NATS prepare to launch free pre-flight planning tool

NATS General Aviation Lead · Post by **NATS General Aviation Lead** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 1:21 pm

Some of you will know that NATS having been working for the past months on a project to make planning a VFR flight safer and easier.

We believe that some key functionality is essential in any such pre-flight planning tool and must include the following:

• Simple user interface
• Free at point of use
• Graphical NOTAM depiction
• Generates alerts when a planned route interacts with controlled or restricted airspace
• Generates basic Pilot’s Log
• Comprehensive VFR database

NATS have been looking hard for products that incorporate this functionality and for a way of acknowledging the clear safety benefits that any such product would bring to the GA community.

We are nearly there! Beta testing is well underway of a truly innovative and exciting tool developed by a well known and respected UK company who already specialise in VFR Flight Planning and In-flight GPS.

Watch this space for updates as we approach a launch date in time for the Easter Weekend.

In the meantime, if you feel you would like to be one of a small team of Beta testers to help in the final stages of validating the tool, then please PM me.

Ian Melville · Post by **Ian Melville** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:59 pm

Sounds good,
Will the output be recognised as an official source without disclaimers, or will we still have to log into the AIS system for 'official' notams etc?

NATS General Aviation Lead · Post by **NATS General Aviation Lead** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 9:35 pm

The product will carry a very similar disclaimer to that on the AIS site.

NATS General Aviation Lead · Post by **NATS General Aviation Lead** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 9:36 pm

Thank you to the huge number of people who have volunteered to Beta test this exciting tool. We now have more than enough testers and already a huge amount of very positive feedback. So if you have not been asked to test the software, don't worry, you will get your chance to play with the completed product for free in just a few days.

Nigel Hitchman · Post by **Nigel Hitchman** » Fri Apr 01, 2011 9:59 pm

This sounds like a good step forward. However does the NOTAM part of it get rid of all those admin notams meant for ATC or military that are of no interest to pilots? It has been explained that these have to be issued as Notams rather than through some other admin system. But presumably the filtering of this system should be able to take them out.
The types of thing Im talking about are.
-Some Mil aircraft is allocated squawk code 0251
- police helicopter is callsign heli 2
- phone number for xxx bombing ranges is changed to ...
- trigger notam for some admin change

keep up the good work!

Maybe we will see the £50 mode S transponder yet!!! (I know it was £500 before, but we have less budget to pay for it now the fuel price has gone up!)

NATS General Aviation Lead · Post by **NATS General Aviation Lead** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:05 pm

I am delighted to now be able to disclose the company that NATS have been working with to bring the UK General Aviation community a free VFR pre-flight planning tool is SkyDemon.

SkyDemon are already known and respected throughout the community for their SkyDemon Plan software. They have been working incredibly hard in conjunction with NATS to produce a streamlined, on-line version, free at the point of use, which delivers key functionality that we believe is essential to the safe planning and execution of a VFR flight. The name of this exciting tool is SkyDemon Light.

Over the next few days we hope to be able to formally acknowledge and endorse this key safety functionality in SkyDemon's product and jointly declare the tool operational but in the meantime we need your help to continue our programme of Beta testing. We would like to thank our original team of Beta testers for their comments and support and now extend the offer all LAA forum members to try out and evaluate SkyDemon Light.

The link to the prototype is www.SkyDemonLight.com/airspace.html The application will prompt you to install the Microsoft Plug-In, Silverlight on your computer but in practice this is already resident on many peoples systems.

Please post your comments and thoughts back to the thread and Tim Dawson from SkyDemon together with NATS Research & Development Team will monitor your posts to help us complete the Beta test phase and declare SkyDemon Light operational.

Tom Sheppard · Post by **Tom Sheppard** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:16 pm

Yeah; got two copies of Silverlight now. Nowt else.

Steve Brown · Post by **Steve Brown** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 10:23 pm

Crikey - that looks really good!
Really good.
Thanks - will try out more asap.
Regards
Steve

Ian Melville · Post by **Ian Melville** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:42 am

Jonathan, where do you want us to post comments?

Tom Sheppard · Post by **Tom Sheppard** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 8:06 am

Thank you for the PM. It is all working now. Wow! That is impressive.

NATS General Aviation Lead · Post by **NATS General Aviation Lead** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 7:08 pm

Ian Melville wrote:Jonathan, where do you want us to post comments?

Please post your comments straight to the thread so we can all benfit from the debate.

Thanks

Ian Melville · Post by **Ian Melville** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 8:07 pm

Hi Jonathan,
I have posted my comments in the flyer forum, but a quick respone would be that I have two requests
1. Allow level and wind for each leg
2. Popular continental airfields

It loaded up on XP with IE8 with no issues

Tom Sheppard · Post by **Tom Sheppard** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 8:32 pm

Sensible requests. Even if it is not possible to extend the system as far as the continent, The ability to adjust height on each leg would greatly improve the utility of the system. I could see that correcting for wind as well on each leg might be tricky.

Dave Hall · Post by **Dave Hall** » Wed Apr 06, 2011 1:45 am

Certainly very user friendly. It doesn't seem to bother about terrain clearance for the plog, and with no provision for a note of MSA, that's an area which could catch someone out - though you should see the hills flying VFR.

The 5-letter navigation points are handy too.

Paul Hendry-Smith · Post by **Paul Hendry-Smith** » Wed Apr 06, 2011 9:38 pm

Hi Jonathan

Simple one, are we going to see a version for Mac's??

Cheers

Paul