Airport Plates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Fuji Abound]

Seems to me the plates (VFR) for many airports in Europe and England are available on the web - but not all in one place. It also seems to me that there is no one single source that pulls together all the low level flight information services available through Europe, together with the sort of service that can be expected and the frequency (ies) to use. Am I correct, would this be useful, what about copyright problems (maybe there are none) etc., etc.

[100LL]

Yeah but are they all current. You know this game why give somthing away when you can have someone over a barrel for it.

[skydriller]

Would anyone have links to any of these types of website they can recomend? I for one would be interested in checking them out.

[BayAreaLondoner]

One that I use a lot is www.aeroplanner.com (http://www.aeroplanner.com)
It is primary US-centric but there appears to be some limited non-US data. For instance, try doing a SmartChart and typing in EGLL as the airport ID.
Perhaps if enough of us pressure tham, they will increase their non-US coverage. They do seem to be quite responsive to customer requests.

[This message has been edited by BayAreaLondoner (edited 26 June 2001).]

[Lew Ton]

And how do you know they are correct, complete and up-to-date?

[BayAreaLondoner]

According to the aeroplanner website's disclaimer, the data is not for operational use. It does not relieve one of the responsibility to carry official charts with them.
I use the site as a planning aid. It seems to provide useful functionality and so far the data I've used appears to be up to date. While I'll have the generated flight plan on my kneeboard, I'll be navigating from a real paper chart on which I've performed my flight planning, possibly based on info obtained from aeroplanner, but checked against the real charts.
Publication dates are shown on the various charts (e.g. Sectional is: San Francisco Ed 66 Pub 22-Mar-2001 for one of the SmartCharts, and since I have the paper one I know that it is current, and for the Terminal Procedures, it says Effective to 12JUL2001).
As far as I am aware, the only electronic device that I am aware of that *could* replace paper charts is sold by Jeppesen at some considerable cost. It is basically an A4-sized tablet computer and contains current nav data.
Since charts don't run on batteries and are foldable, I think I'd always want to have them with me. But I am going to use the technology that is available in a reasonable manner, and at the end of the day, I think that is the right attitude to have.

David.

[This message has been edited by BayAreaLondoner (edited 26 June 2001).]

[This message has been edited by BayAreaLondoner (edited 26 June 2001).]

[Nightstop]

Spanish airport charts can be found on the Spanish AIS website, click here then follow the links "AIP" and "AD" etc.
http://ais.aena.es/AIS/menu_principal.htm

[The Jaguar Fan Club]

For the UK, go to www.ais.org.uk (http://www.ais.org.uk) and look at the Aerodrome section.

This is the online UK AIP and kept right up to date as it should. You can also access all the AIC's and AIRAC ammendments from here.

Happy Flying
TJFC