NavCanada... digital maps... ?

[goingmach_1]

I have been lucky enough to have spoken to a Nav Can horses mouth and the jist of it was this.

The sun rises and sets of commercial aviation at NavCan, i.e.; AC and West Jet plus a few others. Everything else is a pain in the ass.

The only hope anyone else other than the big boys have, is to be represented at some level. Either at a airport level, municipal, provincial or federal. COPA is on some of that and my source says at least they have 1 voice. Better than no voice.

Its all about revenue. The big boys are paying for all of it, and they want something in return. Think of them being the majority shareholders.

Back to the topic of this thread, my source said what the HUGE issue with digital maps is the whole survey thing. Surveying the country to ensure accuracy with the VNC's. As we all know Canada is the second largest country land mass and a tiny population. So to throw that effort at this project, think the big boys don't need it, is not how they want to spend the shareholders money.

For now they have copied all the VNC's into PDF files.

[photofly]

Back to the topic of this thread, my source said what the HUGE issue with digital maps is the whole survey thing. Surveying the country to ensure accuracy with the VNC's

I can't be the only person to question this... aren't you supposed to survey the country BEFORE you draw up the maps? That is, draw the maps up from the results of the survey? If VNC's are not accurate, why are we using them to fly with?

Maybe it would be cheaper to terraform Canada to match what's already printed on the VNC. (Must suggest that to the Harper Government: creating jobs for Canadians.)

[goingmach_1]

Back to the topic of this thread, my source said what the HUGE issue with digital maps is the whole survey thing. Surveying the country to ensure accuracy with the VNC's

I can't be the only person to question this... aren't you supposed to survey the country BEFORE you draw up the maps? That is, draw the maps up from the results of the survey? If VNC's are not accurate, why are we using them to fly with?

Maybe it would be cheaper to terraform Canada to match what's already printed on the VNC. (Must suggest that to the Harper Government: creating jobs for Canadians.)

I don't know for sure, but the original maps are analog? And to make them digital is the issue. I believe its something to do with scaling when using a digital devise. I vaguely remember that Jeppesen had this problem when they went to digital. A paper map is a fixed scale obviously. But on a iPad or whatever and your scrolling in and out that changes everything. If you reading a "paper map" the pilot needs to ensure he/she knows where they are according to the map. If your putting a airplane GPS icon over the digital map, then the map needs to be accurate. In other words, the pilot is responsible for reading a map, and the iPad tells the pilot where the aircraft is. The liability falls on the digital map when the aircraft has CFIT accident. If the pilot was using a paper maps, its as simple as he/she was "lost".

[photofly]

I think you might be talking about the problems of digitizing the grid on which the chart is based: you have to "reverse engineer" the Lambert Conformal Conic projection or do some other kind of magic to get spherical coordinates across the chart. It sounded like NavCanada wanted to send out guys in bearskin hats with chains and rods across the north

[AirFrame]

There's only one problem with that... The maps were digital before NavCanada took over. I had a CD with PDF's of the maps on it in the mid-1990's, and they weren't scans... They were vector artwork.

They have to maintain them anyway, because they have to make paper copies... So the effort to keep those updated will be there regardless of whether they make digital copies available or not. In any case, the maps now have all been digitized and geo-referenced, which is how ForeFlight and FltPlan Go are receiving and using them.

What they need is a small team dedicated to modern digital media and data distribution, that actually understands what technology is available and how users want to use the data.

I would love to see the wording of the agreement they signed when they took over management of the Air Navigation System from Transport. There must be something in there about mandating that services are provided equally right down to the smallest operators.

[goldeneagle]

[
It wasn't intended as a slight against Apple devices, but the reality is that the latest iPad Air 2 is $549 for just the 16GB version. In contrast, an equivalent Android tablet would be the Nexus 9, for $429 for the 16GB version. That's $130 of reality.

Umm. I bought a new iPad Air (not the 2) last week. Price was $434.99, so your $130 of reality, is in reality, about 6 bucks.

[CpnCrunch]

[
It wasn't intended as a slight against Apple devices, but the reality is that the latest iPad Air 2 is $549 for just the 16GB version. In contrast, an equivalent Android tablet would be the Nexus 9, for $429 for the 16GB version. That's $130 of reality.

Umm. I bought a new iPad Air (not the 2) last week. Price was $434.99, so your $130 of reality, is in reality, about 6 bucks.

That doesn't include a GPS, so not much use for navigating. It costs $579 for the version with gps, and that's the old ipad air model.

If you want the latest ipad air with a GPS, it costs minimum $689. The ipad mini is a bit cheaper, at $579.

I just bought a Galaxy Tab S 8.4 for $369, which is roughly equivalent to an ipad mini 3, but $200 cheaper.

[RatherBeFlying]

NavCanada Directors and Advisory Council members are largely drawn from commercial operators and government. COPA and CBAA have one seat each on the Advisory Council out of 20. CBAA elects one Director out of 16.

http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/about-us/Pag ... nance.aspx
http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/about-us/Pag ... ctors.aspx
http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/about-us/pag ... ittee.aspx

Ken Psutka is the sole voice for private flyers.

One would like to think that the commercial folks would want to make it simple for little guys to stay clear of airspace.

Publishing digital charts, airspace and the CFS just seems a stupefyingly obvious means to that end. The Yanks and Europeans caught on a long time ago, but NavCanada can't seem to get past the paper CFS as be all and end all.

Gliders commonly use specialised instruments, computers and software. A glider industry manufacturer may sell maybe a dozen to several score copies of an instrument / computer / software in Canada.

In the US and Europe, it is dead easy to find digital current airspace and airport files to load into glider software, but not in Canada

One glider pilot in Western Canada takes it upon himself to manually produce airspace files from the Designated Airspace Handbook. It's a lot of work and it's easy for transcription files to creep in. He can't keep up to the 56 day update cycle. It's hard enough to do it once a year.

I know a glider pilot who used an out of date airspace file knowing the boundaries of Class C had changed; so he ignored the computer warning for the outer ring which he knew had been dropped. He did not get a warning for the next ring, thermalled too high and did not catch on until the moving map came up to the ring after.

Fortunately traffic is very rare in that segment of that ring; so nobody got any surprises.

But one of these days the difficulty faced by small manufacturers in obtaining digital data will result in a too close encounter -- especially because pilots these days don't seem to be using paper charts.

[AirFrame]

It wasn't intended as a slight against Apple devices, but the reality is that the latest iPad Air 2 is $549 for just the 16GB version. In contrast, an equivalent Android tablet would be the Nexus 9, for $429 for the 16GB version. That's $130 of reality.

Umm. I bought a new iPad Air (not the 2) last week. Price was $434.99, so your $130 of reality, is in reality, about 6 bucks.

Sure, and last years' Samsung tablet is now $300 on the street too. if you want to look at older-generation Android devices, they get cheaper as well, which was exactly what I said in my original email.

And as someone else pointed out, no GPS in the non-GSM tablet, so keep your $130 to buy an external one.

[AirFrame]

One glider pilot in Western Canada takes it upon himself to manually produce airspace files from the Designated Airspace Handbook. It's a lot of work and it's easy for transcription files to creep in. He can't keep up to the 56 day update cycle. It's hard enough to do it once a year.

As I recall, he has a script that does it... It reads the PDF, pulls out the text, and then parses it looking for airspace strings. Bloody clever, but as you say, it can get confused and takes a lot of time to debug after each cycle. I believe Skyvector uses a similar script to get their airspace info as well.

But one of these days the difficulty faced by small manufacturers in obtaining digital data will result in a too close encounter -- especially because pilots these days don't seem to be using paper charts.

Sadly, blame for the resulting incident will be laid solely at the feet of the pilot, as it was their responsibility to ensure that they knew all of the relevant information about their flight before taking off.

[photofly]

Sadly, blame for the resulting incident will be laid solely at the feet of the pilot, as it was their responsibility to ensure that they knew all of the relevant information about their flight before taking off.

Not when it's the deceased's pilot's angry widow and hungry children trying to throw as much legal mud at anyone with deeper pockets than they.

[AirFrame]

I think that's exactly why they'll say it's the pilot's fault. Paper maps are available, pretty cheaply too (in comparison to the paid digital options). And digital data is available free from FltPlanGo. No pilot with a reasonably modern cell phone or tablet has much of an argument that they couldn't know what the most current data is. That just exposes ignorance and laziness.

Maybe one exists, but i'm not aware of any incidents caused by someone not having a current VNC/VTA/CFS.

[photofly]

I think that's exactly why they'll say it's the pilot's fault.

Missing the point.

The dead pilot isn't around any more, and his or her family will claim it's absolutely anyone else's fault as long as that person has some money. Throw enough legal mud and some will stick. It's not good for business to be on the end of a five year lawsuit, even if you're in the right. Cheaper to settle. Cheapest of all is not to give someone the inclination to sue in the first place, by not providing a product.

[linecrew]

Holy thread drift..........!

[Thomasgzz]

Air Navigation Pro now make available the Canadian VFR charts through their store, the charts are well updated by the provider flyermaps (new provider focusing on regions where VFR charts are hard to get) and they cover 100% of the Canadian territory.
have a look at the blog post about it : http://blog.airnavigation.aero/2016/12/ ... light.html
Good thing Air Navigation Pro is available for iOS and Android smartphone and tablet.
Cheers,
T