ForeFlight (merged thread)

Rather put the effort into long waited fixes in IFR routing for Europe

I agree totally.

Going for the Skydemon type market – a heavily feature-packed VFR satnav product which tells you with pretty graphics, with a resolution far exceeding the accuracy of any wx source, when you can fly, and tells you when your underpants need changing – is not going to be a good way to spend software writing money. SD did a heavy promotion on the UK social media scene some years ago and – anticipating Jeppesen’s MFDVFR would get a lot of funding and market penetration – worked flat out to pack in almost every feature anybody requested. And that was years ago, and they have added more since.

In the end, MFDVFR died due to excessive pricing and lack of effort by Jeppesen (except in Germany) but IMHO it had the best map presentation of all the apps, by far.

If I was developing a product like this I would strive for excellence in the other areas.

What is needed in Europe – and especially in the UK – is good solid VFR mapping, including danger areas and such, with graphical notams, and warning off all these objects, because that is what gets you busted.

The basic airport frequencies you can get by delivering the national AIP plates. Or Jepps, for those who want to pay the money. Any pilot who flies for real will already be briefing from these sources, not using a satnav app to give him the frequencies.

Peter wrote:

The basic airport frequencies you can get by delivering the national AIP plates. Or Jepps, for those who want to pay the money. Any pilot who flies for real will already be briefing from these sources, not using a satnav app to give him the frequencies.

As you know, ForeFlight extracts these frequencies from AIP and shows them in separate tab in airport view which is more than enough. In addition, you have the frequencies on the plates and you’ll probably get some more info on ATIS and at the end you’ll get it from ATC. More than enough sources for one data.

OTOH ForeFlight abandoned anything with iOS below ver. 13 probably because of better support for graphics in higher iOS versions rather than because of something really useful.

Appreciate the feedback all. We are aware of our shortcomings and are working to resolve these. It may be difficult to see the progress, especially if there are specific features you are looking for, but we continue to work on features and fixes everyday.

We have a lot in progress and I will continue to push for foundational features for Europe.

Please keep sharing your feedback and know I do appreciate everything you are saying.

All the best,
Josh

Hi all,

I’m back with some recent updates in ForeFlight, as well as, news that our portable flight hardware Sentry in now available via European resellers Sky Fox and Kniebrett. To learn more visit https://flywithsentry.com

Released Last Week:

Maps Sidebar

• The Maps view now displays information for most tappable elements and layers in a new semi-permanent sidebar that stays open while you interact with the map.
• The Sidebar appears any time you tap-hold on the map to open the Add to Route window or tap on most Map elements, including Aeronautical Map elements like airports and weather or informational layers like AIR/SIGMETs, TFRs, Fuel Prices, and more. Not all tappable map elements utilize the sidebar, including traffic targets and obstacles.
• The sidebar remains open until you tap the Close button or tap on a blank area on the map, allowing you to pan and zoom the map with the sidebar open, tap other map elements to update the sidebar with their information, change map layers or settings, use Map Annotation or the Ruler, and more.
• ForeFlight displays a flashing green marker on the selected map element or location where you tapped so you don’t lose track of it, and highlights any airspace at that location in green. Tapping on an airway or route leg will outline such segments in green rather than displaying the point marker.
• On iPhone, Map information is displayed in the lower two-thirds of the screen as before, but you can now interact with the map while viewing this information.

Rename Imported Documents

• Rename imported documents directly in ForeFlight for enhanced flexibility and organization.
• Only documents in the Imported drive support renaming, including documents that you’ve added to binders from the Imported drive. Documents in built-in drives (e.g. ForeFlight, FAA, etc.) and Cloud Document drives cannot be renamed.
• Renaming a document in your Imported Drive will also change the name of that document in any Binder you’ve added it to, and vice versa.
• Rename documents by tapping Edit in the Documents view toolbar while viewing the Imported drive or a binder containing imported documents, then tap Rename next to any document to edit and save its name.

Consolidated International Imagery

• The Imagery view offers improved organization for static weather products outside of the U.S. and Canada by better consolidating major regions.
• All European imagery is contained in the Europe region, all South American imagery in the South American region, and Mexican, Carribean, and Central American imagery is also combined into a single region.

SayWeather METARs

• View METARs from SayWeather advisory weather stations at small airports and heliports that lack certified AWOS.
• A “Not IFR Approved. Advisory Only” remark in the METAR text flags these as unofficial sources.
• Some stations are not equipped with ceiling or visibility sensors and will thus not report any flight category, but will report wind, temperature, dewpoint, altimeter, humidity, and some standard remarks.

As always if you have questions or feedback, feel free to share.

All the best,
Josh

@Josh just got SkyEcho2 on the EU grant scheme. How does Sentry access weather in Europe? It looks quite similar to SkyEcho, nearly as if they had common design elements?

Hi @RobertL18C,

Unfortunately, Sentry and SkyEcho2 are both not able to get weather without ground based towers. There have been some tests over the years in Germany, Denmark, and Southern England, but so far there has not been any further development beyond this. They do look similar as we’ve worked with uAvionix to develop Sentry through a partnership. There are some differences between the two and both do work with ForeFlight. Sentry is ForeFlight exclusive as we write the firmware for the device to be optimized for the ForeFlight iOS app and provide those updates through app as well.

We can only hope that there may eventually be a bigger push for this ground based relays as it’s been a huge win for safety in the U.S.

Unlikely to happen in Europe beyond what I would call the “hardware-promotion experiments” I call them that because they have no viable long term business model, but are a probably cheaper way to get press column-inches than buying advertising, and they get you looooads of social media mentions.

Maybe @PepperJo has some more recent info.

Otherwise, the only way to get “airborne-anything” in Europe is via satellite, with Golze ADL being the main choice and they use Iridium.

Hi all,

I wanted to post the latest release notes from the March release which was released last week.

Flight Binders in Plates

• Quickly gather, organize, and access the plates you need for an entire flight using new Flight Binders for a more seamless planning and inflight experience.
• New flight binders automatically suggest airports and procedures based on the most relevant routes from the Maps or Flights views, and you can also select from the full list of your planned flights. Tap Import at any time to load a new route from Maps or Flights into the current Flight Binder.
• Tap Send To > Plates on the Flights view to automatically create a new Flight Binder based on the current planned flight.
• Flight binders organize plates by category in a vertical column on the left side of the screen, with all airport diagrams, SIDs/STARs, approaches, and miscellaneous plates for each airport grouped together and accessible with a single button.
• Preview and select the particular plates within each category that you plan to use for the flight to create a neatly-sorted list that you can tap through or swipe with three fingers to move between adjacent plates.
• Your existing plate binders are accessible under Other Binders in the new slide-out Plate Binders drawer.

Expanded Place Labels

• ForeFlight’s collection of Place Labels has grown by 100-fold, with over 1.4 million labels now available for the entire globe.
• Included are labels for countries, states/provinces, cities/towns/villages, national parks, bodies of water like oceans, lakes, and rivers, and more.
• The expanded set of place labels is included in the High Resolution Basemap download for each region (More > Downloads > Download Settings), allowing you to save space on your device by only downloading the labels you need for your flights.
• A lower-resolution set of global place labels is bundled with the app to provide useful labels without the High Resolution set.
• Enable and disable Place Labels near the top of the Map Settings menu (gear button in Maps toolbar).

German Military AIP

• Customers with the Europe region can now download aerodrome charts and documents from Germany’s publicly-accessible military AIP for expanded coverage of many airports not included in the standard AIP.
• The new data is automatically downloaded with other Aerodrome Charts & AIP downloads for Germany, and appears in the list of downloads as “Germany (MIL AIP).”
• Airport diagrams from this dataset appear in the Airport Procedures list in a new “Bundeswehr” section.
• The German Military AIP also adds new documents in the Europe Documents drive.

French SIA VFR Charts

• All customers with the Europe region can now access 1:1,000,000 and 1:250k scale VFR charts from France’s SIA at no additional charge.
• The new charts are accessible as part of the “Europe VFR” map layer and can be downloaded by enabling the VFR Charts data type and the France region in More > Downloads > Europe.

Files in Flights Navlog & Briefing

• Easily attach a flight’s Navlog, Graphical Briefing, and flight plan form to the flight’s Files menu for simplified record keeping and inflight access.
• When viewing a Navlog or Briefing in Flights, tap the Send To button in the top right and tap Save to Flight’s Files to add a copy of the document to the Files menu where you can rename and annotate it. You can also send the flight’s raw filing form to Files by tapping the Send To button in the top-right after tapping Proceed to File.
• Files in Flights is available with ForeFlight Performance plans.

Honeywell Apex Connectivity

• ForeFlight can now wirelessly share flight details with Honeywell’s Primus Apex FMS via an installed Aspen Connected Gateway.
• Tap Send To > Panel on the Maps or Flights views to send flight details to the Aspen Connected Gateway, then select the Gateway as the FPLN Source within the Apex FMS to load the received information.
• Sharing flights from the Maps view will share only the route, while sharing from Flights will additionally send winds and temperatures aloft, cruise fuel flow, passenger and cargo information, and other performance details if available.

As always, for more information, please visit https://www.foreflight.com/releases/ for more information.

All the best,
Josh

Josh_Tahmasebi_ForeFlight wrote:

We can only hope that there may eventually be a bigger push for this ground based relays as it’s been a huge win for safety in the U.S.

Getting the 26 EU countries (plus UK, Switzerland, Norway) to all agree about anything is pretty much a hopeless exercise. A bit like the chance of it ever getting going in the US if it had needed approval by all the states, rather than just at the federal level, only worse because everyone speaks a different language.

There’s already a 500 ft announcement. What about an option to have a “Check gear down”-announcement as well?