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Planning a route following a line feature


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Andrew Mills
Andrew Mills
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Hi Folks,
Firstly thank you for letting me join the forums. There is a wealth of information here!
I couldn't find anything about planning to follow a line feature rather than inserting several turning points along the feature.
In this case I would like to follow route MIKE from MIKE 2 to MIKE 1, but on other occasions I might like to follow a road or railway etc.

Any ideas?

Thanks, MA

Tim Dawson
Tim Dawson
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You'll just have to insert a few turning points, SkyDemon doesn't have a feature to automatically follow a line feature in that way.
Andrew Mills
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Tim Dawson - 2/22/2021 10:14:27 AM
You'll just have to insert a few turning points, SkyDemon doesn't have a feature to automatically follow a line feature in that way.

Hi Tim, thank you. That's a straightforward solution. Can I then delete entries in the PLOG so that I don't get a load of 20 second long legs filling up space on the page?

Tim Dawson
Tim Dawson
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No, you can't. Personally I wouldn't create that many turning points, there isn't any real benefit to doing so except that it looks like a neater attempt to follow the line.

Precisely following a line feature is something we've discussed internally many times but it isn't very clear what the benefit would be (other than the fact it would be very satisfying). It's unclear what the PLOG would say for the "leg" and, since we don't know how precisely you'd actually end up following the feature, fuel and performance calculations would no longer be very accurate either.

Andrew Mills
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Tim Dawson - 2/22/2021 10:31:08 AM
No, you can't. Personally I wouldn't create that many turning points, there isn't any real benefit to doing so except that it looks like a neater attempt to follow the line.

Precisely following a line feature is something we've discussed internally many times but it isn't very clear what the benefit would be (other than the fact it would be very satisfying). It's unclear what the PLOG would say for the "leg" and, since we don't know how precisely you'd actually end up following the feature, fuel and performance calculations would no longer be very accurate either.

It's only because I have got used to using another flight planning software system (PFPS/FalconView) which has this functionality. On some occasions I want to follow a long line feature which is highly serpentine in plan form (for example the Murchison River in Western Australia or the A13 between Austria and Italy). In both of these cases it is not possible to fly straight line at planned altitude without putting in plenty of turns to avoid terrain either side of the line feature. The straight line calculation doesn't fully do justice to the fuel used when following this sort of line feature, and will indicate that less fuel has been used than is actually the case. With PFPS you can remove lines from the PLOG, whilst retaining the fuel calculations. With FalconView you can 'snap to' line features (eg rivers or VFR mandatory routes). I wonder if people following the London Helilanes might find this advantageous too?

Tim Dawson
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They might indeed, and the London heli routes are probably the most compelling reason we've thought of for doing this. But they're only one feature, which means the bar isn't yet reached.

The alpine GAFOR routes are a contender, but they're a good example of where the pilot almost certainly will NOT actually be following every single curve and meander, and therefore rendering our calculations not very useful.

GO

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