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French AIRAC AIP SUP 198/20 not reflected in SkyDemon


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ZorgroZ
ZorgroZ
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A few months back, the French DGAC has released AIRAC AIP SUP 198/20 with pretty extensive airspace changes in the Annecy area. These are in effect from December 3, 2020 to April 21, 2021.

I have noticed that SkyDemon (French chart updated) does not reflect the updated airspace. This is probably expected, as the above document says:

This [sic] modifications will be included in AIP FRANCE on AIRAC AMDT 04/21.

I take that this means that the official charts will only be updated in AIRAC cycle 04/21 (so it appears in April, toward the end of the effective period of the changes), and I assume that SkyDemon uses these official chart updates.

The obvious question: Is there any way for SkyDemon to incorporate the airspace changes already now, either by SkyDemon (i.e., upstream), or local amendment by the user? Flying with out-of-date maps seems like an airspace violation waiting to happen.

Furthermore, I am a little in disbelief about the lack of practicality of what the DGAC is seemingly doing here:

Do they really expect pilots to try to figure out what the actual detailed airspace changes are (took me 1+ hours of concentrated work comparing old and new charts, as well as retracing the GPS coordinates of the airspace polygons), and somehow amend their paper maps?

As most people fly with GPS and electronic maps today (last but not least due to the complexity of the airspace), there seems no way to fly with up-to-date electronic maps until the AIRAC cycle comes when they make the official release. So either you have to go back to paper maps until then, or you cannot rely too much on them and have to remember that some airspace is different than shown, which is quite a cognitive overhead.

Michael

ZorgroZ
ZorgroZ
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ZorgroZ - 1/25/2021 9:41:33 PM
A few months back, the French DGAC has released AIRAC AIP SUP 198/20 with pretty extensive airspace changes in the Annecy area. These are in effect from December 3, 2020 to April 21, 2021.

I have noticed that SkyDemon (French chart updated) does not reflect the updated airspace. This is probably expected, as the above document says:

This [sic] modifications will be included in AIP FRANCE on AIRAC AMDT 04/21.

I take that this means that the official charts will only be updated in AIRAC cycle 04/21 (so it appears in April, toward the end of the effective period of the changes), and I assume that SkyDemon uses these official chart updates.

The obvious question: Is there any way for SkyDemon to incorporate the airspace changes already now, either by SkyDemon (i.e., upstream), or local amendment by the user? Flying with out-of-date maps seems like an airspace violation waiting to happen.

Furthermore, I am a little in disbelief about the lack of practicality of what the DGAC is seemingly doing here:

Do they really expect pilots to try to figure out what the actual detailed airspace changes are (took me 1+ hours of concentrated work comparing old and new charts, as well as retracing the GPS coordinates of the airspace polygons), and somehow amend their paper maps?

As most people fly with GPS and electronic maps today (last but not least due to the complexity of the airspace), there seems no way to fly with up-to-date electronic maps until the AIRAC cycle comes when they make the official release. So either you have to go back to paper maps until then, or you cannot rely too much on them and have to remember that some airspace is different than shown, which is quite a cognitive overhead.

Michael

I have entered the changed airspace into the custom data editor, and it shows up well. Of course, instead of amending the existing airspace definitions I have added new airspace. Thus I see lots of duplicate airspace in the map (old and "new", i.e., amended).

There is no way of suppressing the "old" airspace, right?

The imputation is a little cumbersome, here are some improvement suggestions:
  • Allow bulk adding of points from a (e.g., comma or newline-separated) string.
  • Add keyboard shortcuts (especially for adding new points).
  • Allow renaming of the 
  • Don't discard newlines when pasting points, as the source PDF often.
  • Don't round radius of arcs to one decimal (unless this is just for display purposes) to maintain full accuracy.
On the other hand, any of this is not a big deal, as the output file is plaintext with some funky custom data format, so can just as well generate it in a text editor or by code.

Thanks, Michael

Tim Dawson
Tim Dawson
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It's hard to say why France has decided to promulgate such changes in a SUP rather than modifying the airspace through the normal AIRAC process. Our tools are designed to work with the AIRAC process, and although we have tools for introducing temporary airspaces through SUPs (which does occur in some countries) what France has done here is to make wholesale changes to an area.

I would be curious how France expects anyone using paper charts (even digitised ones) to cope with what they've done.

ZorgroZ
ZorgroZ
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Tim Dawson - 1/26/2021 9:47:19 AM
It's hard to say why France has decided to promulgate such changes in a SUP rather than modifying the airspace through the normal AIRAC process. Our tools are designed to work with the AIRAC process, and although we have tools for introducing temporary airspaces through SUPs (which does occur in some countries) what France has done here is to make wholesale changes to an area.

I would be curious how France expects anyone using paper charts (even digitised ones) to cope with what they've done.

Makes sense Tim. And can you confirm that it's not possible in SkyDemon to amend existing airspace definition by the user (i.e., non-custom data) to avoid the duplicate airspace when using custom-data amendments?

I reckon in general, it's not safety-critical, as adding more controlled airspace with custom data adds clutter, but errs on the side of caution (i.e., makes the airspace more restrictive rather than less).

pgroell
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There are quite a few SUP AIPs ending on 21 April 2021 (https://sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/documents/supaip/aip/id/6).
I think these SUPs are active until the next paper chart is released.
It's a pity they didn't integrate this already in the electonic charts !

Tim Dawson
Tim Dawson
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ZorgroZ, confirmed.
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