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Skydemon (merged thread)

NeilC wrote:

I have even used it in the USA where it showed a great track round the Hudson VFR corridor in NY after a memorable flight

I really wanted to use it in the US. But it doesn’t display TFRs… Which is probably the most dangerous thing to face in the US airspace. They pop up like crazy and you’ll far sooner receive a personal F16 airshow by busting through a TFR than you are breaking into Class B airspace…

So I had to buy plan B software for flying in the States.

It’s fascinating that it’s mentioned so much in the MORs

Most MORs contain an account from the pilot, at the end of the descriptive text. Not sure if these extracts are complete or partial. It is always, IIRC, the pilot who comments on SD.

I do think ATOs should teach students the use of some common nav apps like this as part of the PPL syllabus.

I think they can’t because

  • the CAA would be favouring a specific commercial product which they clearly should not do
  • some % of PPL students are unable to grasp the “satnav” paradigms, and/or how to use phones or tablets (many struggle with just email, or IM apps)
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
I think they can’t because
the CAA would be favouring a specific commercial product which they clearly should not do
some % of PPL students are unable to grasp the “satnav” paradigms, and/or how to use phones or tablets (many struggle with just email, or IM apps)

To be constructive , I think a generic requirement could be to teach the use of moving map software for awareness of airspace, terrain, plus any supplementary info on PLOG, NOTAMs etc. or words to that effect. Mostly I find my students have a greater grasp of phone and tablet technology than probably I do, and I’m not bad

Last Edited by NeilC at 01 Aug 20:17
NeilC
EGPT, LMML

Yesterday I encountered a very nasty bug in Skydemon and wanted to share it here because in certain circumstances it could be a cause for confusion.

I viewed some approach plates of two Austrian(*) airports on my iPad, when suddenly the PDF document visualizer refused to show any charts any more. It opens the files, but it showed only black tiles in the size of the charts. As I was at home I could directly look it up and found others with the same error. It is the main memory (RAM) of the iPad filled up with data, where any document opened remains to a small part in the RAM. As I did not shut down the iPad for quite some time there have accumulated some documents there.

Workaround is to press and hold the on/off button, but not to turn it off, but when the power-off display shows up, release the on/off button and press and hold it again. Then the RAM is cleaned. In my case it worked. Of course you also have to restart skydemon.

I don’t want to see this e.g. during flight, when runway direction is changed and you brief the other approaches and find yourself with a stuck skydemon. So in my checklist I added the item, that if the iPad was not switched off prior to flight, I’ll clear the RAM.

_* In the Skydemon-Forum other users posted that particularly the Austrian chart files are very big and prone to that this happens.

Last Edited by UdoR at 15 Nov 13:20
Germany

UdoR, have you got a backup device? I always fly with one. And the other thing – please try downloading the PDF with that plate to check if the problem is with SD itself or a PDF viewer…

EGTR

Yes of course I fly with a backup device.

How can you download the PDF, or what do you mean by it? I downloaded the whole AIP, so they’re stored locally. But I don’t understand how this relates to the bug. The plates are in Skydemon and they are viewed by the integrated PDF viewer. When too many plates have been viewed, no more plates are shown – irrespective of the plate, even the plates already opened before will not open again. So it doesn’t matter if you open 50 different plates or 2 different plates 25 times (which was more like what I was doing when preparing some interesting approaches and departures on my couch, where Austria quite has some of those). When the RAM is emptied the plates open again.

For additional info, I think it is related to this topic on Skydemon forum.

Last Edited by UdoR at 15 Nov 15:15
Germany

Something to watch. This was posted on FB:

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Only the warning missing, right? Then I don’t see that really as a big problem. You really should carefully check the airspace around at least by looking at Skydemon’s virtual radar. I’m more concerned about NOTAMs and the coordinates in these not getting correctly parsed or interpreted. With these there is practically no way to verify without software support that you aren’t violating some temporary airspace restriction.

EDQH, Germany

Anyone knows of a way to kill that ☠️ auto-zoom for good?

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

When in flying mode, tap the ‘north up’ icon.
A 4 or 5 option menu appears. One of those is ‘auto zoom’ on or off.

United Kingdom
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