Trip Planning Tools

[Geoff13]

Hi all. I am after a good trip planning tool. Australia wide that I can use on the PC to plan and map a journey. I have OZ runways and it is good but I want to do this on the PC so I can have a large map overall reference. We are looking at Australia Wide and off the beaten track. Any ideas please. I have googled my little bum off but not found what I want. I have tried to do this in the past when planning bike trips but have never really found a suitable tool.

 

 

[Camel]

Have you looked at Garmins products, I used waypoint manager which came with Garmin 296 GPS.

 

Google-- Garmin Trip and waypoint manager.

 

http://www.garmin.com/garmin/cms/lang/en/us/maps/tripplanningsoftware/mapsource.

 

http://support.garmin.com/support/searchSupport/case.faces?supportPage=Trip%20and%20Waypoint%20Manager&caseId=%7Bacfc93f0-1e85-11dc-5ab7-000000000000%7D

 

 

[dlegg]

Pocketfms is hard to beat if using windows, but pricey.

 

http://www.pocketfms.com/2-Features.asp

 

 

[Yenn]

I looked at champagne flight planner quite a while ago, but it was not suitable for a tablet then. It did look good for a PC. Will flight plan, and send flight plan to airservices.

 

 

[Garfly]

Hi Geoff13,

 

Air Navigation Desktop (a new, planning-only, cousin of the well known AirNavigation Pro iOS app) may be what you're after - except that it is only available now on Mac OS.

 

As with AirNav Pro it doesn't yet allow you to download and incorporate the CASA approved charts showing Australian airspace etc. but there is a free ONC aeronautical chart available for the whole country which should be fine for basic planning, if you have other up-to-date sources for the rest.

 

This desktop version being new is still a bit clunky but for those of us on Mac at least we now have a useable desktop planning tool.

 

Anyway it's fun exploring its features.

 

http://www.xample.ch/air-navigation/

 

https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/air-navigation/id598174919?l=en&mt=12

 

http://www.xample.ch/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/User_Manual_OSX_1_1.pdf

 

 

FROM THEIR WEBSITE:

 

"Air Navigation Desktop is a flight-planning application. It is the desktop/laptop computer version of Air Navigation Pro for iPad and iPhone. It is currently available for Mac OS X 10.7 and higher through the Mac App Store. With Air Navigation Desktop you can easily perform your pre-flight planning at home and print the necessary documents such as the route, weather info, weight and balance data and NOTAM briefing. Moreover, It is possible to sync your planned route with Air Navigation Pro for iPad and iPhone."

 

 

[DonRamsay]

You can't beat doing it on a big PC screen.

 

I just use Google Earth to select the route and then put that into OzRunways for the full flight plan.

 

One thing I've found very helpful is the advice you can glean from the articles in SportPilot. There is a particularly useful series on at the moment by Rick Frith. The attached is an extract that will give you the flavour of the experience Rick is passing on.