I’ve used Skydemon light for a month now and I think it’s fantastic. I've just bought a Skydemon Mobile MD so now I’ve been using the full version of Skydemon Plan for the past week and it’s even better, but I do have a few suggested improvements and some apparent errors to point out:



Apparent errors:



1.   The Alderbury VRP (just south of Old Sarum) is shown in the wrong place. It should be located at N510254 W0014354 where the road and railway track meet, but in Plan it’s shown located 1.1 nm south of this point. This makes me wonder if there are other waypoints in Plan that have been entered incorrectly.



2.   Just east of Old Sarum there is a Laser site shown with a big red circle. This red circle does not exist on the CAA chart. According to the CAA chart this laser site is inside the danger area. Why is there a laser site circle shown outside of the danger area in Skydemon Plan?



3.   In the Manchester zone the airway L975 is shown with the wrong base altitude. It’s shown coming down to 3,000 feet, but between 3,000 and 3,500 feet in this area it’s actually class D (see CAA chart).



Suggested improvements:



4.   Printing. It would be nice to have the option of printing ‘whole pack’ or selecting which sections to print. At the moment it’s a laborious process of having to print everything individually.



5.   Printing. It would be nice to have the option of printing the weight and balance.



6.   Planning. Is it possible to set the climb to begin after a waypoint. The altitude change appears to default to occurring before the waypoint.



7.   NOTAMs. On Skydemon light there is a magnifying class option within each NOTAM that you can click to see its location on the map. This feature does not exist in Skydemon Plan. Please add.



Overall a great product though.

It's not far enough out to cause any confusion in flight. It's possible this was done deliberately to declutter that area of the chart. If you wish, you could select Alderbury itself instead of the VRP as that is located at the road/railway junction.







If you have a look at the AIP (ENR 5.3.2), there is laser hazard with unlimited height listed as being inside the confines of D127, but the location is not actually specified. I'm guessing SD has arbitrarily placed it in the bottom left hand corner.







It's more likely to be the CAA chart that is wrong - might be worth checking the AIP. It's in ENR 3.1 if you can make any sense of it!







If you double click a NOTAM, it centres the map on that particular NOTAM and draws a cross hair over it.

Thanks for the suggestions and reports of errors. I'll address each of your points below.

1. The coordinates for this VRP do not appear to be published, but I can see that ours are not quite in line with the location of the town itself so I will make a note to get these updated.

2. I have asked the publishers of this information for clarification on that facility. It may be that its location and suggested radius were once published but are no longer being so.

3. The base of L975 is down to 3000 feet for a large portion of it. I can find no mention of any of it being class D in the AIP. Could you give me an exact coordinate where you believe our depiction of it to be wrong, so I can get a definite answer?

4. Agreed, this will probably come eventually.

5. We haven't heard many requests for this. If enough customers request it we will probably devote the resources to creating it.

6. Double-click a leg to specify explicitly whether the change of level should be before the leg starts or after it starts.

7. Double-clicking on a NOTAM takes you there. We'll consider changing the presentation to that of a magnifying glass for consistency.

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your responses.  Here are mine:

1. The coordinates I quoted for the Alderbury VRP are from Pooley's.  They are consistent with the VRP's depiction on the CAA 1:500,000 chart.  The VRP should also be defined in the AIP entry for Old Sarum, but you're right, it's missing - probably an oversight.

2. AIP ENR 6.5.1 "Chart of UK airspace restrictions and hazardous areas" shows the laser site to be inside the D127 danger area.  The current depiction of the laser site in SD shows it overlapping the standard join from Alderbuy VRP to Old Sarum so you get a nuisance warning while joining.

3. The area in the Manchester zone I was referring to was between DENBY and DESIG.  The Manchester CTA (class D) extends from 3000 to 3500 ft in this area, so it cannot also be L975 class A airspace.  I have now seen that the AIP ENR 3.1 shows L975 going down to 3,000 feet between WAL and DESIG but this must be an error.  This airspace can't be both class A and class D at the same time.  The Manchester TMA chart in the AIP clearly shows that the class D CTA-3 is 3000 to 3500 feet, as does the CAA 1:500,000 chart.  I can see now why the error is in SD plan, and I expect it will be difficult for you to change until the AIP is corrected.

6. & 7. thanks I will try that

Stuart

You're correct that airspace cannot be two different classes at the same time, but there are many cases where airspace of different classes overlaps and in this case, the highest class of airspace becomes the effective class of the area. I'll forward your comments to the people responsible who will either correct the printed CAA chart or correct the AIP. There have been a few instances in the past where the CAA chart has been amended after people noticed discrepancies between it and ours, and ours turned out to be correct.