Thought you guys might be interested to hear that Australia is leading the way in this area...
Reading up ahead of forthcoming trip to Australia including some planned flying in he Sydney Basin area, I was very impressed with the quality of the documents - freely available on the web - which CASA makes available to aid visual VFR flight relatively in busy / complex areas, i.e. the VPG's (
http://www.casa.gov.au/avreg/pilot/pilotgde.htm)
In response to a growing number of airspace infringements here in the UK - increasingly caused by private pilots according to the stats - UK CAA have announced in a recent article in the Royal Institue of Navigators magazine that "we will follow the Australian CAA [sic] and make digital mapping available on the Web." They go onto explain that they are beginning by trialling A4 sized cut-down versions of our 1:250,000 maps, with associated aerial photographs of VRPs, to make negotiating some of our VFR corridors more easy for those unfamiliar to the area, e.g. the 1500' max ALT low-level route that runs north-south between Liverpool and Manchester, under the Manchester TMA.
So well done Australia for showing the way! Its a great example of how we can ALL learn from each others systems, e.g. taking the best of ICAO, US, European and Australian approaches where appropriate.
Cheers all,