November update - Channel Isles

To cover the Channel Isles, NOTAMs are now fetched for the Brest FIR ('LFRR').
N.B. This will also retrieve NOTAMs with FIR of 'LFXX' (Overall French airspace). These are ignored.

EDIT: This removed temporarily, due to a conflict with UK NOTAMs, and a very dodgy internet connection this end. Watch this space.

Temporary restricted airspace over 10nm in radius will now be shown as a red outline, rather than as a solid red block.

October Update

Several Microlighting sites have been added, so that there are now 295 sites shown on the maps. These have been obtained from various sources, some rather old. If you know of any corrections, please let me know. Additionally, let me know about your microlight club, and web site, and I'll add that to the map.

The glider (sailplane) sites have been moved from the airspace section to the sites section on the maps, and are now indicated by blue markers, rather than the previous circles. The text popups now show the club operating from the airfields, and, where known, their web site.

A bug that had shown some hazards as restricted airspace has been fixed.

Areas of Intense Aerial Activity (AIAAs) have been added to the airspace. There is a new option to show hazards or not on the national map. Hazards include AIAAs, HIRTAs, Gas Venting Sites, Lasers, Radio masts, etc

Charts and info for ICAO airfields now loaded from Eurocontrol's web site rather than the AIS web site

Airspace updated.

Updates for August/September

a) The maps have been de-cluttered by marking multiple NOTAMs at the same location with a single marker. The NOTAMs are no longer spread out, so that you no longer have to zoom in to see each NOTAM individually. The marker will be light blue, and have the number of NOTAMs at the same spot displayed on it. Clicking on the marker will display a scrollable list of NOTAMS at that position.

b) The maps and NOTAM list can now be forced to display today's NOTAMs by default, rather than you having to show the week's NOTAMS, then select 'today' from the drop down list. Go to 'my account', then 'NOTAM/Map settings' to set up this option on your account.

c) Email format changes: emails are now broken down into two sections - today's NOTAMs - the NOTAMs actually active today, then those active for the remainder of the week are listed in section 2. NOTAMs that you haven't seen before will be higlighted with '**NEW**', and will come first in both sections.

d) Email options expanded: there are many new email delivery options. There are now options, for example, to just send today's active NOTAMs, or just tomorrow's NOTAMs. Weekend pilots may now choose to have emails delivered on Friday and Saturday, as well as Saturday and Sunday. These will only contain NOTAMs active over the weekend. They may be for the entire weekend, or one day only.

e) There is now an option to send emails with HTML formatting.

Removing route turnpoints

Many people were having trouble with removing turnpoints from their route. The problem was that the timing of a double-click could invoke the single-click routine twice. To avoid this problem, I've changed the way it's done. Instead of double-clicking to remove a turnpoint, you can now just single-click on it. This shows the location as before, but also shows a link at the bottom ('Remove this turnpoint'), which allows you to remove it.

Updates for July

  • As requested by users, you can now choose to see NOTAMS for any day of the week ahead on the maps. Only those in place for the day chosen will be shown.
    Please beware that if you show NOTAMs for any day in the future, that between now and then, NOTAMS may be amended or removed, and new NOTAMs may be issued for that day. You must not assume that any NOTAM information viewed days beforehand will be active on the day in question. The selection is merely there to remove clutter when viewing the maps.
  • The date selection has also been added to the NOTAM lists.
  • NOTAMS with very long text now have a scrollable window, so they don't occupy the entire map.

Narrow Route Brief

.. is here at last!

On the map pages (either your local map or the UK map), click on 'show route'. The first time you do this, a default route will be shown in the middle of the map, in an west-to-east direction. The route will be enclosed in a rectangle marking the route width (default 5nm). This may be altered on-screen to suit.

Drag the start(red) marker to your take off spot, and the green landing marker to your landing. Click on the line in between them to create a draggable turn point (yellow). You can create as many turn points as you like by repeatedly clicking the lines between markers. Click on a marker to show its latitude and longitude. The turnpoint may be removed by clicking on it, and then clicking on the 'Remove this turnpoint' link. Once you are happy, hit 'save route' to store the route on the database. The next time you look at a map and click 'show route', your previously stored route will be displayed.

The 'route NOTAMS' menu item will now contain the NOTAMs affecting your selected route. If you start or end your route on, or very close to an ICAO airfield, the program assumes that you are taking off/landing there. The aerodrome NOTAMs for those airfields will be shown in the list. Note that, unlike the official NATS web site, you do not need to start or finish on an airfield to obtain the narrow route brief.

The route will also appear in the downloaded Google Earth files.

Please let me know of any problems/bugs.