After Hours

Flight Planner for Windows is much more than a package to use track, wind and airspeed to compute heading, groundspeed and time intervals – it is a comprehensive collection of modules that includes flight plan preparation, maps, ALAs, fuel management, weather decodes, costings, ICAO airspace, etc. Windows is an operating system that allows several programmes to run simultaneously, so it is possible, indeed quite common, to hop from one utility to the other in this “pilot’s workbench” system. So the answer to the question about the relevance of the computer operating system is definitely in the affirmative. Using Windows the operating environment can be much more powerful than a DOS based system, where you must return to a menu before making an excursion to find a new piece of information.

Nothing can be had for nothing! Even though I am an experienced computer and Windows user, and have even written flight planning programmes for several types of computers ranging from programmable calculators to Sharp IQs, I did find that the documentation and the programme presented something of a steep learning curve to the new user. Working on the principle that you only read the documentation when all else fails, I found that it took an hour or so to come to grips with this comprehensive work. The ‘fix’ could be quite simple – the documentation could have included a flow guide showing the sequence of modules to use to get the system to run.

If you launch straight into the planning phase, you will receive warning messages that you have not set winds, aircraft characteristics etc. A modern approach, and one that is very complex to programme, is to use ‘wizards’ that guide your actions. This type of programming is very expensive and is only within the reach of the Microsofts of this world. The third solution, and one that I suggest could evolve over time, is to use the ‘Quicken’ approach. Quicken made accounting simple by using a familiar ‘chequebook interface’. This method would start with something familiar such as a domestic flight planning form to present the user interface with a familiar format to produce results immediately. Building ‘intelligence’ into the logic behind the screen presentation would provide the ‘smarts’ that are required for a truly comprehensive flight management tool.

Enough conjecture. After playing with the system for a while, I figured that a logical approach would be to set up the date for an aircraft first, then set the winds, and finally assemble the actual flight plan – much like the ‘real world’. This works!

When you start to enter information into Flight Planner for Windows, your respect for the skill of the programmer grows rapidly. Data entry is one of the best I have seen in any programme, and Denis Urban, the person responsible, should be proud of his work. The ergonomics are excellent, and he has used all the bells and whistles available in Visual Basic to make data entry easy, even enjoyable. Setting all the aircraft parameters could be a tedious job, but with the manual next to the keyboard and an interactive, mouse and keyboard driven screen, the process is quite straight forward. Take time to get the units correct and the performance characteristics accurate, and you will soon be rewarded with accurate flight plans that require very little effort to produce.

Once the system has the necessary aircraft and weather information, flight planning is a breeze. In the Name or Ident box, you type the first few characters of the name or the identifier of the place you will fly to, and as you type, lists of names appear and progressively home in on your input. Once you see what you want, click on the name with the mouse, and it appears on the plan, with all the relevant information attached. This is a fast way of working out distances and bearings from one point to another. You can of course define your own waypoints.

When you print the plan, you start to see the potential of a flight management tool such as this to make your flight more precise and safer.

One feature I liked was the way the programme monitored your plan for errors. I deliberately created a flight which required more fuel than the aircraft could carry, and was pleased to see an error message come onto the screen. If there are multiple errors, they are added to a log so that you can see, and correct, all your mistakes.

Printing the plan is another area where a Windows interface helps. Windows takes care of the printer details, so the programmer can concentrate on the output. Again, I was very impressed with the presentation. My computer system has a laser printer attached, and the Domestic Flight Plan produced looked very professional and was infinitely neater than the normal dog’s breakfast I offer to the Flight Briefing Office. One really ‘cute’ touch that appealed to me was the way the printer had been cajoled into generating its own circles around the various aircraft ELT and survival selections. Last light is automatically computed for the destination and added to the plan in both Zulu and local time.

One of my long time gripes about the Domestic Flight Plan is its lack of proper fuel monitoring, which omits fuel checks at the various waypoints. Without progressive fuel remaining checks, a pilot can commit to a situation where fuel exhaustion occurs. Flight Planner for Windows overcomes this serious deficiency in the CAA approach by printing a flight progress sheet, which includes a predicted fuel and time log together with spaces for the pilot to insert progress details. If the winds are different from forecast, this is an excellent way to ensure that an early decision is made to modify a flight if it looks as if fuel or daylight will expire before landing.

And wait folks – there’s more! No, not a set of steak knives, but a print of each of the waypoints, complete with lats and longs, navigation aids and frequencies, elevations, beginning and end of daylight, even the morse code of navaids. I would have liked to see communications frequencies included for departure and arrival points, perhaps a later version could include these.

When you print the plan, you start to see the potential of a flight management tool such as this to make your flight more precise and safer. The system is computing many required elements for you, warning you of possible problems, and then helping you with your flight by providing the necessary documentation.

To test the reaction of people flying regularly, I asked a private pilot and a small charter service to use Flight Planner for Windows for a time. Neither were experienced computer users, but both managed to get the system running and eventually used the system to generate all flight plans. The comments were that once the learning curve had been climbed, plan preparation was fast and accurate. The tendency was not to use the more complex parts of the programme such as weight & balance, or the costing modules.

For my part, I was most impressed with Flight Planner for Windows, not only for the comprehensive coverage of the various aspects of navigation, but for the potential of the system, which I think is enormous.

One of the icons is the NAIPS interface, but when you wave the mouse pointer over it (all icons react to the mouse pointer to tell you the function,) it says that the NAIPS interface is not implemented in this version.

Let me offer a vision of how the CAA could implement a safer and more cost effective flight planning system for private and commercial pilots. Suppose you have, or your business or aeroclub has a computer equipped with a CD-ROM holding the flight planning programmes, current maps and charts, and a modem.

First, you install the flight management programme from the CD-ROM you receive in the mail and then spend an hour or so loading the operating characteristics of your aircraft into files created on the hard disc in the computer by the system. After loading the planning module, you see a sheet that looks like a domestic flight plan, but with extensions for management of fuel as well as time. Click into the Ident box and choose the aircraft file, to which you can add today’s fuel and payloads. Next add the route indicators, flight rules and preferred height.

Now press the ‘Get Winds’ button and the programme automatically dials a 1-900 number and using planned route and heights, download the relevant winds, forecasts and NOTAMS. If you wish, you can click the ‘Optimise’ button, (already included in Flight Planner for Windows,) and optimise the flight for minimum time or minimum fuel. If there are any errors, such as breaching fuel reserves, crossing a restricted area, or flying past last light, you will be warned. At this stage you correct the plan for these operational deficiencies.

Now press the print button. You are asked to ‘check the boxes’ to actually submit the plan, and for options such as a route map in strip form, either of navaids or of topographical charts, complete with this plan’s track, times, relevant restricted areas, route frequencies and instructions etc all pulled together from the CD-ROM and the central CAA database, with fixed information coming from the CD-ROM and changing data from the CAA. Once you submit the plan, the TAAATS system is informed computer to computer of your intended route and times. Of course, if you wish, your computer will also download the waypoints via a plug-in cable directly into your GPS so that you can be sure that it also has the precise plan.

Such a system would assist pilots and the CAA by ensuring that a pilot’s plan avoids restricted areas, are operationally optimised, and has all the relevant route information. CD-ROMs can now be pressed in Australia and cost less than $2 – far cheaper than using paper systems. An advantage of using CD-ROM is that the tedious process of amendments would be totally eliminated since all the information for Australia would be on the CD-ROM, and all pilots of all classes would receive all the information on each new issue of the CD-ROM. A CD-ROM based system containing a complete aeronautical publications library, plus ‘smart’ interfaces to TAAATS and GPS equipment, could make a substantial contribution to the much discussed ‘affordable safety’ principle. And it would be a world first.

So my suggestion, inspired by this thoroughly professional ‘Flight Planner for Windows’, is that CAA abandon the multi-million dollar NAIPS concept and call tenders from the private sector to develop an intelligent flight planning system based on Personal Computer with a Windows interface and telephone communications with TAAATS, and to distribute aeronautical publications on inexpensive CD-ROMs. If the ‘clever country’ does it first, cost recovery could be through overseas sales rather than taxing aircrew yet again while compromising safety in the process.

To those contemplating purchasing a computer based flight planning system, my recommendation is that you take the time to examine Flight Planner for Windows. Most probably you will find that the features of this “pilot’s workbench” far exceeds your requirements, but the system is a very competent and helpful piece of work. Once you have purchased the system, it will provide the environment to allow you to enhance your planning and flight management skills and make you a more professional operator.

My comments to HW&D Computer Services which produces this suite of programmes is that this a job very well done. There seems to be a demand for a less expensive ‘Lite’ version, and for a simpler interface perhaps based on an extended Domestic Flight Plan format. The supporting programmes such as maps, weather decodes etc are excellent and any extensions to the aeronautical database that comes with the system would be most welcome.

In summary: a glimpse of tomorrow today, and a difficult aeronautical problem very competently and professionally solved.