AvPlan 1.6.1

After a long wait, and a bit of debate with the folks in App Review, we are pleased to announce that AvPlan 1.6.1 is now available from the App Store. This release adds a lot of new functionality, fixes a few bugs and has some great performance improvements as well. iPad 3 owners will notice much better map rendering speed, and we have made some huge improvements in this area in the next release, which will come in the next week or so.

We have added the ability to create passenger manifests with weights which get automatically added to the aircraft loading. Tap on the ‘POB’ button on the weight and balance page. In addition a load sheet can be printed/emailed/sent to another app as well.

A terrain database is now included with the app and will display as an overlay on Airservices maps. This terrain overlay shows all terrain which is >1500ft below to 500ft below as yellow, and anything higher than 500ft below you as red. With a flight plan in ‘Plan’ mode this changes slightly – the terrain will be colour coded as above, but with reference to the maximum flight planned altitude.

Table of contents, bookmarks and full text search is now available for all documents in the ‘Text’ pane. Tap on the window to display (or hide) the search bar.

Waypoints will now auto-sequence through your flight plan (when enabled under ‘Settings’, ‘User Settings’). Tap ‘Departure’ when you depart your origin aerodrome and the flight plan will sequence to the next leg of your plan automatically. Flight plan sequencing stops at a landing point, or at a point in your plan which is marked as a delay point. Tap ‘Next Leg’ in these cases to resume your plan.

This release includes the ability to reverse (create points back to your point of origin), invert or append another flight plan. Tap the ‘Edit’ button on the flight plan and the new buttons will appear.

AvPlan 1.6.1 includes an interface to connect it to the X-Plane flight simulator. Enable this under ‘Settings’, ‘User Settings’. Remember to turn this off before going flying!

We have added a new search button on the En-Route page. Enter in a place identifier, and AvPlan will locate it on a map. If the point is not on the current map, it will open a map of the same type, or a VFR or IFR chart covering a greater area on which that point is located. You will also notice the blue (+) button on each row when searching. Tapping that will allow a line to be drawn between points on the map. This should be really useful when visualising forecast subdivisions.

With no plan active the app will now function as a simple moving map – tapping on a point and selecting the blue (+) in the ‘Nearest Items’ window will enable ‘direct to’ navigation. Tap the data labels at the top of the map to cancel direct-to navigation in this mode.

The app will now import flight plans from Champagne Flight Planner in GPX format. This is in addition to the current ability to import plans from Command Flight Planner.

A ‘Download all’ button is included on the Downloads page – when a new data update is available an additional button will appear to enable you to just download updates of the maps you had previously downloaded. You should also find downloads are far more reliable & continue when the app is in the background.

We have completely changed the internal data layout in the map to ensure your user data is backed up correctly via iTunes or iCloud and data will not be purged if your device fills up. You should also notice the background data consistency check is far faster.

We have also made a bunch of little tweaks and fixes;

• Larger zoom setting on the maps
• When editing field ’18A’ on the Weather/NOTAM’s Terminal page, the previous entries are not cleared
• Waypoints can be entered with 3 decimal paces
• The ‘Nearest Items’ window now displays information up to 30 nm away
• The NAIPS submission form which is generated when a plan is accepted by NAIPS can now be printed.