Mike,
I think every single one of us appreciates the work which you+Russel have put in to turn this disaster into a usable system, and the fact that you are continuing to work so closely with the guys at AIS to improve it even further.
With that in mind, I hope you won't take the following personally, or be offended by it.... but please take a step back and stop trying to defend the system! For example:
You can't input a/d's as turning points because the route format follows the ICAO Flight Plan format. You can't put a/d's into a FP so you can't do it here. Frustrating but logical.
I'm sure that's all true. But the fact is that Aim Far wants to use airfields as turning points. He doesn't care about the reasons that he can't do so.... all he wants to hear is that you've taken his point on board and that you'll argue his case for him. You're also giving advice on how to work around issues (e.g. registering as an international user to get some of the non-ICAO designators), which is great... but surely the ultimate aim must be to make the system intuitive enough that we can figure these things out without needing your help? Again, what we'd like to hear from you would be: "Well, you can work around that by doing XYZ... but I see that this isn't intuitive, so I'll raise that at the meeting and see if we can fix it."
As I said, please don't take my constructive criticism to heart... we really do appreciate everything you've done. In fact, I've found myself guilty of exactly the same thing I'm accusing you of (i.e. defending an IT system's flaws, instead of listening to the users and working out how to address the issues) in my day-job many times, so I know it's very easy to do!
As for what I want: basically as Pulse1 says - the ability to get NOTAMs not just for a pre-planned route, but also for a local bimble wherever I happen to want to fly. I appreciate that there are now third-party graphical tools out there, and I
really must get them installed on my PC and have a look at them, because I suspect that at least one of them would do what I want. Anyone know a way of adding a day or two to the week, because the current week isn't long enough!
FFF
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