CAA 500K Chart Amendments
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You can get up to date VFR charts, from Jeppesen 
It's called the Raster Charts product and will load into Flitestar, and also the now-discontinued Flitemap (which is same as Flitestar but can accept GPS input)
It's about £200 for all of Europe, containing their entire "VFR/GPS" 1:500k charts. I don't know how much the updates are but you can get them every 28 days, I think.
For areas not covered by the above charts, e.g. Greece, they add in the U.S. military ONC charts, which are rather poor and haven't been updated for years, but are better than nothing.
The cost is a lot less than buying all the paper charts for the same area.
You can then print off en route sections as required.
It is very bad of the CAA to hang on to its VFR charts as they do, letting them out to Memory Map but still only once a year. They do a dis-service to safety, just to make a bit of money. The charts should be made available for free or for a nominal fee, in a georeferenced format suitable for Memory Map and Oziexplorer. Then people could have a moving map GPS which runs the actual CAA VFR chart. No excuse then for getting lost
It's called the Raster Charts product and will load into Flitestar, and also the now-discontinued Flitemap (which is same as Flitestar but can accept GPS input)
It's about £200 for all of Europe, containing their entire "VFR/GPS" 1:500k charts. I don't know how much the updates are but you can get them every 28 days, I think.
For areas not covered by the above charts, e.g. Greece, they add in the U.S. military ONC charts, which are rather poor and haven't been updated for years, but are better than nothing.
The cost is a lot less than buying all the paper charts for the same area.
You can then print off en route sections as required.
It is very bad of the CAA to hang on to its VFR charts as they do, letting them out to Memory Map but still only once a year. They do a dis-service to safety, just to make a bit of money. The charts should be made available for free or for a nominal fee, in a georeferenced format suitable for Memory Map and Oziexplorer. Then people could have a moving map GPS which runs the actual CAA VFR chart. No excuse then for getting lost
Dancing with the devil, going with the flow... it's all a game to me.
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For those of us currently out of the VFR loop - can someone tell me how often the half mil charts get published? (not the updates) I'm gonna be VFR flying around June time and notice 'Edition 32' is out now but what I wanna know is whether it's worth buying it because I don't wanna spend £14 on something that'll be invalid come June, see!
Cheers,
VFE.
Cheers,
VFE.
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CAA VFR Chart Publication Dates are here.
Edition 32 was published on 16 Mar 06; Ed. 33 expected 15 Feb 07 - spend away!
Edition 32 was published on 16 Mar 06; Ed. 33 expected 15 Feb 07 - spend away!
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It is very bad of the CAA to hang on to its VFR charts as they do, letting them out to Memory Map but still only once a year.
No doubt if they saw a worthwhile market for the product they would produce it more frequently, however I doubt they wouldn't sell twice as many each year if they published them twice a year.
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The problem that Dublinpilot has come across stems from the fact that the CAA while only publishing a single chart edition each year, they make several reprints during the year and each reprint can include many of the hand amendments published.
For example, an obstacle may be missing from the 1st print of edition x. An amendment will be published on the web. When the 2nd print is made, that obstacle may be added to the chart.
Thus while there is a single edition, there can be several versions of that edition in use at any time. The amendments have to cater for the worst case.
Regards,
DFC
For example, an obstacle may be missing from the 1st print of edition x. An amendment will be published on the web. When the 2nd print is made, that obstacle may be added to the chart.
Thus while there is a single edition, there can be several versions of that edition in use at any time. The amendments have to cater for the worst case.
Regards,
DFC
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Thank you DFC.
I didn't know that, and am quite supprised by it!
But at least it makes some sense! Explains why they are publishing amendments and corrections that are already done on my chart.
dp
I didn't know that, and am quite supprised by it!
But at least it makes some sense! Explains why they are publishing amendments and corrections that are already done on my chart.
dp
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I could understand DFC's explanation if NOTAM'd amendments were found already incorporated on a chart bought and printed some months after the new edition first hits the streets; but the current 1/2 million South England was only published about two weeks ago. How could any altered reprint of this edition be done yet?
Chris N.
Chris N.
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Mike
I am aware that the CAA get much of the data from elsewhere, but equally I would suggest that if a mapmaker wanted to generate a map of the UK which contains the (rather low) amount of detail that the CAA chart carries, they wouldn't need to pay anywhere near the sort of money to Ordnance Survey which for example the AA (with their road maps) did their massive out of court settlement for.
Nobody has copyright on geographical data. The stuff has been there for many millions of years
You can generate 90% of what is on the chart from public domain sources. Nowadays you could do a deal with say Google or NASA for high quality photographic imagery. In fact if you flew around and photographed the place yourself you wouldn't need to pay anybody a penny.
The stuff one really needs for a VFR aviation chart is an obstacle database, which needs to be reasonably up to date. The CAA gets (or buys) that from the MOD, I believe.
The royalties the CAA pays on their VFR charts are absolutely minimal, or they should be.
I am aware that the CAA get much of the data from elsewhere, but equally I would suggest that if a mapmaker wanted to generate a map of the UK which contains the (rather low) amount of detail that the CAA chart carries, they wouldn't need to pay anywhere near the sort of money to Ordnance Survey which for example the AA (with their road maps) did their massive out of court settlement for.
Nobody has copyright on geographical data. The stuff has been there for many millions of years
You can generate 90% of what is on the chart from public domain sources. Nowadays you could do a deal with say Google or NASA for high quality photographic imagery. In fact if you flew around and photographed the place yourself you wouldn't need to pay anybody a penny.The stuff one really needs for a VFR aviation chart is an obstacle database, which needs to be reasonably up to date. The CAA gets (or buys) that from the MOD, I believe.
The royalties the CAA pays on their VFR charts are absolutely minimal, or they should be.
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Originally Posted by chrisN
I could understand DFC's explanation if NOTAM'd amendments were found already incorporated on a chart bought and printed some months after the new edition first hits the streets; but the current 1/2 million South England was only published about two weeks ago. How could any altered reprint of this edition be done yet?
Chris N.
Chris N.
This years chart was expected to be published in March. Thus an Aero information date of February 2nd was set and advance info with a date of March 16 was included. The publication was delayed so that the west end airspace changes could be incorporated.
It appears that the updates on the CAA website are based on the original publication date and information and the delayed chart is probably simply taken to be a revision of the March edition.
It's a pain but saves a bit of ink when doing the amendments.
As for an easy way to do the amendments;
Use the notamplot program or similar that plots lat/longs. Copy and paste the amendment list and use the notamplot to plot all the lat/longs. If any are in your area of interest then read the amendment and plot on chart.
Regards,
DFC
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The problem that Dublinpilot has come across stems from the fact that the CAA while only publishing a single chart edition each year, they make several reprints during the year and each reprint can include many of the hand amendments published.
For example, an obstacle may be missing from the 1st print of edition x. An amendment will be published on the web. When the 2nd print is made, that obstacle may be added to the chart.
Thus while there is a single edition, there can be several versions of that edition in use at any time. The amendments have to cater for the worst case.
You better be very sure of this, DFC, because I have personally never seen a CAA 1:500k chart of a particular edition (say Edition 30) with a date on it other than the very earliest one.
Could simply be that shops order what they think will be a fair chunk of their annual sales and then aim to sell out old stock first...
For example, an obstacle may be missing from the 1st print of edition x. An amendment will be published on the web. When the 2nd print is made, that obstacle may be added to the chart.
Thus while there is a single edition, there can be several versions of that edition in use at any time. The amendments have to cater for the worst case.
You better be very sure of this, DFC, because I have personally never seen a CAA 1:500k chart of a particular edition (say Edition 30) with a date on it other than the very earliest one.
Could simply be that shops order what they think will be a fair chunk of their annual sales and then aim to sell out old stock first...
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Originally Posted by IO540You better be very sure of this, DFC, because I have personally never seen a CAA 1:500k chart of a particular edition (say Edition 30) with a [B
date [/B]on it other than the very earliest one.
Could simply be that shops order what they think will be a fair chunk of their annual sales and then aim to sell out old stock first...
Could simply be that shops order what they think will be a fair chunk of their annual sales and then aim to sell out old stock first...
It would be nice if the CAA could actually let us in on their secret!
Regards,
DFC
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So you saw two charts with the same edition and the same date underneath it, with different things on the chart itself?
If you saw that, somebody should be shot. That's dreadful document control, rather important on something which is a legal enough document to enable or prevent a prosecution with a five-figure fine.
If you saw that, somebody should be shot. That's dreadful document control, rather important on something which is a legal enough document to enable or prevent a prosecution with a five-figure fine.
