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Flying Dutchman
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+xYes, it's possible other software packages are splitting the PDFs themselves. We have been chasing the French (via Eurocontrol) to publish their IACs properly for a number of years now, but we cannot force them.
Clearly this is undesirable, so I'm following this up today to try to get some answers. Looking forward to hear if you get any answers.
I wonder if other software packages are splitting the PDF’s, how they do it. Because besides possibly splitting the PDF's, they also manage to get them each geo-referenced. Grahamb points out that the data arrives via a single ‘approved’ channel (I guess then via Eurocontrol). What kind of metadata or other document properties are accessible in the PDF's through the used channel? Do we know if other software packages use the same data source? If you see any possibility, I offer to help coding something that is able to separate / extract the PDF’s in single IACs 
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Tim Dawson
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Yes, it's possible other software packages are splitting the PDFs themselves. We have been chasing the French (via Eurocontrol) to publish their IACs properly for a number of years now, but we cannot force them.
Clearly this is undesirable, so I'm following this up today to try to get some answers.
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grahamb
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+x+x+x+xI suppose it wouldn't hurt to write to them yourself expressing the same desire. Hi Tim, I understand t he French have amalgamated their instrument plates into the "textual information" document in the Eurocontrol EAD system. In 2016 I saw a post of you, believing 'the French stated that they plan to reverse this change sometime in the coming months.' Have you got any update on this?
Today, I noticed that the Garmin Pilot App is able to get to the single plates (also with geo referencing), so somehow they achieved to sort of index the French charts. Below an example of LFLL. Would be great if this functionality can be restored, although I understand it's probably beyond your control.
Thx for the hint - for curiosity I checked Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight, just for two of the competitors. Both show the georef'ed plates, so they somehow get separate PDFs. Maybe a good entry for Skydemon to approach SIA again? That might be an option. But the fact that those competitors are able to do it, makes me wonder if SkyDemon could do it now as well? I have no knowledge how SIA/Eurocontrol distribute the plates or through what kind of API such databases are accessed , but maybe now there's a new possibility to index the French plates? Or could there be another data source that Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight are using enabling them to index the French Charts? It may just be that Garmin and Foreflight are big enough to devote resource to bursting the pdfs before geo-referencing each month.
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Flying Dutchman
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+x+x+xI suppose it wouldn't hurt to write to them yourself expressing the same desire. Hi Tim, I understand t he French have amalgamated their instrument plates into the "textual information" document in the Eurocontrol EAD system. In 2016 I saw a post of you, believing 'the French stated that they plan to reverse this change sometime in the coming months.' Have you got any update on this?
Today, I noticed that the Garmin Pilot App is able to get to the single plates (also with geo referencing), so somehow they achieved to sort of index the French charts. Below an example of LFLL. Would be great if this functionality can be restored, although I understand it's probably beyond your control.
Thx for the hint - for curiosity I checked Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight, just for two of the competitors. Both show the georef'ed plates, so they somehow get separate PDFs. Maybe a good entry for Skydemon to approach SIA again? That might be an option. But the fact that those competitors are able to do it, makes me wonder if SkyDemon could do it now as well? I have no knowledge how SIA/Eurocontrol distribute the plates or through what kind of API such databases are accessed , but maybe now there's a new possibility to index the French plates? Or could there be another data source that Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight are using enabling them to index the French Charts?
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pilot-byom
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 323,
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+x+xI suppose it wouldn't hurt to write to them yourself expressing the same desire. Hi Tim, I understand t he French have amalgamated their instrument plates into the "textual information" document in the Eurocontrol EAD system. In 2016 I saw a post of you, believing 'the French stated that they plan to reverse this change sometime in the coming months.' Have you got any update on this?
Today, I noticed that the Garmin Pilot App is able to get to the single plates (also with geo referencing), so somehow they achieved to sort of index the French charts. Below an example of LFLL. Would be great if this functionality can be restored, although I understand it's probably beyond your control.
Thx for the hint - for curiosity I checked Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight, just for two of the competitors. Both show the georef'ed plates, so they somehow get separate PDFs. Maybe a good entry for Skydemon to approach SIA again?
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Flying Dutchman
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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 7,
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+xI suppose it wouldn't hurt to write to them yourself expressing the same desire. Hi Tim, I understand t he French have amalgamated their instrument plates into the "textual information" document in the Eurocontrol EAD system. In 2016 I saw a post of you, believing 'the French stated that they plan to reverse this change sometime in the coming months.' Have you got any update on this?
Today, I noticed that the Garmin Pilot App is able to get to the single plates (also with geo referencing), so somehow they achieved to sort of index the French charts. Below an example of LFLL. Would be great if this functionality can be restored, although I understand it's probably beyond your control.
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kakugo
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+x+xStupid question: if the PDFs are readily available from the SIA web site, why can't Skydemon get them from there? Tim gets his AIP data as distributed via the single 'approved' channel. The answer is for France to fix their feed of data into that.
I can fully understand Tim not wanting to develop one-off non-standard methods that will be fraught with complexity and unanticipated challenges.
Yes, I agree. It would be possible to write a script that downloads the PDFs for each plate from the SIA web site, but it would be ugly, fragile and of course they wouldn't be georeferenced. So it was a stupid question indeed.
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grahamb
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+xStupid question: if the PDFs are readily available from the SIA web site, why can't Skydemon get them from there? Tim gets his AIP data as distributed via the single 'approved' channel. The answer is for France to fix their feed of data into that.
I can fully understand Tim not wanting to develop one-off non-standard methods that will be fraught with complexity and unanticipated challenges.
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pilot-byom
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@kakugo: Would you pay extra for this massive manual effort to every 28 days rip the big PDF apart and process manually? I guess this is major work, if not delivered process compatible.
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kakugo
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Group: Forum Members
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Stupid question: if the PDFs are readily available from the SIA web site, why can't Skydemon get them from there?
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