Prior to using the much superior Sky Angel, then subscribing to Sky Demon, I used Jepp FlightStar for my VFR planning (I admit it !).

One of the features I found really useful in FlightStar was the ability to select a waypoint airfield to land and re-fuel (or clear customes etc whilst enroute to South of France). This allowed a trip kit to be printed with all legs included in the PLOG, and to automatically dowload the approach and landing plates etc for the intermediate stops. The PLOG also calculated the diffeences in the total leg times to include the landing and take off info.

In SkyDemon currently, if I want to fly to my ususal field in the south of France, I can't capture this landing en-route data on the PLOG or virtual radar etc.

Is this functionality already included in SD and I can't find it (if so please help look in the correct direction), if not can it be added as part of the planning procedures, perhaps as a right click on an en-route airfiled with an option to land and refuel? This is then reflected in the PLOG and virtual radar, and the plates downloaded automatically if available?

Great stuff and keep up the excellent work.

Ta

Hugh

Regards



Hugh

G-OIBM

Commander 114

SkyDemon doesn't currently offer multiple sectors per planned route. This is something we may do, but it would complicate the product and it doesn't get asked for all that often, so it's not going to happen soon.

As an ex Jepp Flightstar user I also miss the total trip facility.

I am currently planning several future trips with 4pob, all of which require fuel and/or customs stops enroute.

As I am planning on using my IPad in the cockpit, it would also be really usefull to have the whole trip in one.

When renting aircraft its useful to plan the whole route to get an idea of total time and rental cost, but is a pain then having to split and replan the route as separate segments.

I think you'll find this a very popular feature even if you haven't had loads of people ask for it yet.

I bet if you asked all current subscribers how many would find this feature useful I would be surprised if there were many that wouldn't.

That would be a nice feature to use when I collect airports with touch and go landings

PPL / NQ

The feature mentioned above is one i also would really like.
If you plan a trip for severall day's it becomes handy if you can plan the whole trip and see what you need.
So i am also one who is in favour of this extra feature.

grt
Freerk

This thread is very intersting as it makes one wonder if navigational equipments used in commercial operations cater for a similar facilty i.e. planning several trips in a single lump-sum.

Very Newbytheway

DurhamTeaseAirport

Well Jeppesen Flight Star planning software does, I don't know if that can be transferred to the on board GPS or Flight Management system or not.

I always used to plan return journeys as one flight, and print out strip maps for in cockpit use.

prep and plan for a trip with multiple sectors would be very useful ... yes please ..... gets my vote!

Tim,

Look like I may have started a thread that generating a bit of interest, so I'll keep hoping that we may get a multi leg trip kit in thye future (near-ish ??)

It really is a great function!

Regards



Hugh

G-OIBM

Commander 114

We've actually been prototyping this feature, i.e. multiple sectors per route, and it works fine. The trouble is, it's not really very different from how things are now, except that multiple routes are displayed on the map and clicking on one makes it "active", whereupon the virtual radar and everything else update to show that as the "selected" route.

What would you actually want to behave differently in a multi-sector route? We probably wouldn't particularly want to change the PLOG, as the PLOG is for a single sector by design. The virtual radar is also designed to represent a single sector.

Tim that would be a good idea to set it up in different sectors. Where as you plan the route you chose where to brake the route into sectors.
In the Plog you only see the sector information.
The only problem is how to print the different sectors. A suggestion could be to choose a sector and then print the sector, than choose another sector, print it
and so on

grt
Freerk

Hello Tim

any news on this topic?

grts
Freerk Bouwer

I'm another who would like this feature.

I've just spent the past 6 days on Fly UK and it would've been great to be able to plan a day's flying as a single route and split it into sectors to allow for fuel stops whilst planning.

It would also be handy to be able to select a waypoint in the air and change it to a landing point, presumably splitting the track into a sector?

If I am flying a 3hr leg, I may choose to divert en route due to weather or just for a break. I can add a waypoint and insert it en route, but I can't select it as a place to stop, just an overhead waypoint.

Cheers

Steve

Also interested by this feature...

also very interestred in planning a route with multiple sectors divided by fuel stops

br

Erik

I frequently plan a trip that's longer than one tank. I would like SD to be able to show me the entire route, beginning to end, with proper fuel and time planning. So I would like to be able to specify two additional items for each waypoint on a route: fuel added and time spent on the ground.

-- Chris.

I too would like to see this feature. Even though I am a new pilot and my routes are quite simple, it would be a great help.

Tim, what say you? There have now been numerous requests for this function on this and other threads. Would that be enough to put the issue on the feature list of one of the upcoming releases?

-- Chris.

It's something we're still considering. It's probably one of the features we don't have which is requested most often, but the points against it are also strong, in that it would require significant development investment and would complicate the product.

Hi Tim,

just thought I'd give you a few ideas from a user's point of view on what the added functionality should encompass.

For each waypoint in a route I would like to be able to designate it as an "overfly" (that's the default) or "landing" waypoint. It would be nice if the "landing" waypoints were shown in a different color so that they stand out easily when viewing a long route.

For each "landing" waypoing I would like to be able to specify the amount of fuel upon departure as well as the time spent on ground. These pieces of information should, of course, be carried over into the subsequent route calculations (ETA, weight and balance, etc.)

To access the additional information for each waypoint I think it would be easiest to do a "long tap" on it, which already brings up a waypoint information window which then incorporates the additional data items.




Greetings, -- Chris.

Just a bump of the topic. Has it made it yet to a likely spot on your to-do list, Tim?

Thanks, -- Chris.

No, I'm afraid not. The frequency of people asking for this is so low that it didn't even come up at our most recent development meeting.

That is a pitty.
The reason why there is not so much request for it that a lot of people have already asked for this option and are just waiting for it.
After doing a 8 day tour around eastern europe we really needed that option.
But I still think that SD is the best planning/ moving map software there is on the market for VFR flying.

with kind regards

I don't think that is the reason. We're very familiar with the process of constant demand, and that's how we decide what features get developed. When there is a true demand, it is constant. People tell us by email, by phone, on these forums and others, every week. That is simply not happening for multi-sector routes.

Hi Tim, now I am a bit confused. You just wrote:

No, I'm afraid not. The frequency of people asking for this is so low that it didn't even come up at our most recent development meeting.

But a little farther back you posted this:

It's something we're still considering. It's probably one of the features we don't have which is requested most often, but the points against it are also strong, in that it would require significant development investment and would complicate the product.                               

It's something we're still considering. It's probably one of the features we don't have which is requested most often, but the points against it are also strong, in that it would require significant development investment and would complicate the product.                               

I believe this would really make planning long trips a lot easier and more comfortable from a user point of view. It would not burden the user interface and could be integrated seamlessly with what's already in place. Plus, there have been numerous people on this forum asking for it. I can't, of course, speak to the absolute numbers but judging by the forum response this would not be wasted development time.

Please, keep this in mind and don't simply strike it off the new feature list.

Thanks, -- Chris.

It certainly hasn't been struck off anywhere. I just mentioned that because my colleagues, who collate this stuff and raise each proposed new feature at our meetings, haven't raised this recently.

Having given this a bit more thought, I'm prepared to slowly start making our way towards this feature. Don't expect it right away, but we can go some of the way in the forthcoming version and then together decide how far to take it in the next version, etc.

What I am proposing is that in the forthcoming version we enable multiple sectors per flightplan file. This would take the form of a "Land Here" button as Chris suggested, which would split a sector into two sectors. The user interface would subtly change once there is more than one sector defined, with each turning point that is a landing highlighted in different colours. There would then be a "selected sector" (highlighted) and ALL SkyDemon features such as Virtual Radar, NOTAM briefing, PLOG etc would refer to the selected journey only.

If that sounds like an acceptable first step, I will post a beta version of SkyDemon Plan only (for PC) with this feature turned on for testing. If and when people are happy with it, we can discuss how the feature can be extended in the next version, such as making the PLOG reflect all sectors or making the fuel flow from one sector to the next. As it stands (with my proposal above) each sector will have its own Planned Fuel setting just as the single sector does in the current version.

Feedback?

That's great news, Tim! I really think you are using this forum to good advantage in developing SD further. The only other company I know which does so is Dynon.

Your proposal sounds good. The way I understand it is that in the planning stage you can define points-of-landing (POLs) which break a long route into individual sectors. What SD displays in terms of ETA (final), DST (final), NOTAMs, etc. and the portion shown in the vertical crosssection view pertains only the the currently active segment. POLs are visually distinct from other waypoints. SD essentially treats a multi-sector route as a sequence of individual single-sector routes. Everything we have known to apply to routes will henceforth apply to each sector of a route individually, right?

For sectors to be useful during planning, it would be necessary that each waypoing can easily made into a POL and back again to an ordinary waypoint. The way I would be using this feature during planning is this: on a long trip, say across the US, I would plan the entire route as one sector. Then, depending on fuel and facilities I would break it down into individual sectors by choosing POLs. Therefore it should be easy to see the effect on fuel status when choosing this or that POL. I would optimize the route and come up with a properly "sectorized" version of it. Then, during the flight, there might be circumstances which require a deviation from the plan, i.e., I am actually landing one waypoint further along because of favorable winds. Upon landing, it should then be easy to adapt the planning to the new situation. This would mean to un-POL the previously planned stop and put a POL at where I actually landed. I would then specify fuel on board for this new POL and expect to see updated fuel available figures along the route. Based on these, I would then move my POLs to a new optimum.

I hope I made this clear from a user's point of view so that a software developer can see the underlying reason behind it and maybe even improve on it.

Excited to see this new feature, -- Chris.

Hi Tim,
What you propose is more or less what I do now using an Excel sheet, defining landing and fuel flow... So for me it is a very good option.

Chris, your first main paragraph is correct by my understanding.
I've implemented this with a simple "Land Here" command on the context menu for a turning point which inserts a POL as you call them, but behind the scenes it splits your sector into two distinct sectors.
There is a corresponding "Do Not Land Here" command to join up the two sectors into one again.
Fuel flow is going to be the big thing to get right going forward, but I must reiterate that for the forthcoming 3.0.8 I can't do that; it will literally just be the splitting and joining parts so that multiple seconds are represented in one flightplan. After 3.0.8 goes live, assuming there are no major issues with what I've already done, we'll get cracking on intelligently flowing the fuel from one sector's model through to the next etc and being able to specify that you'll be "topping up" at a POL.

This sounds like a great idea. Another requirement may be the ability to add an ETD (Estimated Time of Departure) for each POL (which may be the next day or later for an overnight stop) so that a flight plan pre-filed for a leg further down-route would have the correct times and DOF in it.

Simon

As each sector is its own flight in its own right, they all have their own flight details window entries and so all have their own takeoff time field already.

What will happen to the times if you plan a flight from A->B then insert a POL in the middle? Presumably the 1st sector can keep its initial takeoff time, but what about the 2nd sector if you don't have a 'time on the ground' field. You could just default to 'time on the ground' of zero so that ETA at the final destination will remain the same but this would be very inconvenient as you will then have to manually update all the subsequent sectors and repeat this every time you insert a POL into an existing sector. 

Tim,
this new feature is highly appreciated ...

As I see based on your posted Beta, witch is running great on the Mac using Crossover, it works perfectly on the iPad as well.
One key question I got in mind: right now to enter different leg properties you select the leg and enter all data in the usual "Flight Details" Dab.

Unfortunately the colors are not changing regarding the leg you are selecting. It would be much easier to validate with leg you are editing, when the color of the legs between the start - land here - end would have different colors. Like a "active" vs inactive" state.

As a request I would prefer that all legs are edited in one single "Flight Details" window, witch would be simply extended each time a leg is created .. a color code also here would be appreciated as well.

I understand and support your philosophy of leaving much in the responsibility of the pilot vs automating through SD (e.g. Fuel calculation over several legs.
To make it easier for the pilot/user I would find it supportive to just have this one "Flight details" tab with several legs underneath, as this would make the manual entering of data much easier .. 
for example - pilot enters first start time and fuel as full; as SD estimates arrival time / duration as well as fuel consumption the pilot can simply enter now the respective data in the following leg as a starting point .. ideally SD would pre populate in light grey the minimum date as an estimate from the leg before to make it even more convenient for the pilot to actively enter the data / confirm that data, or in red as the fuel would not last for the second leg as a warning ...

I know some of this may definitely something for above and beyond your current scope, but in general this new feature is a massive plus for SD.

Keep up the great work and enhancements
Markus

That's exactly the sort of guesswork we don't want to be doing automatically. As it stands, most people never set an explicit takeoff time. If you have, and you split a sector, the second sector will be brand new and its takeoff time will be undefined. The ETA function is a navigation function that applies only to the selected sector, there is no special processing for multi-sector routes.

I've now posted a beta including the functionality at the link below.
http://www.skydemon.aero/start/SkyDemonBeta.msi

Looks really good at first glance. One small problem I've noticed is that if you delete a waypoint (right click and select remove waypoint) which is a POL (i.e. the waypoint appears in two sectors) then the waypoint is only deleted in the current sector. This can result in routes that are broken with gaps in the middle!

Edited to add trivial point: when saving route the default name uses the first and last waypoints of the current sector not the whole route.

Edited again to add: the 'remove waypoint' feature also applies if an intermediate POL is dragged to a different location.

Thanks, that sort of feedback is useful. Behind the scenes the multiple sectors do not have to be contiguous, so we want the user interface to enforce contiguous-ness as much as possible in the normal course of adjusting routes. I'll publish another beta in a couple of days with such issues improved.

Here's some more:

1) When simulating a route with two sectors: Flying the 1st sector and the 1st sector magenta line displays in the virtual radar, but if the second sector is selected (whilst still flying the 1st) then no magenta line is displayed at all in the virtual radar. I would prefer for all sectors to be shown in the Virtual Radar whichever is the active sector, but if only one can be visible then it should always be the active sector.

2) If I create a waypoint over a town then I (quite rightly) do not have the 'land here' option available for that waypoint. However if I have a POL at an airfield waypoint I can then drag this and drop it onto a town and the POL attribute is not reset.

1. You're essentially asking for a new feature here. Please bear in mind what I wrote above about the limitations of what we're doing in the first instance. If you've got a multi-sector route and the selected sector is sector number 2, then SkyDemon navigation services essentially knows _nothing_ about sector 1 while you're flying. This could be a potential enhancement in the future, and that's the idea behind doing it in stages.

2. This is harmless and by design.

Another supporter for multi-sector plans here - being based at a non-UK non-customs airfield means all my flights back to the UK and the return are multi-hop to clear customs. I'll have a play with the MSI above, but for reference the Jepp method of a 'Route Pack' is adequate

Thanks Markus for the feedback. To be clear, the selected sector should have a big blue outline. Do you not see that on your PC?

I think Markus may have been referring to the iPad display. On the PC I see a faint blue surround to the selected sector (which could be more pronounced, or maybe better to dim magenta line for the non-selected sectors). On an Android tablet the blue surround is very thin and very faint and is easily missed if you don't know what to look for. I realise that you have not updated the Android and iPad versions to support this feature yet and am pleasantly surprised that it worked at all with split sectors - great stuff.

intact its the same on both devices .. as you can see from the virtual radar .. the first leg EDFE-EDRJ is active, but both legs incl the return are same colored.
its already great stuff, can not agree more, but some elements could be tuned a bit more
 

Hi Tim, my windows version shows 3.0.8.0 and does NOT have a blue line .. even so I can't believe this has anything to do with Crossover on Mac OSX, so I will check the same under a true Windows VM.

Not sure if my lengthy text was clear ... colored segments are one element, the data entering on these and the combined view under one "Flight Detail" tab are the others. Happy to describe in more detail if needed, also offline.

Thanks
Markus

Hi Tim,
just related my post regarding the Flight Details Tab while defining a multi Leg flight.
Right now I see that by clicking one of the legs the flight details tab fills with the respective data for that particular leg.
More preferable from my point of view would be to expand the tab by each leg and with that let the pilot scroll if necessary to the details within the same tab. this would allow simple data validation like tack off time for the following leg, fuel consumption etc .. 
Hope this helps to spin some thoughts for your great product to make it even better 
Cheers
Markus

The resolution of your screenshots is not sufficient for us to understand what you're talking about, I'm afraid. You mentioned virtual radar, but that doesn't make sense because this feature has nothing to do with virtual radar. Only on the main map is the selected sector highlighted with a blue outline (and only when there are multiple sectors).

I see what you mean about the flight details tab, we will take it into consideration when designing potential future enhancements.

when I mentioned "virtual radar" in reference to the picture, is simply the nice fact, that the radar screen shows you the active leg ... in the case of that picture the first leg (hence it made sense from my point of view to mention this, as there is no other indication in my case / there is NO blue line, as you where mentioning, neither on the windows version, nor on the ipad, as you can see from the pics

This is what I see on my PC. Note the (very) faint blue surround to the Northern sector.

OK now I see whats meant with "blue line" and as I focused in, I see this on my side as well..

Must admit, I do not find this type of highlighting the active leg useful, not differentiated enough .. rather I would see a real blue line with a magenta fade aside or anything like this (ideally configurable). Brings me back to virtual radar, as this is then the only dominant visual indication witch leg is currently active, aside of the flight details tab, witch should have the right title.

I agree. @Tim: How about fading the magenta line for the inactive sectors?

Personally, I would follow the defacto standard set by Garmin. There, the active leg is shown in magenta and inactive ones are white. I have only very limited G1000 experience and might have this wrong but the Dynon SkyView also uses magenta and white, I believe. Since the G1000 went through all the hoops of certification, why not leech off of them whenever it makes sense?

-- Chris.

Your wish is my command.

Will there be a revised beta posted?

We never do anything just because a competitor does it. I believe this issue, which is how to highlight the selected sector, is different from the issue of which leg is the one currently being flown, which we have always highlighted by including a white line down the middle of the leg.

I'm not sure if I will manage to post a revised PC beta before next week, but an Android beta has just been published which has the new multi-sector code and a few other changes (such as prototype georeferenced plates).

Is there a way we can get information about the total trip like fuel needed, total distance and total time needed. We get  all the details of a single leg. But for planning, this total information would also be nice to have.

Keep up the good work. It get better every time.

Regards

At some point, it seems like that would make sense for us to do. But since implementing this feature we have seen little demand for enhancing it, and there is a lot of work for us to do in other areas where there is much greater demand.