1
Welcome to the December 2017 edition of the SkyDemon customer newsletter. In the five months since I last wrote to you we’ve been incredibly busy with software releases and behind-the-scenes work, which I offer as an excuse for why I haven’t managed to write more often. I can see this is only the third I have managed this year, but it’s a good one; read on for lots of interesting stuff.
A couple of the things I’ll talk about are in the forthcoming 3.9 version of SkyDemon, so don’t worry if you don’t see them yet.
Radio Tab
For many years we had a Radio screen available from the main menu in navigation mode. It showed all the frequencies you might want to use at your current position and coming soon, but a lot of people didn’t seem to know about it.
We decided to create a dedicated Radio tab on the right-hand side of the screen, where the other briefing tabs are, and moved the information there. You can open the tab in flight and see the current FIS frequency, the best frequency to use for any airspace you’re in (or approaching) and the frequencies for the airfields around you too. It’s incredibly useful and even shows you the nearest altimeter pressure setting to use (from the latest METARs) and transponder codes for use with TMZs and frequency monitoring.
Briefing for Local Flights
A lot of our users often go flying with no particular destination in mind, or just for a local flight from their home airfield, landing back there after enjoying the scenery for a while.
SkyDemon supports briefing for local flights. Go to create a new route, enter your takeoff airfield and simply specify the radius you’ll be flying inside. You’ll then see that circle represented on the map and your NOTAM and weather briefings will be updated accordingly.
In September we added special support for local flights to the Pilot Log and Briefing Pack. In the Pilot Log you still get frequencies but not the waypoints section, and in the Briefing Pack virtually all the content is there, including a chart of the area in which you’ll be flying.
Other Enhancements
Cloud storage of saved routes is now automatic, in our iOS and Android apps. We removed the dedicated “Save to Cloud” and “Load from Cloud” options from the Route menu and when you go to save, a copy is automatically placed in the cloud. You can turn this off if you want to. When you go to load, your routes saved on the device and in your private cloud storage are all shown in one clear list.
While planning your flight we generate warnings for penetration of controlled or dangerous airspace, planning below MSA, and a few other things. These warnings have always been displayed in the Flight Details tab but unfortunately many people do not know about that tab. We have therefore brought them out into their own Warnings tab, which serves as an excellent reference while planning a flight to quickly check that the hazards we’re telling you about are hazards you’re aware of.
We added a banner at the top of the What’s Here screen when you’re flying which provides an instant reading of your distance from, and bearing from and to, the position underneath your finger. This updates in real time and can be touched to pin the waypoint to the top of the screen, giving you live updates on it until it’s touched again. Great when ATC keep asking you to report relative to a specific waypoint.
UAT Trial
UAT is a technology used in the USA to broadcast traffic and weather information from ground stations to aircraft. As long as you have a receiver on board (and there are many reasonably-priced receivers available) you can receive this information and display it on your navigation app of choice.
Many people have always said that UAT will never come to Europe. However, with the support of the CAA, we have teamed up with uAvionix to start trial broadcasts in the UK. We currently have one low-powered transmitter broadcasting with a 15nm radius around our offices, but in the new year we will have an additional two transmitters elsewhere in the south of the UK hopefully delivering some joined-up coverage.
If you have a compatible receiver, SkyDemon will receive this live weather information and display it. At the moment we are broadcasting precipitation radar which instantly shows up as an overlay on your map and helps you avoid bad weather enroute. We are also broadcasting TAF and METAR, so even without an internet connection you can monitor the very latest bulletins from any airfield within a 250nm radius of a transmitter. This is hugely exciting stuff, and it’ll be easy for us to turn on more weather products as the trial grows and progresses. If the data broadcast proves useful to lots of people it will help us make a case for rolling out a network of ground stations. Already some other European countries have expressed an interest in offering this too.
If your aircraft already has certified kit which will pick up the American UAT signals, it should also pick up the UK broadcasts if you’re flying in range. In terms of portable devices, the SkyEcho from uAvionix will pick up the UAT as well as receiving (and sending) ADS/B, so that’s a great solution. The iLevil and Stratux are also devices which will receive UAT and ADS/B.
We will update you with more information about how the UAT trial is progressing in further newsletters next year.
Awards!
I don’t normally talk about awards but this year we have been given a couple of very prestigious ones which are worth mentioning.
In May we were awarded the Jeffrey Quill medal by the Air League, for our work in the field of encouraging airmindedness, particularly in younger pilots. I was honoured to accept the medal on behalf of the team from HRH the Duke of Edinburgh at a ceremony at St James’s Palace in London.
In October we were given the Sir James Martin award by the Honourable Company of Air Pilots, in recognition of an outstanding and practical contribution to the safer operation of aircraft. Hannah and I attended the ceremony at the Guildhall in London where we received the medal on behalf of the team.
Wrapping up the Year
This year has been great for us, but then again, all the years we’ve been in business have been great for us. This has been our best yet, though.
We’ve added plenty of new features to SkyDemon, though they have tended to be smaller things, as we’ve already got most of the major features we want. The most common feedback we get these days is not to add anything which will complicate the product, and we are extremely sensitive to that. Having said that, we have added a new traffic radar instrument, the graphical airspace stack in the What’s Here screen, management of flightplans from within the app, auto zooming, briefing for local flights, UAT support, the radio tab, and a few other things.
At this time of year when the European flying season is at its quietest, we always concentrate on improvements we can make to our existing features rather than adding new stuff. To that end, the current public version and the forthcoming version have tidied up a lot of the menu structure and moved some things around in order to simplify the user interface. There are fewer options, fewer things to touch, and the layout is more intuitive. We’re working on our website too, and that will become easier to navigate.
We are confident that despite the many additions we’ve made, SkyDemon will finish this year with a simpler user interface than it started with. That makes us very happy!
Give the Gift of SkyDemon
This Christmas, make a friend or relative happier and safer by giving them the gift of SkyDemon. Our gift certificates are very popular at this time of year and cost only £139. When redeemed, they grant a year’s worth of SkyDemon personal subscription, and the redeemer can renew for the usual price of £89 in their second year.
To purchase a gift certificate, click on the link below. We send them out by first class post every working day.
http://www.skydemon.aero/store/giftcertificate.aspx
Follow us on Facebook
These newsletters are only sent once every few months, when we find time to compile them. They go out to over a hundred thousand pilots, and it actually takes weeks to send them!
We post updates on Facebook much more often - every week or two - sharing information about what we're working on and asking for feedback about new ideas that we come up with. You can find our page at the link below; simply click "like" to be kept informed.
View our page on Facebook
Thanks for Listening
That's all for this time; don't forget to follow us on Facebook if you'd like to stay in regular contact.
Tim @ SkyDemon
This message has been sent to Axel Neudeck because you have an account on our system which is signed up to receive our newsletters. If you do not wish to receive these newsletters, please accept our apologies and use this unsubscribe link.
Welcome to the December 2017 edition of the SkyDemon customer newsletter. In the five months since I last wrote to you we’ve been incredibly busy with software releases and behind-the-scenes work, which I offer as an excuse for why I haven’t managed to write more often. I can see this is only the third I have managed this year, but it’s a good one; read on for lots of interesting stuff.
A couple of the things I’ll talk about are in the forthcoming 3.9 version of SkyDemon, so don’t worry if you don’t see them yet.
Radio Tab
For many years we had a Radio screen available from the main menu in navigation mode. It showed all the frequencies you might want to use at your current position and coming soon, but a lot of people didn’t seem to know about it.
We decided to create a dedicated Radio tab on the right-hand side of the screen, where the other briefing tabs are, and moved the information there. You can open the tab in flight and see the current FIS frequency, the best frequency to use for any airspace you’re in (or approaching) and the frequencies for the airfields around you too. It’s incredibly useful and even shows you the nearest altimeter pressure setting to use (from the latest METARs) and transponder codes for use with TMZs and frequency monitoring.
Briefing for Local Flights
A lot of our users often go flying with no particular destination in mind, or just for a local flight from their home airfield, landing back there after enjoying the scenery for a while.
SkyDemon supports briefing for local flights. Go to create a new route, enter your takeoff airfield and simply specify the radius you’ll be flying inside. You’ll then see that circle represented on the map and your NOTAM and weather briefings will be updated accordingly.
In September we added special support for local flights to the Pilot Log and Briefing Pack. In the Pilot Log you still get frequencies but not the waypoints section, and in the Briefing Pack virtually all the content is there, including a chart of the area in which you’ll be flying.
Other Enhancements
Cloud storage of saved routes is now automatic, in our iOS and Android apps. We removed the dedicated “Save to Cloud” and “Load from Cloud” options from the Route menu and when you go to save, a copy is automatically placed in the cloud. You can turn this off if you want to. When you go to load, your routes saved on the device and in your private cloud storage are all shown in one clear list.
While planning your flight we generate warnings for penetration of controlled or dangerous airspace, planning below MSA, and a few other things. These warnings have always been displayed in the Flight Details tab but unfortunately many people do not know about that tab. We have therefore brought them out into their own Warnings tab, which serves as an excellent reference while planning a flight to quickly check that the hazards we’re telling you about are hazards you’re aware of.
We added a banner at the top of the What’s Here screen when you’re flying which provides an instant reading of your distance from, and bearing from and to, the position underneath your finger. This updates in real time and can be touched to pin the waypoint to the top of the screen, giving you live updates on it until it’s touched again. Great when ATC keep asking you to report relative to a specific waypoint.
UAT Trial
UAT is a technology used in the USA to broadcast traffic and weather information from ground stations to aircraft. As long as you have a receiver on board (and there are many reasonably-priced receivers available) you can receive this information and display it on your navigation app of choice.
Many people have always said that UAT will never come to Europe. However, with the support of the CAA, we have teamed up with uAvionix to start trial broadcasts in the UK. We currently have one low-powered transmitter broadcasting with a 15nm radius around our offices, but in the new year we will have an additional two transmitters elsewhere in the south of the UK hopefully delivering some joined-up coverage.
If you have a compatible receiver, SkyDemon will receive this live weather information and display it. At the moment we are broadcasting precipitation radar which instantly shows up as an overlay on your map and helps you avoid bad weather enroute. We are also broadcasting TAF and METAR, so even without an internet connection you can monitor the very latest bulletins from any airfield within a 250nm radius of a transmitter. This is hugely exciting stuff, and it’ll be easy for us to turn on more weather products as the trial grows and progresses. If the data broadcast proves useful to lots of people it will help us make a case for rolling out a network of ground stations. Already some other European countries have expressed an interest in offering this too.
If your aircraft already has certified kit which will pick up the American UAT signals, it should also pick up the UK broadcasts if you’re flying in range. In terms of portable devices, the SkyEcho from uAvionix will pick up the UAT as well as receiving (and sending) ADS/B, so that’s a great solution. The iLevil and Stratux are also devices which will receive UAT and ADS/B.
We will update you with more information about how the UAT trial is progressing in further newsletters next year.
Awards!
I don’t normally talk about awards but this year we have been given a couple of very prestigious ones which are worth mentioning.
In May we were awarded the Jeffrey Quill medal by the Air League, for our work in the field of encouraging airmindedness, particularly in younger pilots. I was honoured to accept the medal on behalf of the team from HRH the Duke of Edinburgh at a ceremony at St James’s Palace in London.
In October we were given the Sir James Martin award by the Honourable Company of Air Pilots, in recognition of an outstanding and practical contribution to the safer operation of aircraft. Hannah and I attended the ceremony at the Guildhall in London where we received the medal on behalf of the team.
Wrapping up the Year
This year has been great for us, but then again, all the years we’ve been in business have been great for us. This has been our best yet, though.
We’ve added plenty of new features to SkyDemon, though they have tended to be smaller things, as we’ve already got most of the major features we want. The most common feedback we get these days is not to add anything which will complicate the product, and we are extremely sensitive to that. Having said that, we have added a new traffic radar instrument, the graphical airspace stack in the What’s Here screen, management of flightplans from within the app, auto zooming, briefing for local flights, UAT support, the radio tab, and a few other things.
At this time of year when the European flying season is at its quietest, we always concentrate on improvements we can make to our existing features rather than adding new stuff. To that end, the current public version and the forthcoming version have tidied up a lot of the menu structure and moved some things around in order to simplify the user interface. There are fewer options, fewer things to touch, and the layout is more intuitive. We’re working on our website too, and that will become easier to navigate.
We are confident that despite the many additions we’ve made, SkyDemon will finish this year with a simpler user interface than it started with. That makes us very happy!
Give the Gift of SkyDemon
This Christmas, make a friend or relative happier and safer by giving them the gift of SkyDemon. Our gift certificates are very popular at this time of year and cost only £139. When redeemed, they grant a year’s worth of SkyDemon personal subscription, and the redeemer can renew for the usual price of £89 in their second year.
To purchase a gift certificate, click on the link below. We send them out by first class post every working day.
http://www.skydemon.aero/store/giftcertificate.aspx
Follow us on Facebook
These newsletters are only sent once every few months, when we find time to compile them. They go out to over a hundred thousand pilots, and it actually takes weeks to send them!
We post updates on Facebook much more often - every week or two - sharing information about what we're working on and asking for feedback about new ideas that we come up with. You can find our page at the link below; simply click "like" to be kept informed.
View our page on Facebook
Thanks for Listening
That's all for this time; don't forget to follow us on Facebook if you'd like to stay in regular contact.
Tim @ SkyDemon
This message has been sent to Axel Neudeck because you have an account on our system which is signed up to receive our newsletters. If you do not wish to receive these newsletters, please accept our apologies and use this unsubscribe link.