Android programmer.
Achim, that is absolutely fantastic. I particularly like the idea of providing all plates in one PDF with TOC – although I have not looked at it yet. If it is anywhere as good as the briefing pack, it will be good!
What a great feature! Now if you could add the Jeppesen charts as well it would be fantastic (free of charge of course) ;-) (kidding, great work indeed)
I hope you’ll see a couple of new Swedish users today as well. I held an hours presentation today with the topic ‘Flight planning’ for fellow pilots in south Sweden (Royal Swedish Aeroclubs southern chapter) where I highly recommended both this forum and the router. They were all very impressed. I hope they’re all clicking away right now :)
Great work Achim.
The app of choice for running georeferenced maps is Oziexplorer, which exists for windows and android. It is not free however.
There are various moving map apps, also for IOS. None of them is particularly good but they should run simple rectangular-projection (Mercator?) material.
OziExplorer is a great tool, not very user friendly but very powerful. Not available for iOS which is a must unfortunately.
Also we need one important feature: the application should automatically determine which plates to display based on the current position. I think OziExplorer can do that to a certain extent.
I really don’t want to develop a mobile app but it looks more and more like it will be required to make this work well :-/
What is needed is auto changeover to/from the airport taxi chart below say 50kt GPS GS.
I don’t think any generic off the shelf app can do this. Jepp Flitedeck used to do this, but it was a crap bit of work which crashed all the time.
The sids/stars are not usually to scale anyway so can’t be used.
I have not analyzed all charts but the vast majority of AIP charts for SID/STAR are scaled, at least most of the chart. Non scaled charts is a Jepp specialty.
