Since our last newsletter, way too long ago, a lot has happened in the world. We hope that you are healthy and weren’t overly affected by the steps taken by almost all countries in the world to fight COVID-19.
Now that most countries, albeit with a few restrictions, do allow GA flying again, we hope that you’ve had the opportunity to get back in the air, or will be able to do so soon.
AIP, NOTAM, AUP/UUP, ATC, FIS? Charts, some websites and apps?
How to combine all these sources into a simple route plan?
In April, we were forced to re-evaluate the release and development roadmap for EasyVFR 4. The saying Never waste a crisis to us meant that we took the opportunity to work on a unique and new idea for the European VFR communities. Today we are thrilled to share with you, as one the first EasyVFR 4 users, our exciting news – before everyone else.
In this newsletter, we’ll cover what we have worked on in the past months. And then there’s the EASA GA Safety Award 2020 that EasyVFR 4 was the second-place winner of! Some news on the compatibility with upcoming iOS 14; news on the latest update of EasyVFR 4 and of course more about this exciting new feature that you will get your hands on real soon!
Enjoy reading and we’ll hope that you are as excited about this new version as we are.
Cheers,
The EasyVFR 4 team
EasyVFR 4 wins second price in the first EASA GA Safety Award!
🥳 🥳 Weeee! We’re proud as a peacock for being a winner in the very first EASA GA Safety Award with our brand new EasyVFR 4!! We hereby congratulate our fellow winners Open Glider Network and FlyTool with their success.
“The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is pleased to announce the winners of its first General Aviation (GA) Safety Award. The GA Safety Award recognises the most safety-beneficial smartphone/tablet application for use by GA pilots.”
“The apps submitted were assessed against their ability to address one or more of the four major safety concerns identified in the European Plan for Aviation Safety (EPAS): Staying in control, managing the flight, preventing mid-air collisions and coping with weather.”
“2nd Prize – 5,000 €: Awarded to the PocketFMS Foundation for EasyVFR 4 which provides a complete solution for flight preparation, route planning, and flight navigation. EasyVFR 4 helps pilots to manage the flight and reduce the risk of mid-air collisions through the provision of planning tools that also enable the identification of different types of airspace and links to relevant NOTAMs. It also helps pilots to cope with weather by providing weather graphics on the display in the cockpit. ”
See the EASA GA Safety Award 2020 press release.
Now in final public beta and a free 30 days trial period
EasyVFR 4 is now available as a public beta to ALL European aviators. New users can explore EasyVFR 4 for 30 days, free of charge.
The number of beta users is growing rapidly and we hereby invite you to share the registration form with your aviation friends all over Europe!
EasyVFR 4 beta trial account here.
Official and Reliable data provided by
Unique for VFR route planning and navigation – AUP!
In the past months, a number of features, workflows and performance have been tested, optimized and redesigned in order to get EasyVFR 4 on track before announcing our biggest feature yet. In the previous versions, you could already see a small part of that work. Now we are ready for the real thing:
AUP, NOTAM and AIP information in a single mobile flight planning and navigation app! Only see airspaces that are active and relevant for your trip.
That’s right, EasyVFR 4 now supports airspace (de)activations per Airspace Use Plan (‘AUP’) natively!
In a growing number of countries, the AUP is or is becoming a supplemental way with a high time resolution of enabling and disabling airspaces. Via a direct and secure link with Eurocontrol, EasyVFR 4 can now also dim and highlight airspaces that are switched on and off per AUP. This means that if a particular airspace is only active from 10:00 until 12:00 by AUP, EasyVFR will show it as active in that timespan only! To our knowledge, no other VFR flight planning and navigation app has this feature yet.
How to use the AIP, AUP and NOTAM data within EasyVFR 4?
The new AUP data feed is natively integrated into the EasyVFR 4 SmartMap, just like the NOTAM and AIP data already were. Airspaces that are activated by AUP are highlighted in blue on the Moving Map. And in the airspace quick-info window, today’s AUP activation schedule is listed in the red box (see the above image).
Airspace reservations published via AUP will be downloaded by EasyVFR 4 from 06:00 UTC on the day that they are valid.
How to use the SmartMap settings?
The new AUP data feed is natively integrated into the EasyVFR 4 SmartMap, just like we already did with the AIP and NOTAM data. Airspaces that are activated by AUP are highlighted in blue; inactive airspaces will be shown faded. When the airspace details are shown via the Quick Info wheel, you will see the timespan in which that airspace will be activated by AUP.
When will I get the AUP Data in EasyVFR 4?
The AUP feature is currently only available for beta testers who started at or before May 15th 2020, until we optimize the usage of this data. We will let you know as soon as we are ready to add it to your license – again, at no charge.
Are you already used to working with AUP data?
We love to hear your thoughts on our AUP implementation in our Forum or by Email!
Update to version 4.0.803 for Performance & Stability
The latest phones and tablets like the iPad Mini 5 were already quite fast running EasyVFR 4. Compared with were we stood in April, with the latest updates since august, you’ll find that all other supported devices are now noticeably faster when panning and zooming the map. In our tests, we see between two to five times faster map rendering. That’s quite a bit!
The latest version, 4.0.803, focuses on stability, solving many bugs that could lead to unexpected closing of the app.
We are looking forward to hearing about your experience with this new version. Do you notice the improvements? Is there still a stability issue on your platform? We’ll keep working on both the stability and loading times for all supported devices and platforms.
Android, iOS/ iPadOS, Windows, MacOS.
See the release notes on the forum for all the work done lately.
Subscribe to our new Youtube channel
Sometimes you simply want to have a clear instruction video on how a feature of an application works. We have heard you and are working on a series of video tutorials, published via our new Youtube channel: “EasyVFR 4 – Smart flight planning and navigation”. The spoken language in the videos is English, and we have added subtitles in many other languages.
🔔 Subscribe to this channel to help us grow and to receive all future videos.
iOS 14 compatibility tests and workarounds
Apple are working hard towards a release of a new version of the operating system for your iPad or iPhone (iOS). iOS 14 is currently in beta, meaning it’s being tested but may still contain issues that need attention before it can be fully released to everyone.We have tested both EasyVFR 3 and 4 …
