New MH Feature - Terminal Procedures for Plan-G

[allardjd 1,853]

EDIT - 7/7/17

 

These downloads are no longer available since the MH File Library can no longer be supported.  E-mail me if you have some specific things you are interested in and I'll try to accommodate your needs.  Note that the ability to display files in Plan-G as detailed below still works  if you have files for a specific airport in the proper format.

 

John Allard

allardjd@earthlink.net

 

=================================================================

 

Terminal Procedures for Plan-G

 

Mutley's Hangar is pleased to roll out a new, free resource for our users - Terminal Procedures, in a format that can be used directly in Tim Arnot's Plan-G. Terminal Procedures uploaded here have already been consolidated (some were originally multi-file procedures) and re-named to display in the airport Charts fly-out menu in Plan-G.

 

There's a new category in the MH File Library titled Terminal Procedures for Plan-G. There are already a few categories below that for specific countries and US states. Populating them has begun. More categories will be added as more data is processed and uploaded.

 

To whet your appetite, the screenshot below gives an idea of what you can expect to see for an airport that has had its Terminal Procedures installed in your Plan-G Charts folder tree. When a procedure is selected from the fly-out menu, it will open in the default file viewer, typically Adobe Reader.

 

 

 

The downloads will contain the full pdf version of real-world procedures. They will be outdated/expired versions and, of course, are not suitable or legal for real-world navigation.

 

- IAPs and SIDs -

Instrument Approach Procedures (IAPs) and Standard Instrument Departures (SIDs, or sometimes DPs) will be bundled together and posted on an airport-by-airport basis with all the available procedures for a single airport in one zip file. Some of the downloads may be quite large. The IAP and/or SID downloads can be used by simply unzipping them into the appropriate folder of your Plan-G Charts folder tree.

 

- STARs -

STARs will be handled somewhat differently from IAPs and SIDs because some STARs apply to multiple airports. We anticipate STARs will be posted by the STAR name but the posting text will indicate which airports are served so a search on the airport ICAO code should bring up all that are available and relevant to any specific airport. At this writing, no STARs are posted but over 300 have been processed and we're in the final stages of polishing the content and the packaging process. It is expected that STARs will begin to appear within a few days.

 

STARs, because they may apply to more than one airport, should be unzipped in a dedicated STARs folder, which may be located anywhere you wish. It is not necessary that they be located within your Plan-G Charts folder tree, but they may be. You must create a Windows Shortcut file for each airport to which the STAR applies and move those into your Plan-G Charts folder tree. This avoids needing a full copy of the STAR for each airport. STAR pdfs are 200K and up - Windows Shortcut files are about 1,200 bytes.

 

The download material for STARs will include the full text of each required Windows Shortcut filename. That will permit a copy and paste operation when creating the Shortcut files, avoiding the typing and assuring that the STAR will display properly in Plan-G.

 

- ONGOING PROJECT -

This will be an on-going project with much more data to be added, in much the same manner as the Airport Diagrams that are available elsewhere in the MH File Library. Initially, US airport procedures will predominate but as other sources of public domain procedures are identified and as user demand dictates, others will be added too. Requests for procedures for a specific airport or specific STARs will be considered if public domain procedure documents are available. We cannot use Jeppesen charts because they are proprietary.

 

- DATA VOLUME -

The volume of files will be relatively large and users may wish to pick and choose which airports they want to download Terminal Procedures for if download speed, Internet usage limits or disk space are matters of concern. It is anticipated, for instance, that the procedures for all the US airports, once they are available, will run to around 6 GB.

 

- LOG-ON NOT REQUIRED -

As with Airport Diagrams, an MH user ID and login are NOT required to download. Casual browsers and lurkers as well as logged in MH Members may download freely.

 

John Allard

[mutley 4,487]

Thanks John, this is an awesome resource for the community I hope they become as popular as the airport diagrams!

[needles 1,010]

Great stuff John and a huge thanks for all the kind, hard work you, Tim and others do for the forum to enhance our joint experience.

Thank you.

[brett 2,284]

I can only think you are a vampire that needs no sleep, where do you find the time for all these projects. 

 

This is an excellent addition to the site as I will soon be able to find all these charts in one place.  Thanks for all your hard work John.

[allardjd 1,853]

Something missing in my FS Experience -> Idea -> Trial/Test -> Task -> Project -> Hobby -> Chore -> Compulsion...

 

I'm somewhere out near the right end of that scale on Airport Diagrams and approaching that on Terminal Procedures. I've put real-world waypoints on the back burner for now. Would love to take on Terminal Waypoints, which would make the real-world charts much more useful, but it's huge. The primary problem is that the terminal waypoints, unlike the enroute waypoints, are buried in the FSX airport BGL files, so adding or editing them requires splitting individual airports out of files that Microsoft has bundled them in. It's all doable but a lot of work for a fairly small airport by airport payback. This is enough for now.

 

I have hundreds more processed and ready to upload but the upload process, creating the zip files, etc. is a bit time consuming too. I'll get better at it and will inevitably come up with better ways to do it, streamlining the process. STARs were tough and there was just no other way to do it other than with Shortcut files, except by having multiple uniquely named copies of a 300K STAR. Shortcuts make a lot more sense and that's kind of what they are for anyway.

 

My wife has a hobby that's almost as consuming as mine so we sit in our separate offices and talk through the doorways to one another a good part of the day and night. Life is good.

 

Anyway, happy you like them and I hope you get some good use from them. I do think it's kind of neat to right click on an airport in Plan-G and have all that stuff right there on the Charts menu to refer to.

 

John

[dogtrack 345]

Stunning, many thanks John.

[allardjd 1,853]

It was my intention to focus on the US terminal procedures first, because I have them in hand and processing them is not too difficult. I'm re-thinking that because most MH members are UK residents, so have been looking for ways to bring in terminal procedures for UK airports. I had a few in Scotland that I had processed some time ago and posted those early - they were pretty simple and went OK, but all the rest so far have been US procedure documents.

 

I've decided to try to bring in the UK procedures along with the US ones and got my feet wet on one airport today, EGMD, Lydd. I've posted a zip for that airport that contains six IAPs.

 

I had some difficulties and would like some confirmation that they're OK. To those of you who are so inclined, I'd appreciate it if you could...

1) Download the EGMD IAPs zip file from the MH File Library

 

http://forum.mutleyshangar.com/index.php/files/file/5065-egmd-iaps-and-or-sidszip/

 

2) Install it in your Plan-G Charts folder

 

3) Assure that the IAPs display under the Charts menu when you right-click on the Lydd airport icon

 

4) Open the IAPs, see that they dislplay OK and particularly, assure that three of them are two-page pdfs and that the data on the second page displays.

 

5) E-mail me at allardjd@earthlink.net

 

...and let me know the results, good or bad.

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who can do this.

 

I want to assure that I've really got a working process before I go too far up the road with UK terminal procedures.

 

John

 

EDIT: I intend to do the same with Australia and Canada procedures too, more or less in parallel with the US ones.

[dogtrack 345]

Email sent John.

[allardjd 1,853]

I'm having a bit of a problem with cataloguing UK terminal procedures and could use some opinions or advice before getting too far along and end up facing a massive back-fit.

 

Let me show you a few examples for EGSS Stansted to illustrate the problem I'm having...

 

UK STARs are only uniquely identified by an arcane alphanumeric serial number kind of thing. There is a text description that often includes something like VOR BKY u/s, designating it for use if a certain navaid is unavailable. Sometimes these descriptions are not unique, making the description text unsuitable as an identifier.

 

 

My problem is to find or fabricate a unique identifier for each STAR that will display in the menu line in Plan-G when the Charts folder is clicked. LONDON STANSTED via CASEY VOR BKY u/s is kind of long and unwieldy, particularly when coupled with the other necessary parts - it becomes EGSS - STAR - LONDON STANSTED via CASEY VOR BKY u/s. That's just too long for a menu pad item.

 

One possible solution would be for me to just arbitrarily assign a designator to each STAR's filename that would display in the Plan-G menu listing as something like...

 

• EGSS - STAR - Alpha
• EGSS - STAR - Bravo
• EGSS - STAR - Charlie

 

I could also just use the UK unique identifier...

 

• EGSS - STAR - AD 2-EGSS-7-3
• EGSS - STAR - AD 2-EGSS-7-4
• EGSS - STAR - AD 2-EGSS-7-5

 

Neither of these provides any information about what's in the procedure without clicking it to open it, but that's pretty much what the US STARs give us. "BENKY TWO" is not terribly informative either.

 

I want to do this in a way that's most useful and least frustrating to the users. I'm open to suggestions about how to proceed on this. I'm going to go slow on UK terminal procedures, at least for the larger airports, until I can formulate a reasonable standard.

 

If you have an opinion, I'd like to see it here, or in an e-mail or PM.

 

John

[Kevin Firth 114]

Charts work fine for me John.

Perhaps the best way would be to list STARS as they are presented in the AIP? http://www.nats-uk.ead-it.com/public/index.php%3Foption=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=91&Itemid=140.html

e.g. "STANDARD ARRIVAL CHART - INSTRUMENT (STAR) via KEGUN (south and southeast) - ICAO" could be shortened to "STAR - via KEGUN (S&SE)" ?

Cheers K

[allardjd 1,853]

Charts work fine for me John.

 

 

The EGMD ones?

 

John

[Kevin Firth 114]

Charts work fine for me John.

 

The EGMD ones?

 

John

Yes

[allardjd 1,853]

Thanks, I appreciate you checking it out.  That's one problem solved - I can get around the problems with the version of Adobe used for the UK Terminal Procedures that was interfering with combining multi-file procedures into multi-page single files.

 

John

[brett 2,284]

The first question I have is when looking at those two (south) charts is that they look exactly the same except for the 7-3, 7-7 identifier. So why are their multiple versions as the dates are even the same?

 

   

[allardjd 1,853]

That's only the header block. The actual routes on the chart are quite different - what you'd probably call different transitions. They're similar and of course go to the same area and airport but the initial point coming off the airways are different.

 

Good question though - I should have showed more of the charts in my graphic.

 

John

[brett 2,284]

Thanks John, I will look at them more carefully.

[Quickmarch 488]

This might be a whacky idea - I'm at anchor in Nanaimo, so internet is not up to downloading much more than email or uploading much more than this reply. I can't view the STARS you refer to for EGSS.

 

Might it be possible to reference the STARS off the transition? ie: Trans Name, ICAO, RWY or ICAO, RWY, Trans Name. Flying the tube-o-chairs, you input the Arrival RWY (obviously, you've picked an airport and got the active from ATIS) and get back a list of transitions. As your route likely terminates at one of the transitions this might be the easiest reference. 

 

If you had a dispatcher riding herd on the flight, this would be easy. However, I find I'm launching for a distant airport without knowing the destination weather for when I get there. So I flight plan to a common transition WP and scramble around at the end of the flight inputting the matching STAR.

 

F'rinstance: If you're arriving on the wet coast from the East anywhere near CYVR or CYYJ (our two biggies) STAVE is a common waypoint. From STAVE you can approach all runways at either airport via STARS: FASBO1 (CYYJ either runway), BOOTH7 (CYVR 08L, 08R & 12), CANUCK NINE (CYVR 08L, 08R) and CANUCK NINE (CYVR 26L, 26R).

 

So I can see shortcuts called: CYVR CANUCK9 26L or CYVR CANUCK9 08R  or CYYJ FASBO1 09. The first two share the same STAR name but reference different runways.

 

Just saying...........

[allardjd 1,853]

I'm looking for a consistent way to "package and present" the STARs within the Plan-G Charts menu. It's proving pretty difficult partly because the two issuing authorities whose products I'm working with so far (US FAA and UK CAA) do things very differently.

 

The US STARs often give access to a broad area and can be used to merge with the IAPs to several different airports in the arrival area, sometimes across a state line or even a national boundary. I've seen at least one case where a single US STAR gets you into fourteen different airports in the arrival area - they're all called out in that one STAR. I've found two US STARS (Seattle and Detroit areas) so far that serve a number of US airports and one nearby one in Canada. It's that multi-airport property of some STARs that forced me to go with one copy of a STAR (avg. ~ 250K) in a central location and a separate Windows Shortcut file (avg. 1,240 bytes) in the Plan-G charts folder tree for each of the served airports.

 

On the other hand, most, or maybe all of the US STARs for large hub-type airports (KORD, KATL, KMIA, KLAX, KJFK, etc.) are dedicated to that single airport only. Those COULD be handled like IAPs and SIDs and not use the Windows Shortcut, but I want a consistent method for handling STARs, not doing some one way and some another.

 

Cataloguing these by Transition ID doesn't work. US STARs of both types, multi-airport and single-airport, routinely contain a number of transitions/entry points within the STAR and it appears that the UK STARs also do that. I have to preface the STAR filename with the ICAO for the airport in order for the STAR to display for a specific airport - absent that, there's no way in Plan-G to even see it. Cataloguing them by Transition results in more duplication. Imagine if the STAR that serves fourteen airports had four transitions - that's 14 X 4 = 56 Shortcut files for one STAR. Fourteen is bad enough.

 

Looking at the UK STARs, I have not yet found any examples of a multi-airport STAR - not to say there aren't any, but if so I haven't encountered them yet. The UK unique designator includes the airport ID, which further fuels my suspicion that all the UK STARs are airport-specific.

 

The biggest problem so far with the UK STARs is simply that they have no human-friendly unique name such as CANUCK NINE - it's more like "AD 2-EGSS-7-8" for a unique name and a sometimes not-unique description like "LONDON STANSTED via ASKEY (south) VOR BPD u/s (4C, 2D, 2S)". That's not an exaggeration or a contrived title - that's the real deal and in some cases the latter gobbledygook is not even unique; I have two Stansted STARs with different alpha-numeric designators and somewhat different routes to EGSS, but identical arcane descriptions.

 

I'm leaning toward just using the unique alpha-numeric designator for the UK STARs, so in the example above, in Plan-G it would look like, "EGSS - STAR - AD 2-EGSS-7-8". It's not like there are all that many STARs for Stansted or any other single airport. The descriptions are sometimes (OK, usually) too long to use in a menu pad; the alpha-numeric communicates little of value, but then again, neither does CANUCK NINE.

 

I owe you an e-mail on this topic too - pending.

 

John

[brett 2,284]

What does that ID mean though John, if I am flying and ATC tell me to go this way or that way, as March said you need to look it up by name not that ID number.

[allardjd 1,853]

Quote

What does that ID mean though John, if I am flying and ATC tell me to go this way or that way, as March said you need to look it up by name not that ID number.

 

Well, AD 2-EGSS-7-8 means pretty much the same thing that CANUCK ONE would mean in the US if assigned, except that it has the added advantage of having the airport ID embedded in the name, not that you wouldn't already know that. Neither one of them tell you much without looking at the document. My objective is to make the document easily available to you in Plan-G, not name it in such detail you don't have to open it.

 

In most cases, your flight plan is going to include the STAR right from the beginning and you'll know that. Some STARs are runway-specific, so if the wind changes and forces the active runway(s) to change you may be assigned a new STAR. In the real world, I suspect in that case they'd just dispense with the STAR and go with vectors but maybe not. In any case, if enroute and knowing your destination airport, you had to switch STARs, it's not THAT hard to look through all of them for that one specific airport to find the one you need. Most airports don't have that many available - five to ten maybe for a big-city airport. STARs begin hundreds of miles out in some cases - almost always at least a hundred miles, so there's plenty of time to get your hands on the one you're assigned before the waypoints begin to come fast and furious. That usually only happens as you get closer in to the airport.

 

John

 

EDIT: If I were to use their ID, it would appear on the Plan-G Menu as...

 

• EGSS - STAR - AD 2-EGSS-7-8

 

The EGSS part is necessary at the beginning of the filename to associate the document with the airport.

 

The STAR part in the middle tells you what kind of document it is (SIDs and STARs have similar names in the US) and also makes all the STARs appear together in the menu.

 

JDA

[brett 2,284]

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I don't use these charts often but when I have it's been a finger on the telephone book type choice, pick one and then fly it to see if I can meet the altitudes, turns and distance. It has been a slow learning process to understand all the technical aspects of the charts in general and how they are used.