online flight planning recommendations

[rusty sparrow]

Any recommendations on websites that will allow me to enter, start, destination and way points together with airspeed, wind and altitude etc and then print the route?

[englishal]

I use Jeppesen Internet Flight Planner. It gets the winds from the net. Costs about £150 per year and the plogs are spot on, to the minute.

Also use SkybookGA.com which is good.

[IO540]

Any recommendations on websites that will allow me to enter, start, destination and way points together with airspeed, wind and altitude etc and then print the route?

VFR or airways?

Not aware of a "website" which does either, for Europe.

[Curtis E Carr]

Is this what you're after? (http://www.goflying.org/nav/vfrplan/index.htm)

[rusty sparrow]

VRF only - don't have IR rating or instruments

[rusty sparrow]

that's pretty good - but is there a free one that overlays a navigation chart?

[rusty sparrow]

This also looks good - just found on Flyer.

Any thoughts on it?

[pulse1]

I use the sawn off version, Navbox Quickplan, which does everything I need for VFR in UK and Europe. Best value software I have ever bought.

[DaveW]

ProPlan is excellent, and thoroughly recommended. Lots more detail on its merits if you do a search on Flyer.

It doesn't meet the requirements of the original post, though, as it isn't an online tool.

drauk's fly.dsc did what is asked. Unfortunately he had to take it down due lack of time; it was superb whilst it lasted, and he was able to support it.

[rusty sparrow]

that looks like what I need - thanks for the recommendation pulse1

[BackPacker]

Not free, but PocketFMS is nice too.

The idea is that you prep the route on an Internet-connected PC and then transfer it to a PocketPC (various types supported). You then mount the PocketPC in the cockpit somewhere, attach a GPS and track your progress. It's got loads of nifty features, such as interfaces with both the Zaon XRX and Flarm. Can't speak from experience though - I'm still pretty much a stopwatch and compass guy.

We have some version of Navbox at the club and the main disadvantage to that is that it doesn't do vertical navigation. So a reasonable VFR cross country, where you fly cross-channel as high as possible, then need to duck below a TMA somewhere and then climb overhead a MATZ or something is not supported. In PocketFMS you input the desired altitude per leg and it shows you a list of airspace types you're traversing, with frequencies and everything. I don't know if the lack of vnav is specific to the version of Navbox we have or a general feature that's lacking across the range.

[IO540]

Navbox is an excellent VFR flight planning program and I use it for all VFR trips, all the way down to Greece but, due to the very bare map representation (avoidance of copyright payments for maps etc is what has enabled the low price of the program), it must always be used together with the real printed (or the real electronic) VFR chart which shows CAS, terrain (MSA) etc etc.

Navbox makes a very poor moving map product - precisely because the map data is so bare.

The two requirements are very different.

For flight planning, you need something on which you can draw the route, and print off a plog (wind corrected, optionally).

On that plog you then write down the MSA and the planned altitude, for each leg. These values come off the printed chart. They cannot really come out of anything electronic, like a Jepp GPS database, Navbox, Flitestar, etc. All these products have databases which are very hard to read.

For an airborne GPS, you really need to be running the real VFR chart. For the UK, Memory Map running the UK CAA chart does this nicely, but requires a reasonable size screen. When you see the real VFR chart, you can use a moving map GPS for vertical navigation hints (alongside the previously prepared plog, of course ;) ).

I have seen PocketFMS and it appears to be a good product but I don't recall how clearly readable are the vertical airspace annotations.

[BackPacker]

I have seen PocketFMS and it appears to be a good product but I don't recall how clearly readable are the vertical airspace annotations.

The annotations on the moving map are just like on a VFR map: contour lines. It depends on the zoom level, resolution and such if you can see and read them.

But one of the features of PocketFMS is that you tap the screen at an arbitrary position (most likely your current position, or somewhere you'll be in a few minutes time) and it'll show you a vertical profile of the airspace: who owns which altitude block, what class, what frequencies and so forth. All the way up to FL600 if you wish.

[Nipper2]

I have posted something roughly similar to this on the Infrigements thread in another place but I thought worth repeating here..

Navbox ProPlan will print the MSA for each sector for you automatically on the Expanded Nav Log

The minimum horizontal separation allowed is 5nm and the minimum vertical buffer is 500'. You can of course increase these in the 'configure' box.

I have just plotted several trial routes, all around the Kingsclere mast. In every case the MSA comes up as 1747 feet (1247+500) so long as I am within 5nm and drops to something else when I move more my route more than 5nm away. I can not of course vouch that this works all over the Europe. Like most people I tend to do a quick check with a line on the chart just to be sure...

You can of course toggle the high obstructions on and off when you configure the map.

I can't find it right now, but in a thread about flight planning software some time ago, I do remember reading that Navbox was thought to be pretty good and Flightstar less so in this capacity (in Europe at least due to a poor obstructions database).

In so far as I can see NavBox does a great job of working out MSAs and I'm not sure where IO540's comments about the data being hard to read stem from (I do however agree that the mapping is a bit basic).

Hope that is helpful.

[bubo]

go for NavBox Quick Plan - best value for money, just the stuff you need, nothning more, nothing less.