Prepare Flights

User Manual — Plan, Brief, Fly & Log

1. Welcome & What This Is For

This is a browser-based weather and airport information tool for general-aviation pilots. It puts every significant airport worldwide (over 22,000 of them) on one map and overlays it with a complete suite of aviation weather forecast products — current conditions, multi-day forecasts, fog, icing, turbulence, and convection — so you can answer the questions that matter before a flight: Is the weather flyable? Where? When?

The app is a Progressive Web App: open it in any modern browser, optionally add it to your home screen, and it behaves like a native app (works offline, full-screen on mobile).

What you can do:

• See the current flight category (VFR / MVFR / BIR / IFR / LIFR) of every airport at a glance
• Spot fog, mist, and freezing fog as letter badges right on airport markers
• Read the latest METAR and a 12-hour TAF with one click
• Click anywhere on the map for a compact weather panel and 6-period day/evening/night forecast
• Scrub forward up to 7 days through every forecast layer using a single time bar
• Draw a line on the map and instantly see a vertical weather cross-section (an airgram) along it
• View animated wind, cloud, precipitation, fog, icing, turbulence, convective activity, and pressure forecasts as map overlays
• Read official Significant Weather Charts (SWC) and live SIGMETs alongside the model forecast

2. The Interface at a Glance

The main screen is intentionally clean. Here is every control you will see and what it does:

That's the entire UI. The map fills the rest of the screen.

2.1 Moving Around the Map

• Pan — click + drag (touch: drag)
• Zoom — scroll wheel, pinch, or use the + / − buttons
• Reset to your location — click the ◉ locate button

Smaller airports become visible as you zoom in — large airports are visible globally, medium ones from zoom 5, small ones from zoom 7.

2.2 Searching for Airports

Click the search bar at the top-left and type at least two characters. Matches appear as a dropdown. You can search by:

• ICAO code — EFHK
• IATA code — HEL
• Airport or city name — Helsinki

Pick a result and the map flies to the airport and opens its popup automatically.

Quick list (no typing). Tap the empty search box and a shortlist drops down before you type anything:

• Nearest — the closest airports to your location, each with its distance in nautical miles. This uses your device’s GPS, so allow the location permission when asked; if no position is available the Nearest list is simply omitted.
• Favourites — your starred airports (Section 6.7), shown when you are signed in.

Tap a row to jump straight to that airport and open its popup — and unlike a typed search, the zoom level stays as you had it (only the map centre moves). Tapping the search box again closes the list.

3. Signing In & Syncing Your Data

The map, weather overlays, METAR / TAF, airgram tool, NOTAMs, SWC and radar work without an account. Sign in to unlock the Flight Planner (Section 16) and to have your saved flights, aircraft profiles and weather-layer preferences follow you across devices and browsers.

3.1 The menu button

One round button in the bottom-left corner of the map holds the account and everything else the app keeps off the chart. It shows a person icon when nobody is signed in and your initial, on blue, once you are. Click it and the menu opens upward:

• Anonymous (not signed in): the bottom row is Sign in, which opens the sign-in card — Continue with Google on top, and below it an email field with a Send sign-in link button.
• Signed in: the bottom row is Log out, with the signed-in address underneath it, and the rows above it add Logbook, Aircraft log, Offline packs and ⚙ Settings (Section 4).

The list is flat and grouped by four rules: reading (About, Help, Feedback) at the top, the map’s own controls (Legend, Refresh) next, what you set up (Settings, Offline packs) below that, and your flights and your account at the bottom — nearest the thumb, since the menu opens upward from the corner. About is the topmost entry in both states, and opens the version, contact and disclaimer dialog (Section 4.6).

In flight (while the tracking HUD is up) the button is hidden with the rest of the planning chrome — minimise the HUD to bring it back.

3.2 Two ways to sign in

• Google — one tap. The browser hops to Google’s consent screen, you approve, and you’re back on the map already signed in. No password to remember.
• Email magic link — type your email address and tap Send sign-in link. A one-time link arrives within seconds (check spam if it doesn’t). Tap the link on the same device and you’re signed in. Useful when you don’t want to involve a third party, or you don’t have a Google account.

Either way the result is the same account — first time signing in with that email creates it, subsequent sign-ins log you back into the existing one. Your session persists for up to a year on each browser; you only need to sign in again if you log out explicitly or clear your cookies.

3.3 What syncs to the server

When you’re signed in, the following travels with your account so it’s there on every device you use:

• Saved flights — everything the Flight Planner library shows: routes, per-leg fuel / wind / FL settings, the aircraft choice, the visibility flag.
• Aircraft profiles — your custom aircraft (call name, fuel capacity, TAS, burn, climb / descent perf), and any per-preset overrides you made to the built-in DA62 / DA40 / SR22 / C172 / PA28 presets in Settings.
• Settings preferences — weather-layer modes and symbol toggles (Section 4.1), Flight Planner defaults (default aircraft, reserve and taxi minutes, default flight rules), basemap choice and the active map-overlay set (Terminal Airspaces / SUA / ACC / IFR / VFR Points), and your airgram view preferences (Hours / Days mode, speed mode, scale mode, max FL).
• Airport filters — your funnel-panel selections (type, runway length, surface, ATC, country, elevation, fuel; Section 5.4).
• Favourite airports — your starred fields (Section 6.7).
• Presets — your saved map-layer viewpoints (Section 9).
• Logbook — your pilot logbook entries (Section 21), including the consumables you capture per flight.
• Aircraft log — your manually-added aircraft-log flights (Section 22).

The sync runs quietly in the background — on every reload, when the tab regains focus, and periodically while you work. There is no “Save” button to press.

3.4 What does not sync

• Map view state — current pan, zoom and time-bar offset. These reset to defaults per session.
• UI ergonomics — panel positions you’ve dragged, dismissed one-shot hints. These stay per-browser.

3.5 Logging out

Picking Log out from the menu does three things in sequence:

1. Tells the server to invalidate your session.
2. Wipes everything sync-related from this browser’s local storage — saved flights, aircraft profiles, synced settings, the last-push marker. Anything left would have been a copy already on the server.
3. Reloads the page so the next person using this browser sees a clean anonymous session and the map you were planning on doesn’t hang around.

When you sign back in (here or on another device) everything is fetched fresh from the server, so nothing is lost — only hidden between sessions.

4. Settings

Open Settings from the bottom-left menu (Section 3.1) — the ⚙ Settings entry. The panel is a master–detail: a Home view with cards for Display, Aircraft and Presets (saved map-layer viewpoints — Section 9), each of which opens its own page with a ← Back button. Display goes one level deeper again — it opens a short list of groups rather than one long page, so a map-button preference is not buried below eight symbol toggles. Close with the × button in the header, by pressing Escape, or by clicking outside the panel.

Settings is for signed-in users — every change there is written to your account and propagates to your other browsers on their next sync. (The About dialog is separate: it lives in the bottom-left menu for everyone, not inside Settings — Section 4.6.)

4.1 Display

Display opens three groups. Everything in them is a look-and-feel choice — nothing here changes the weather data itself, only how it is drawn or what the printed briefing includes.

General — the map’s own controls and the printed briefing.

• Zoom buttons on the map — + / − buttons at the top of the left-hand control column. On by default on touch devices, off with a mouse. A pinch needs two fingers to land together, which is exactly what turbulence takes away; a button needs one.
• See-through map buttons on phone — on a phone the corner button columns lose their fill and become outlines with the map running through them. Icons keep a white halo so they stay readable over any chart. No effect on larger screens.
• Print briefing — Terminal Areas & reporting points — include those layers on the printed map pages.
• Print briefing — Weather overview page — include the four-panel model overview (winds / cloud + convective / icing / ceiling) in the briefing.

Weather — how each forecast overlay annotates itself. These are the same toggles you would otherwise hunt for in each overlay’s legend strip, pulled out so you can set your defaults once.

• Winds aloft display — Particles, Barbs, or Both for the Winds overlay.
• Cloud cover — category labels — print FEW / SCT / BKN / OVC over the cloud-cover heatmap.
• Precipitation — drop / flake symbols — drizzle, rain, snow and freezing-rain glyphs on top of the rate colours.
• Fog — symbols — METAR-style BR / FG / FZFG glyphs over the fog severity.
• Icing — symbols — SWC-style moderate / severe icing pictograms.
• Convective activity — CB labels — thunderstorm cell labels and lightning glyphs over the CAPE heatmap.
• Turbulence (CAT) — symbols — MOD / HVY / SEV pictograms over the turbulence cells.

Radar — the observed-imagery layers (Section 12).

• Satellite image — how Sat. Image (FMI) is drawn. See Section 12.5; the short version is that the default lets the map show through the clear sky, and Photograph brings back the raw picture.

Changing anything here updates the live map immediately if the corresponding layer is on, and the choice is remembered for next time.

4.2 Aircraft

The Aircraft page has three sub-sections.

Defaults. Four fields used by the Flight Planner whenever you create a new flight:

• Default aircraft — which aircraft to preselect on a new flight. The list shows the registration in parentheses when one is set (e.g. Diamond DA62 (OH-KAO)) so identical types are easy to tell apart.
• Default reserve — minutes of reserve fuel for the per-leg fuel required calculation.
• Default taxi — minutes of taxi fuel for the flight-totals math.
• Default flight rules — VFR / IFR / — preselection for the leg’s flight-rules picker.

Presets. A dropdown lists the built-in aircraft presets — DA62, DA40, SR22, C172, C182, PA28 and a generic GA tourer. Pick one and you get two buttons:

• Edit — opens the full perf editor (next sub-section) pre-filled with the preset’s numbers. Anything you change is saved as an override for that preset — the next time you (or the Flight Planner) ask for “DA62” your numbers come back instead of the factory defaults.
• Reset — visible only when overrides exist. Drops the overrides and restores the built-in numbers.

Custom aircraft. Aircraft you’ve added yourself (e.g. OH-DAA, your own tail). Each row shows the call name, cruise TAS and burn, and has Edit and Delete buttons. A + New button at the top of the list opens a blank editor.

4.3 Aircraft editor

The editor is a single form. The performance fields drive the planning math; Registration and MTOW are optional and feed the per-leg Handling flight-announcement email (Section 16.7).

Reserve and taxi are not in this editor — they live under Defaults (17.2). The reasoning: reserve and taxi are pilot / operator preferences, not aircraft properties.

Save writes the aircraft (or override) to your account and refreshes any open Flight Planner picker in real time, so you don’t need to close and reopen the planner to use the new entry. Cancel discards changes and returns to the Aircraft page.

4.4 Autorouter (connect your account)

Connecting your autorouter.aero account lets the Flight Planner find and validate IFR routes and file flight plans under your account — routing and filing always run against your own autorouter login, never a shared one.

• Connect autorouter — opens autorouter’s sign-in (OAuth) in a new page; on return the screen shows ✓ Connected with the session expiry. This unlocks the ✈ Auto route, Validate route and flight-plan filing controls on every leg (Section 16.12).
• Manage filed flight plans — lists the flight plans filed through your account so you can review or cancel them in one place.
• Disconnect — removes the stored token; the routing / filing controls revert to a “connect” prompt.

If the session expires the screen prompts you to reconnect. The connection is per-account and follows you across devices when you sign in.

4.5 NOTAM Calendar (subscribe on your phone)

Subscribe your phone’s calendar (iPhone Calendar, Google Calendar, or any app that reads a webcal / ICS feed) to a private, always-updating calendar of NOTAMs for your ★ favourite airfields (Section 6.7). A runway or aerodrome closure then shows up as a calendar entry, spanning its active period — so “is the field open this weekend?” is answered at a glance, without opening the app. It behaves just like the flag-day / name-day calendars you can subscribe to online: it appears as its own calendar you can switch on or off.

It is a signed-in feature (the feed is tied to your account and its synced favourites). Open Settings → NOTAM calendar and tap Create my NOTAM calendar.

• Add to iPhone / Calendar — opens the webcal link so your phone offers to subscribe in one tap. On a computer, use Copy feed URL and paste it into Google Calendar (“Other calendars → From URL”) or your calendar app’s “subscribe to calendar” option.
• Which airfields — the feed follows your favourites. Star a field to add it; un-star to remove it. No separate list to maintain.
• How much to include — two levels:
  • Closures only — just when the aerodrome or a runway is actually closed.
  • Closures & restrictions — the above plus taxiway / apron closures and unserviceabilities (U/S). Obstacle-light and other minor NOTAMs are never included.
• Its own calendar — once subscribed, toggle it on or off in your calendar app like any other calendar; each NOTAM is one event, and a cancelled NOTAM drops off on the next refresh.
• Reset link — rotates the URL (the old one stops working; re-subscribe on your devices). Turn off revokes the feed entirely.

4.6 About

The About dialog shows the current build version and date, the author’s copyright and contact email, and the app’s disclaimer. It opens from the About entry at the top of the bottom-left menu (Section 3.1) — the same place whether or not you are signed in. (About is not inside Settings.) The version line is handy when reporting an issue, so it’s clear which build you were running.

5. Airport Markers

5.1 Marker Types & Visibility

An Airports switch at the top of the layer menu (🌐) turns all three tiers on or off together — on by default, remembered across reloads — a fast way to declutter to just airspace and terrain, or bring the fields back (see §10.10).

On the Aeronautical basemaps, when you zoom in close to a field the plain marker gives way to a windsock drawn from the latest METAR wind; the spot stays clickable for the airport popup. See §10.10.

5.2 Live Flight-Category Colour

Whenever a current METAR is available, the dot is replaced by a larger category badge with a single letter inside:

The worst-case rule applies: whichever value is in the lower category wins.

Solid vs dashed. A solid badge is an observed or official reading; a dashed outline is a model or nearest-station estimate. So an official METAR (at Now) and an official TAF (forecast) both render solid, while an unofficial AWS/nearest-station category and an Open-Meteo model category render dashed.

Categories through time. Scrub the time bar forward and the badges stay on, showing a forecast category instead of going blank: the field’s own TAF where it issues one (solid), or the Open-Meteo model everywhere else (dashed). At Now, fields with no METAR and no unofficial observation also fall back to an Open-Meteo model estimate (dashed), so no field is left uncoloured. This works whether or not the Weather Map (Section 11.1) or any overlay is switched on.

Map weather refreshes itself: a background pull runs about every five minutes, plus an immediate refresh when you pan or zoom to new airports and when you return to the tab after it has been hidden for a couple of minutes. The bottom-right corner shows an “Updated N min ago” indicator, colour-coded green (under 5 min) → amber (under 15 min) → red (older), so the age of the marker colours is always visible. To force a fresh pull at any time, click the ↻ Refresh button in the bottom-left button column.

Small fields without an official METAR can still get a category colour from a nearby unofficial observation (an on-field automatic weather station, or the nearest station within range) — see Section 6.6. Those markers are flagged as estimates so they are not mistaken for an official reading.

5.3 Fog & Mist Badges

If the METAR contains a fog/mist code, a small coloured tag appears under the airport identifier:

5.4 Filtering Which Airports Show

The funnel button sits at the top-left of the map, stacked directly under the ★ favourites button. Click it to open the Filters panel; the panel floats above the map controls so nothing hides it. A live “N / M shown” count at the bottom tracks how many of the loaded airports pass your filters, and a Reset button clears everything back to defaults.

All filters combine (an airport must pass every active one to stay on the map). Favourite airports are exempt — a starred field stays visible even when its type or size is filtered out.

• Type — Large, Medium and Small airports (all on by default).
• Runway — Min / Max length — two sliders that bound the runway length (a field passes if it has a runway in the chosen range). The min slider’s left end and the max slider’s right end both read any, so leaving them at the extremes places no limit; the two are kept ordered so the minimum can never exceed the maximum.
• Paved only — restrict to hard-surface (asphalt / concrete) runways.
• ATC service — tick any of TWR, APP/TWR, AFIS/Radio, CTAF/UNICOM, Uncontrolled; leave all unticked for any.
• Country — one or more comma-separated ISO codes (e.g. FI, SE, EE); blank = any.
• Max elevation — hide fields above a given field elevation in feet.
• Fuel — show only fields with JET A-1 or AVGAS, and optionally hide PPR-required fields. Fuel / PPR data comes from cached AIPs.

Your filter selections are remembered between sessions. When you are signed in (Section 3) they also sync to your account, so the same set follows you to every device and browser.

6. Airport Information

Click any airport marker. The popup opens centred on screen and auto-pans if it would otherwise be clipped at the top edge. Long popups become scrollable inside their card rather than pushing past the viewport.

6.1 Header

The header is two rows that read like a quick-look briefing:

• Row 1 (left): Airport name · current flight category pill (VFR / MVFR / BIR / IFR / LIFR) · NOTAM badge ("N", orange/red) when active NOTAMs exist.
• Row 1 (right): Open-Meteo "now" snippet — temperature, weather icon, plain-English condition (e.g. "Partly cloudy").
• Row 2 (left): ICAO · IATA codes (greyed monospace).
• Row 2 (right): Surface wind — direction° / speed kt (e.g. "240°/12kt"), same small grey style as the codes.

6.2 Tabs

Below the header a row of tabs gives access to deeper information. The default tab is Info. Tabs are only shown when their data is available.

6.3 Weather Tab

The Weather tab stacks five clearly separated boxed sections. Each section has a coloured top stripe identifying its data source.

The METAR and TAF section headers each carry a small ↻ refresh button. Clicking it bypasses every cache layer and pulls the freshest report straight from the source — useful when an observation is overdue and you want to check for an update without reloading the page. The popup also refreshes its own METAR on a timer while it is open, and the age timestamp turns amber, then red, as the reading gets older, so a stale value is obvious at a glance.

Reading the forecast grid

The TAF table and the Weather (Open-Meteo) table are drawn by the same code, so everything below applies to both. They sit one above the other in this tab on purpose: same grammar, so your eye does not have to switch conventions halfway down. Time runs left to right, one column per hour or per period; the row labels stay pinned on the left while the columns scroll sideways.

The warn row

Everything that is a hazard rather than a measurement collapses into the last row. A blank cell means the forecast flags nothing; nothing here is inferred beyond what the source actually states. Colour groups the family — convective, freezing, wind, obscuration — but the code is always spelled out, so the row survives a black-and-white print.

ICE and WS are TAF-only, and that is not an oversight. Open-Meteo has no wind-shear product at all here, and its icing verdict needs pressure-level humidity the forecast strip does not fetch. An empty warn cell in the model table is therefore not a promise of smooth, ice-free air — it is the absence of a source, which is exactly why it stays empty rather than showing a guess. For icing and turbulence aloft, use the dedicated layers (Section 11) and the LLF section above.

A transient (TEMPO / PROB) hazard is drawn hollow — same code, visibly not the prevailing condition.

An "Active weather layers" verdict block appears at the bottom of this tab when any forecast layer is on (Winds, Icing, Turbulence, etc.) — same content as in Section 7.

6.4 How Icing is Detected

An icing badge appears whenever any of these is true:

• The METAR contains a freezing-precipitation code (FZRA, FZDZ, FZFG, …)
• Temperature is in −20 … +2 °C AND there is precipitation (RA, SN, DZ, PL, SG, GR, GS)
• Temperature is in −20 … +2 °C AND ceiling ≤ 5,000 ft AND temperature−dewpoint spread ≤ 3 °C (visible moisture in clouds)

This is a deliberately permissive trigger — icing certificates require margin, and the cost of a false negative is far higher than a false positive.

6.5 METAR History — the Last-3h Trend

The METAR section header has a History button. Open it to reveal a compact trend of the last three hours of observations — up to six columns at the routine half-hourly cadence, oldest on the left, the most recent marked NOW on the right. It reads like a simplified forecast grid — a coloured flight-category letter per column, then rows for WND, VIS, CIG, WX / CB and QNH — but it is a plainer table than the forecast grids above it: no weather glyphs, no wind colour ramp, no warn row, because it is showing what was observed rather than what is forecast. Hover any column to see its raw METAR line.

The point is to show how the weather is actually evolving rather than just the single current reading — is the ceiling lifting or lowering, is visibility improving, is the wind backing or building? Read side by side with the TAF section directly above it, the trend lets you sanity-check the forecast against what the field has really been doing: a TAF calling for improvement carries more confidence when the last three hours already show it, and a deteriorating trend against a steady TAF is a flag to watch.

The trend is offered both for fields with an official METAR and for fields whose unofficial observation we archive ourselves (Section 6.6). The panel loads on first open and is kept for the rest of the popup session.

6.6 Unofficial Weather at Fields Without a METAR

Many smaller fields publish no official ICAO METAR. Where a usable observation exists nearby, the app surfaces it anyway — clearly labelled so it is never mistaken for the real thing. A banner above the decoded weather always states the source and that it is “unofficial — not an ICAO METAR”.

The distance rule behind this: a station within about 1.5 nm is treated as the field’s own weather; a station out to roughly 27 nm (~50 km) is offered only as a labelled nearest-station estimate; beyond that nothing is shown. This is why two neighbouring grass strips can differ — one has an automatic station close enough to qualify and the other’s closest station falls just outside the range.

These unofficial fields also support the Last-3h trend (Section 6.5), archived from our own snapshots. As with every product here, treat unofficial readings as situational awareness and verify against official sources before flight.

No METAR / TAF at all — the Open-Meteo model estimate. When a field has neither an official report nor a usable nearby station, the METAR and TAF sections simply read “No METAR available” / “No TAF available” followed by a pointer: “See Open-Meteo model estimate for METAR / TAF below.” The Weather (Open-Meteo) section (Section 6.3) then supplies a fully model-derived OM-METAR and OM-TAF in the same visual grammar as the real reports. This gives useful situational awareness for fields the observation network does not cover — but it is a numerical-model estimate (the same data behind the forecast layers), never measured weather, so it is labelled accordingly throughout.

6.7 Favourite Airports

Mark the airports you check often as favourites and reach them — with their weather at a glance — in one tap. The ★ button is visible to everyone; saving favourites requires you to be signed in (Section 3), after which they sync to your account and follow you across every device. If you open the panel while signed out, it explains the feature and offers a one-tap sign-in.

• Star an airport. Open any airport’s popup and tap the ★ star next to its name. A filled star means it is a favourite; tap again to remove it.
• The Favourites panel. A ★ button sits at the top-left of the map, just under the “Track my flight” control, and opens a panel next to it. Each row shows a flight-category badge (VFR/IFR/…, same coloured pill as the popup), the ICAO and name, and at-a-glance weather chips — ceiling, visibility and wind. Fields without their own METAR borrow an estimated category from the nearest station or the on-field/AWOS reading, shown in italic.
• Jump to one. Click a row to pan the map straight to that airport and open its popup. The zoom level stays exactly as you had it — only the centre moves.

Removing a favourite is done from the airport’s popup (tap the star off), so the panel always reflects the set you actually use.

6.8 Charts & the Plate Viewer

Tapping a chart in the Charts tab opens it inside the app, full screen, instead of handing it to a new browser tab. On many charts your own position is drawn on the plate — which is what turns an aerodrome chart into a taxi aid at an unfamiliar field, day or night.

The chart list

The Charts tab and the viewer’s own chart picker are the same list, so what you learn in one works in the other:

• Every chart is one tap away. The list is flat — sections are captions you scroll past, not folders you open.
• Runway chips at the top (All · 06 · 24) narrow a long list to the runway you are using. Charts that belong to the whole field — the aerodrome chart, the VAC, the AD 2 text — stay visible whichever runway you pick, and a chart that covers a pair (“AOC RWY 06/24”) shows under both.
• Two marks at the end of a row: ⌖ means the chart can draw your position, and a green dot means it is already stored for offline use.
• Temporary arrangements lead the list. Works, temporary runways and the procedures that go with them are published as AIP supplements, which are not in AD 2 at all — Tampere-Pirkkala’s temporary runway 06/24C is SUP 104/2026. They appear under Temporary at the top of the chart list, each with its number and the dates it is in force, because a supplement overrides the permanent chart it amends. They disappear on their own when they expire, and a period that has not started yet is greyed rather than highlighted. Refreshed daily.
  Covered: Finland and Sweden (as PDFs, in the viewer), Estonia, Norway and Latvia (as web pages, marked ↗). Not covered: Denmark — Naviair lists its supplements by file name only, with no subject, dates or aerodrome to attach them to.
• An ↗ arrow means that entry opens in a browser tab instead of the viewer — the aerodrome’s own AD 2 text, which most states publish as a web page rather than a PDF, and documents fetched from an autorouter account. They are listed with the charts because they are part of the same publication.

Four ways in

The Charts tab is one of them; the other three save you having to find the field on the map first:

• From the flight planner — every leg carries a Charts row listing its aerodromes: departure, destination and the alternate (in amber). One tap opens that field’s charts. A field the app has no charts for simply isn’t listed.
• From the briefing — each aerodrome page lists that field’s charts by name under Charts, with a ⌖ against the ones that can show your position. On screen a name opens the chart; on paper the list is your index of what to have looked at. Long lists stop at twelve and say how many more there are.
• In flight — the button at the bottom of the right-hand stack, which shows the ICAO code of the field that matters now (Section 19.9).

Which chart opens first depends on what the aerodrome is for this flight: the aerodrome chart for a departure — the one with the taxiways — and the visual approach chart, then the instrument one, for a destination or alternate. Whatever it picks, the title and the ‹ › arrows reach every other chart at that field.

Which charts can show your position

Several states publish their AD 2 charts as georeferenced PDFs: the projection is inside the file, so the app can place you on the page without altering the chart in any way. Charts that carry it are marked with a ⌖ in the chart list — worth a glance before you open one.

A chart without georeferencing says “Not georeferenced” in the corner and shows no aircraft symbol. Nothing is guessed.

Moving around the viewer

• Drag to pan, pinch or scroll to zoom. Zoom in far enough and the page is re-rendered sharp rather than stretched.
• Tap the title (it carries a small ▾) for the full list of that aerodrome’s charts, grouped by section, with the current one highlighted and a ⌖ on each chart that can place you.
• ‹ and › at the left and right edges step to the previous or next chart — the fast way to flip between the approach plate and the taxi chart without going back to the popup.
• A page stepper (‹ 1/3 ›) appears in the control bar only when the document has more than one page. Some VFR-guide pages run to four.
• ⌖ centres the page on your aircraft, ⎮ fits the whole page, ✕ closes. On a keyboard: ← / → change chart, ↑ / ↓ change page, Esc closes.
• The control bar sits at the bottom on a phone or tablet — within reach of the thumb, and clear of the camera housing, clock and battery that live along the top edge. With a mouse it stays at the top. Wherever it is, the chart itself keeps clear of the notch, so “fit page” always means the whole page.

The aircraft symbol points along your track and is drawn at the same size whatever the zoom, so it stays readable. The pale blue circle around it is your GPS accuracy, drawn to the chart’s own scale. When you are outside the area a chart covers — an approach plate covers perhaps 40 NM — a note in the corner of the chart says “Position is not on this chart” rather than pinning the symbol to an edge.

Offline

Charts already in a flight pack open with no connection, position and all: the pack carries the chart PDFs, the georeferencing and the viewer itself (see Section 23). A chart opened for the first time without coverage, and not in a pack, cannot be fetched.

7. Click-Anywhere Weather

Click an empty spot on the map (anywhere that is not an airport) to open the weather panel for that point. The popup auto-pans into view if its top would be clipped, and becomes scrollable inside the card when content (especially after generating an AI summary) is taller than the viewport.

7.1 Header

The header mirrors the airport popup layout but with location data instead of airport identifiers.

• Row 1 (left): Reverse-geocoded place name (e.g. "Mikkeli"). Falls back briefly to "Loading location…" while the geocoder responds (1.5 s timeout).
• Row 1 (right): Temperature, weather icon, plain-English condition.
• Row 2 (left): Latitude / longitude in decimal degrees (e.g. 61.690°, 27.270°) followed by the terrain elevation at that grid cell (m and ft, Copernicus DEM via Open-Meteo). Useful context for minimum safe altitude when clicking on terrain.
• Row 2 (right): Surface wind — direction° / speed kt.

7.2 Sections

Below the header the popup stacks boxed sections in this order. Each has a coloured top stripe identifying its data source. The order is deliberately Open-Meteo first because it covers the whole planet, then LLF only when the click point is inside a Nordic forecast area.

7.3 Active Weather Layers

When forecast layers are switched on, a section labelled Active weather layers appears at the bottom of the popup. Each active layer (Weather Map, Winds, Clouds, Icing, Turbulence, Convective, Precipitation, Fog, MSL Pressure) contributes a one-line verdict for the click point — e.g. Weather Map shows the symbol condition and temperature at that point and time. Verdicts respect the selected altitude and the current time-bar offset, so the popup tracks both inputs in real time.

• Turbulence — "Moderate turbulence — wind shear 5.0 kt/1000 ft between FL100 and FL140 — low altitude band (around FL050)". Cells flagged with the wx-layer-ctx-warn tint when severity is MOD or worse.
• Icing — "Severe icing (large supercooled droplets possible) — temperature −4 °C, humidity 100%, cloud cover 100% at flight level 100".
• Other layers follow the same pattern: layer name on the left, value+verdict on the right.

This section is your fastest cross-check that the painted overlay matches the underlying data at a specific click point.

8. The Time & Altitude Bars

The time bar sits at the bottom of the map and is always available — the airport markers are themselves time-aware (their category becomes a TAF / Open-Meteo forecast when you scrub forward, Section 5.2), so you can sweep through "what does Friday morning look like over the Baltic?" in seconds without turning any overlay on. It drives all time-aware overlays and the marker forecast at once.

The range is approximately −12 h ↔ +168 h (7 days) when a forecast layer is on, and at least the Open-Meteo marker-forecast window (about −2 h ↔ +48 h) even with no overlay selected. Past observations are limited by the source (e.g. radar nowcasts only publish a recent window). Turning the last forecast overlay off snaps the time back to Now so the next layer you open doesn't inherit a stale offset.

8.1 The Altitude Bar

Some forecast layers (Clouds, Icing, Turbulence, Winds, Precipitation, Convective Activity, MSL Pressure) are inherently three-dimensional. A shared altitude bar appears in the top-right whenever you switch on a layer that needs one. Picking a level applies it to every active 3-D layer at once, which keeps cross-comparisons honest.

Low / Mid / High are non-overlapping bands — the same shear layer or icing cell appears in exactly one of them, never two. Hover any button for a tooltip explaining what it represents and which pressure levels it draws from.

The bar hides itself when no altitude-aware layer is on and resets to Total automatically so the next altitude-aware layer you open starts in its default state.

9. Presets

A preset is a named set of map layers (plus an optional SWC chart for briefings). It serves two purposes: apply it to the live map in one tap to switch between viewpoints, or print it as a briefing in one click without changing the map you’re looking at. The button lives at the top of the right-hand control column, above the globe.

9.1 Built-in VFR & IFR presets

Two built-in presets are available to everyone, signed in or not:

• VFR — the Aeronautical (VFR) basemap with Airports, Terminal & Special Use Airspaces, ACC Sectors, Obstacles, Power lines, VFR Points and Navaids.
• IFR — the Aeronautical (IFR) basemap with Airports, IFR Points, Airways, Navaids, ACC Sectors, Terminal & Special Use Airspaces and the AMA Grid.

Each switches the basemap and its overlay set in one tap. Beyond those, your own saved presets (convection, icing, a custom VFR layout…) sync across every device you sign in on and require sign-in.

The quickest way to use them is the Presets button — the stacked-squares icon at the top of the right-hand control column, above the globe. It opens a small panel that lists your presets: tap one to apply it to the map, tap the printer (⎙) on a row to print it as a briefing, or tap + Save current view to capture the layers currently on the map as a new preset. Manage in Settings opens the full editor, where you can also attach an SWC chart for briefings.

9.2 Creating & editing presets

Beyond the main-screen Save current view, the full editor is at Settings › Presets. Two ways to start:

• + New preset — opens an empty editor.
• + From current map layers — pre-fills the editor with whatever layers are on the map right now, ready to fine-tune.

In the editor you pick exactly what the print should contain — you don’t need to turn anything on the live map first:

• Layers — tick boxes grouped into Airspaces & info, Weather, Radar / Satellite and Low Level Forecast.
• Altitude / level — the level the altitude-aware weather layers render at (Total, Low / Mid / High, or a specific FL).
• Forecast time — print “now” or a forecast offset (+1 / +3 / +6 / +12 / +24 h).
• Include SWC chart — adds a Significant Weather Chart page (choose Finland / Nordic / Europe) just before the airspace map.

Each saved preset shows on the list with a layer count and a short summary; Edit reopens the editor, Delete removes it.

9.3 Printing a preset

Click the bottom-left print button and pick the preset from the menu. The app prints its saved layers, altitude, time and SWC choice straight away — the live map is left exactly as it was. Airspace tables in the appendix are fetched in the background for the current view, so they appear even if those overlays aren’t switched on. (Choose Current view in the same menu to print what’s actually on the map instead.)

10. Map Layers (🌐)

The globe-icon menu in the top-right corner picks the underlying basemap and toggles a stack of chart overlays — airports, airspaces, ACC sectors, IFR / VFR points, navaids, airways, obstacles, the AMA grid, power lines, live traffic and GPS interference. Open it by clicking the globe; click any other layer-menu icon (or anywhere on the map) to close. Your overlay selections are remembered across reloads, and the built-in VFR and IFR presets (§ 9) switch the basemap and the matching overlay set in one click.

10.1 Basemap

Nine basemaps are offered; the top two are aviation charts, the rest are general map or imagery styles. All except Satellite and Topographic (MML) are rendered by MapLibre GL JS from OpenStreetMap data via OpenFreeMap, so they zoom smoothly and stay sharp on high-DPI screens.

Aeronautical (VFR) is a vector base restyled to read like a VFR sectional. On it, the Terminal Airspaces layer draws its boundaries as chart-style bands with the ICAO class letter inside and the area name in blue, a frequency panel pins to the corner when you zoom in, a windsock appears near a field once you’re zoomed in close (from the latest METAR), and the Special Use Airspaces tags surface each area’s code and altitudes by zoom. The basemap itself does not switch overlays on — use the VFR preset to load the full working set in one click.

Aeronautical (IFR) is a label-free base with the enroute working-chart look. Selecting it automatically switches on the enroute set — Navaids, IFR Points, Airways, ACC Sectors, Terminal & Special Use Airspaces and the AMA Grid — and shades controlled airspace (CTR / TMA / CTA) yellow with aerodromes drawn as crosshairs. Switching back to another basemap restores your previous layers.

10.2 Terminal Airspaces

What you see: TMA and CTR polygons around controlled airports, outlined and shaded subtly so they don’t bury the underlying map. Click any polygon for a popup with the controlling unit’s callsign, frequency, vertical limits and airspace class.

On the Aeronautical basemaps the boundary is drawn VFR-chart style: a semi-transparent band on the inside of the line, the ICAO class letter (C / D /…) in a solid box sitting inside the band, and the area name in blue with a white halo beside it, with the vertical limits shown as an upper / lower box. When you zoom in, a frequency panel pins to a corner of the map (approach set, switching to the ground set — ATIS / DEL / GND / TWR — when you zoom in far enough for runway numbers to show). The band, class letters and frequency panel are part of the Terminal Airspaces layer — turning the layer off removes them too.

How it’s computed: Where the app scrapes the national eAIP — Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Latvia — that publication is authoritative: geometry, vertical limits, frequencies and the airspace type all come from it, and another source’s copy of the same area is dropped rather than drawn on top of it. Flyk then fills the gaps in the Finnish set (RMZ / FIZ the eAIP tables miss), and OpenAIP covers the rest of Europe — served from the app’s own per-country export, rebuilt weekly (see §10.3 for what that means for coverage, freshness and zoom). Frequencies follow the same order: the AIP’s own number where it publishes one, otherwise OpenAIP’s airport data — the same source as the airport popup and panel — so the number you see here matches everywhere.

Use it for: Knowing whose airspace you’re entering, getting the right frequency before contact, and judging the lateral and vertical limits of controlled volumes on your route.

10.3 Special Use Airspaces

What you see: Restricted (R), Danger (D) and Prohibited (P) areas plus TSA / TRA reservations (military training, daily AUP/UUP releases). Two independent visual channels encode type and activation:

The hourly scrubber on the time bar updates the styling live, so scrubbing forward shows which areas switch from dashed to solid (or vice-versa) at any time in the next 24 h. Click a polygon to read the activating NOTAM(s), validity window, vertical limits and remarks — and use the Ask AI button on any NOTAM in that popup for a plain-language explanation (what it says, whether it affects you, and its severity), exactly like the NOTAM explainer in the airport popup.

On-map tags (Aeronautical basemaps). When you zoom in on a VFR / IFR chart, each area labels itself with a compact chart-style tag — so you can read the essentials without clicking:

• a coloured header with the area type letter (R / D / P / TSA / TRA) and its designator (e.g. EFR11);
• the vertical limits as an upper / lower fraction (e.g. FL95 / GND), the same way the terminal band shows them;
• a schedule line — “until 19:00Z” when active, or “06:00–19:00Z” (with a tmr / date prefix) when it activates later.

Tags are shown only for areas that are active now or activate later today — everything else you read from the polygon colour, keeping the chart clean. The tags size themselves to the map (grow and shrink as you zoom), and they step aside so they never overlap another tag, a leader line, an airport, an obstacle or a navaid; a tag pushed off its area is tied back to it with a thin line. Areas below 1000 ft get no tag.

Local training areas (TRA). The Finnish AUP/UUP set also contains the aerodrome-local training areas (TSA / TRA / CBA, e.g. EFTRATP61…95 around Tampere-Pirkkala). To keep them useful without burying the map, the local TRAs draw faintly (a dashed outline) whenever Special Use Airspaces is on, and zooming right in adds a subtle label inside each — its designator over its upper / lower limits — sitting along the top edge. Any area that is active (of any class) still fills and tags prominently as above. This is the only source for these areas — OpenAIP does not carry Finnish TSA/TRA.

How it’s computed: Combines several sources for the widest practical coverage, in this order of authority:

• The national eAIP ENR 5.1 scrape for Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Latvia — the state’s own published R/D/P set, refreshed each AIRAC. It wins: where OpenAIP carries the same area, its copy is dropped (the two are matched on designator, allowing for the different spellings — EK-R39, EN-R116, ESR126 — the sources use). Across Finland that drops 244 of OpenAIP’s 245 areas in favour of the AIP.
• OpenAIP for the R/D/P geometry of the rest of Europe, and for the occasional area the national scrape does not carry.
• Flyk for a Finland-extended R/D/P set (broader local coverage than OpenAIP) and for NOTAM-supplement-driven temporary areas that are created and modified at short notice.
• Flyk AUP/UUP reservation feeds for the TSA / TRA / local-training calendars — refreshed daily and re-evaluated against the current hour to set activation state.

Coverage, freshness and zoom — the OpenAIP-sourced areas. OpenAIP no longer publishes a downloadable database, and its live query API cannot serve a moving map, so the app builds and hosts its own per-country export and rebuilds it weekly — 46 European states, Turkey and Cyprus included. Three consequences are worth knowing before you rely on what you see:

• Two refresh cycles share one map. National eAIP data — the six states above, and the navaids, airways and IFR points of §10.5, §10.9 and §10.12 — follows the AIRAC cycle. OpenAIP is volunteer-maintained and not AIRAC-locked, so the layers it feeds refresh weekly instead.
• OpenAIP-sourced airspace draws from about zoom 7.6 inward. A wider view would have to pull several megabytes of polygons it could not render legibly, so beyond that the map keeps only the national AIP and Flyk areas. In practice: zoom out over the Baltic and the Finnish areas stay while the German ones drop away — zoom back in and they return.
• The coverage has gaps. It is per country and volunteer-maintained: Ukraine has no airspace set at all, and the smallest states carry partial ones. An area missing from the map is not evidence that there is no area — check the state’s own AIP.

Use it for: Active-airspace avoidance, planning around military exercise blocks, finding the right NOTAM number before phoning ATC, and knowing in advance which areas will reopen during your flight window.

10.4 ACC Sectors

What you see: Area Control Centre sector boundaries drawn as thin dark-grey dashed outlines. The sector name and frequency are printed along the boundary line itself — rotated to run parallel to the edge and repeated at intervals, with the two sectors either side of a shared boundary each labelled on their own side, and the text sized to the map so it grows and shrinks as you zoom. Click any sector to open the unified What’s-Here popup with the sector callsign, all available frequencies, vertical limits and remarks — same chip/tab layout as the SUA and Terminal popups, so clicking through stacked airspaces is consistent.

How it’s computed: Sector geometry comes from three sources merged transparently:

• Flyk for Finnish ACC sectors (14 sub-sectors, AIRAC-current).
• Local AIP-derived files for Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Denmark.
• OpenAIP (type=27) for the rest of Europe / Turkey / Cyprus — from the same weekly per-country export as §10.3, with the same zoom floor.

Use it for: Knowing which ACC to contact and on which frequency at any point along your route; especially useful for IFR pickup and for VFR flight following in busy airspace.

10.5 IFR Points

What you see: The published enroute significant points (five-letter name-codes) from the national eAIP. The symbol shows the point’s type: a four-pointed star for an RNAV route waypoint (a point on a published airway) and a triangle for a standalone reporting / FRA point, each filled when compulsory and hollow when on-request. Hover a point for a card with its type, compulsory / on-request status and FRA role (Entry / Exit / Intermediate). To keep a zoomed-out view legible the layer declutters by zoom: from about zoom 7 it shows only the key fixes (route waypoints, compulsory points and FRA entry/exit) as bare symbols; their names appear at zoom 8, in step with the airway labels, and the dense standalone FRA points fill in when you zoom in further (about zoom 9).

How it’s computed: Scraped from the national eAIP ENR 4.4 (the complete significant-point list) and refreshed each AIRAC — see §10.9 for the same pipeline that builds the airways. Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Denmark for now (Lithuania’s eAIP is PDF-only, sourced via the autorouter document library; it publishes no airways, so all of its points are standalone FRA fixes). Denmark is the one exception to the filled / hollow rule — its ENR 4.4 does not state compulsory vs on request, so its points draw in the on-request style.

Use it for: Reading IFR clearances, planning Free-Route entry/exit and controlled-airspace transit corridors, and matching FPL route strings against the visible network.

10.6 VFR Points

What you see: VFR reporting points published in national AIPs — the official compulsory and on-request fixes used to enter / exit CTRs and TMAs. Each point shows its short name (and sometimes a one-letter code) on the map.

How it’s computed: National AIP / Flyk waypoint data, displayed at the zoom level where labels remain legible.

Use it for: Building VFR routes that the controlling unit will recognise (“requesting EFHK transit via OSCAR”), confirming the geometry of a published reporting point before reporting overhead, and aligning your GPS plan with the names ATC will use on the radio.

10.7 GPS Interference

What you see: A coloured hex-grid highlighting areas where aircraft reported degraded GPS / navigation accuracy — a likely sign of GPS interference (jamming or spoofing). Only meaningful cells are drawn: yellow = Medium (2–10 % of aircraft in the cell affected) and red = High (>10 %). The low/clean tier is omitted to keep the map focused on actual interference.

How it’s computed: Built from gpsjam.org’s daily resolution-4 H3 dataset, which is derived from ADS-B Exchange aircraft navigation-integrity (NIC) reports. The app shows the most recent available day, keeping only cells with at least five aircraft and more than 2 % degraded. The data is aggregated over a full UTC day — it is not real-time, and a coloured cell indicates detected degradation, not a confirmation of intentional jamming or spoofing.

Reading it: Turn the layer on from the World menu. A legend appears in the bottom-left legend panel (ⓘ button) with the date and colour key. Click any cell — or anywhere on the map — to open the unified “What’s here?” popup, where a GPS chip shows the interference level, the affected-aircraft percentage and counts for that cell, alongside the usual airspace, alert and weather chips.

Use it for: Situational awareness of regions where GNSS reliability has recently been poor (e.g. near conflict zones), so you can plan for the possibility of GPS loss — brief conventional-navigation fallbacks, expect RAIM/approach degradation, and cross-check position. Because it reflects the previous day, treat it as a trend indicator, not a live warning; always check current NOTAMs for active GPS outages.

10.8 Traffic (ADS-B)

What you see: Live aircraft as small top-down aeroplane silhouettes, each pointing along its track — helicopters show a rotor symbol instead. Size hints at the aircraft class (a light GA aircraft is smaller than an airliner); colour is the altitude band (orange below 5000 ft, blue to FL150, purple to FL250, grey above or on the ground — ground traffic is faded). A callsign label sits beside each (toggle it from the legend panel). An emergency squawk (7500 / 7600 / 7700) turns the aircraft red and pulses. The layer draws from zoom 7 in; zoom further out and it clears, since a single fetch can’t sensibly cover the whole map.

Click an aircraft for its details: type, registration and operator (with a photo where known), the flight route (departure → destination and airline for scheduled flights), altitude with vertical speed and the autopilot-selected level, ground speed / Mach / TAS and track, squawk, QNH and wake class, and its distance and bearing from the map centre. A Show track (FR24) button draws the aircraft’s actual flown path for the current flight.

How it’s computed: Positions come from the community airplanes.live ADS-B network, fetched by your browser roughly every 10 seconds for the area in view. Route and aircraft details (operator, photo) are looked up on demand from adsbdb.com; the optional flown track comes from Flightradar24 when you press the button. The Altitude bar (Section 8.1) filters the traffic to a level band — the same selection that drives the Winds layer.

Use it for: General situational awareness of who is around and at what level. Advisory only: community ADS-B coverage is incomplete (it cannot see aircraft without ADS-B, and low-level or remote traffic may be missing) and is delayed by seconds — it is never a substitute for see-and-avoid, a collision-avoidance system, or ATC. Do not use it for separation.

10.9 Airways

What you see: The IFR ATS route network drawn as lines between significant points, in the openFlightMaps style: each segment carries a small box, rotated to run parallel to the route, showing that segment’s distance (NM) with the airway designator (e.g. Y232) above it and the segment’s lower limit (e.g. FL95) below. The boxes appear once you zoom in (from about zoom 8) so they don’t pile up on a wide view — the route lines stay at every zoom. The box shape encodes the direction — a hexagon (pointed both ends) for a two-way route, and an arrow pointing the permitted way for a one-way route — The route’s magnetic track (degrees) is printed along the line at each end — both ends for a two-way route, only the flow end for a one-way one. the standard chart convention. Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Latvia, Norway and Denmark for now (Lithuania publishes no ATS routes — full Free Route Airspace — so it has significant points but no airways; Norway and Denmark publish no conventional routes either, so their ENR 3.1 is NIL and every route you see is RNAV from ENR 3.2). Click any route line for its full per-segment table: the from/to points, the vertical band (lower – upper limit, e.g. FL95–FL660), airspace class and distance.

How it’s computed: Built by scraping the national eAIP en-route sections (Finland and Sweden ENR 3.2 one page per airway; Estonia ENR 3.3 and Latvia ENR 3.2 as a single route table) and refreshed each AIRAC with the rest of the AIP data — the IFR Points layer is the complete set of significant points from ENR 4.4 (including standalone points not on any airway). The symbol shows the point’s type, following the ICAO / ForeFlight convention: a four-pointed star for an RNAV route waypoint (a point that lies on a published airway) and a triangle for a standalone reporting / FRA point — which is why, for example, the Estonian free-route points appear as triangles. Either shape is drawn filled for a compulsory point and hollow for an on-request one. Hover a point for a card giving its type, compulsory / on-request status and, where the AIP marks it, its FRA role (Entry / Exit / Intermediate — the Entry / Exit points are the ones used to join or leave Free Route Airspace in a flight plan). One-way vs two-way comes from the ENR 3.2 “direction of cruising levels” column. The scraper extends to other national eAIPs that use the Eurocontrol template; coverage is limited to the countries built, as there is no free pan-European airway dataset.

Use it for: Seeing the enroute structure — which airways run where, and their level bands. Advisory reference; plan and file against the official AIP.

10.10 Airports

What you see: A master switch, first in the menu and on by default, that turns the app’s airport markers as a whole on or off — a quick way to declutter to just airspace/terrain, or bring the fields back. It governs all three airport tiers (large / medium / small — see §5.1); your choice is remembered across reloads.

Windsock (Aeronautical basemaps). On a VFR / IFR chart, when you zoom in close to a field — the same zoom at which the runway numbers appear — a windsock is drawn just above the aerodrome, angled to the latest METAR wind, so you can read the surface wind at a glance. At that zoom the plain airport symbol / code is hidden (the chart draws the field) but the spot stays clickable for the airport popup.

Use it for: Keeping the map focused; and getting an instant surface-wind picture at a field without opening its weather.

10.11 AMA Grid

What you see: A grid of Area Minimum Altitudes — the lowest altitude that clears terrain and obstacles within each quadrilateral, drawn as a faint number (kept behind the other layers so it never dominates). Borders are tinted by height band. Click anywhere for the value under your finger.

The grid has two levels, exactly as the published AMA chart does. Zoomed out you get the 1°×1° square in solid lines with one figure in the middle. One zoom step closer, dashed lines divide it into four 30′×30′ quadrants, each with its own smaller figure — and in three quadrants out of four that number is lower than the square's, sometimes by a thousand feet. The square's figure is simply the highest of its four quadrants.

How it’s computed: Calculated with the Fintraffic ENR 6 AMA formula — max(highest obstacle MSL, highest terrain + 60 m) + 300 m, rounded up to the next 100 ft, over each cell plus an 8 km buffer. Terrain comes from elevation tiles; obstacles from the states’ own official Area 1 sets in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Latvia, and OpenAIP elsewhere. An estimate for terrain awareness — not the official AIP AMA; always cross-check.

Use it for: A quick terrain-clearance floor when planning or diverting, especially IFR or in poor visibility.

10.12 Navaids

What you see: VOR / DME / NDB navaids drawn with their official ICAO symbols, each with its ident and frequency. Hover (or click) for a card with the full name, type, frequency and elevation.

How it’s computed: Finnish, Estonian, Swedish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian and Danish navaids are scraped from the national eAIP ENR 4.1 and refreshed each AIRAC; the rest of Europe comes from OpenAIP’s weekly export (§10.3), and an OpenAIP navaid is dropped where a scraped one shares its identifier and position.

Use it for: Conventional-navigation planning and cross-checks, tuning standby aids, and reading IFR clearances that reference a navaid.

10.13 Obstacles

What you see: Individual obstacles drawn with the official Finnish VFR chart symbols (eAIP GEN 2.3), by type — each with its top elevation (ft MSL) shown below the symbol:

A lighting mark sits at the apex when known: a ray-burst for a steady light, a solid five-point star for a flashing one. The symbols grow moderately as you zoom in, and in a cluster (a wind farm) only the tallest keeps its height number so the field stays legible. Hover an obstacle for a card with its type, elevation (ft MSL and ft AGL) and lighting state.

How it’s computed: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia and Latvia use their own official Area 1 obstacle sets — complete, and the only source that carries the lighting state; the rest of Europe comes from OpenAIP (tallest few per cell, no lighting). Refreshed with the rest of the data.

Use it for: Low-level route and circuit awareness — masts, turbines and chimneys along your track and near a destination. Advisory; verify heights against the AIP.

10.14 Power lines

What you see: Major overhead power lines drawn as lines on the map — a low-level obstacle class worth seeing when planning valley routes, ag work or any operation near the surface.

Use it for: Low-flying hazard awareness. Advisory reference only.

11. Weather Forecast Layers (⛅)

Click the cloud-and-sun icon (top-right) to open the forecast menu. You can have several layers on at once. Every layer in this menu is computed from Open-Meteo model data unless noted, and every layer responds to the time bar (Section 8) and the altitude bar (Section 8.1, where applicable).

The legend panel at the bottom-right shows colour scales and on-screen tweaks for each active layer.

11.1 Weather Map

What you see: The first entry in the menu — an even scatter of weather symbols (sun, cloud, rain, snow, thunderstorm, and a distinct freezing-precipitation glyph) with the temperature below each, spread across the whole viewport on a fixed lattice. It gives the big-picture weather pattern at a glance — where it is clear, clouding over or raining — the way a consumer weather map reads. Hover any symbol for the plain-language condition (e.g. “Light rain, +12 °C”).

Time-aware: at Now the symbols show the latest ~15-minute nowcast (matching the airport popup’s Weather panel); scrub the time bar and every symbol updates to the hourly forecast for that time — out to 7 days, the same forecast horizon as the other forecast layers (the map no longer freezes at +48 h).

How it's computed: temperature and WMO weather code sampled from Open-Meteo on the lattice (current nowcast at offset 0, hourly forecast otherwise). The symbols are deliberately decoupled from the airport markers — the field’s flight-category dot (Section 5.2) carries the aviation category, so the weather symbols don’t stack on it.

Use it for: a fast synoptic read of the weather across the region and how it evolves over the next hours. Model guidance, not an observation — for live precipitation use the Radar layers (Section 12).

11.2 Winds

What you see: Animated particles streaming across the map at the chosen flight level. Particles flow in the wind direction; their density gives a feel for speed; speed is colour-coded (cool = light, warm = strong).

How it's computed: The forecast model's u and v wind components at the selected pressure level are sampled on a viewport-fitted grid. Particles are advected each frame using bilinear interpolation, with random respawn to keep the field "alive".

Use it for: Picking the most efficient cruise level, spotting frontal shear, judging crosswind for an airport.

11.3 Clouds

What you see: A smooth grey cloud-cover raster (GPU-rendered, so it zooms cleanly). The shading darkens and grows more opaque as forecast cloud cover rises. Optional category labels show the low / mid / high cloud amounts as WMO oktas (e.g. OVC / SCT / –, where “–” = clear), one per contiguous area; toggle them from the legend’s Show category labels checkbox.

How it's computed:

• Total is an altitude-weighted blend of the three levels (low cloud darkens the most, high the least), so the grey tone reflects which decks are present.
• Low / Mid / High use Open-Meteo's cloud_cover_low/mid/high directly (each shown at its own weight).
• FL050 … FL240 altitude-bar steps map to the containing slab (low / mid / high).

Use it for: Quick "is there a hole?" assessment, ceiling height awareness, comparing cloud cover at different cruise levels.

11.4 Precipitation

What you see: A GPU-rendered tint with animated rain drops / snowflakes overlaid. The tint colour ramps by rate, from pale blue (very light) through blue and dark blue to purple and red (extreme); snow washes the colour toward white; sleet is a mix. Forecast probability is shown as colour saturation — uncertain areas read greyer / washed-out, confident areas fully saturated. Opacity stays constant so even light-but-likely precipitation remains visible.

How it's computed: Open-Meteo's precipitation (mm water-equivalent per hour), snowfall (cm fresh snow per hour, ~10:1 ratio) and precipitation_probability are sampled on the grid. The ratio of snowfall to precipitation gives a "snow fraction" which controls the rain↔snow colour and symbol mix per cell; the probability drives the saturation. The animated drops/flakes fall by phase — blue rain streaks, white drifting snow, magenta freezing precip.

11.5 Temperatures

What you see: A smooth GPU-rendered heatmap of air temperature painted across the visible area, using the standard meteorological colour scale — violet for sub-Arctic cold, through blue and cyan into green, yellow, orange and red for hot regions. Temperatures sits at the bottom of the weather stack so clouds, precipitation, fog and other overlays render on top of it. The layer is altitude-aware: the altitude bar appears when it is selected — All shows the 2 m surface temperature, while Low / Mid / High and the FL050…FL240 bands switch the heatmap to the temperature at the corresponding pressure level (see How it's computed). An optional Show °C labels checkbox in the legend prints decluttered numeric values over the heatmap.

How it's computed: Open-Meteo temperature is sampled on the same shared 80×80 viewport grid as the cloud and precipitation overlays, so when several of those layers are on the data is fetched once and shared. The selected level picks the field: All uses temperature_2m; the altitude bands use the nearest pressure level — Low/FL050 → 850 hPa, Mid/FL100 → 700 hPa, FL140 → 600 hPa, High/FL180 → 500 hPa, FL240 → 400 hPa. Rendering is a WebGL raster: the temperature grid is uploaded as a texture and the GPU does the Mercator-correct bilinear sampling, while a 256-entry colour look-up texture built from the named stops applies the exact ramp — so the gradient stays smooth and the features anchored to the right geography across zoom and pan, with no per-frame CPU work. Switching level keeps the current frame on screen until the new level's data arrives (no blank flash).

Use it for:

• Icing exposure at low altitudes — sub-zero (blue / cyan) terrain combined with cloud-cover or precipitation overlays is the classic structural-icing setup.
• Density-altitude planning — orange / red regions (especially at higher elevation airfields) erode take-off performance dramatically. Cross-check with the airport's elevation and the DA62 perf calc.
• Air-mass boundary spotting — a sharp colour transition (e.g. a 10 °C drop over < 200 km) marks a thermal front. Pair with isobars (Section 11.10) to identify the synoptic feature.
• Time-scrubbing the warm/cold pulse — sliding the time bar shows the diurnal cycle and any approaching cold/warm advection in 1-hour steps.

11.6 Fog

What you see: A GPU-rendered raster where surface visibility is forecast to drop below 5 km. Four severity bands are classified in the shader and rendered as distinct blue-grey tones — no colour blending between bands, so edges are sharp:

BR in sub-zero temperatures is not classified as FZFG — freezing mist at 1–5 km is an observation nuisance, not a safety hazard, so the layer reserves the FZFG colour for genuinely fog-grade visibility.

Annotations (legend radio): Three options control what is drawn over the raster:

• None — raster only, no text or glyphs.
• ═/≡ Symbol — METAR-style glyph (single-bar for BR, double-bar for FG/DENSE, with a freeze marker for FZFG) placed at the cell centre. Uses the same declutter logic as other symbol layers so dense grids don't overlap.
• Visibility m — numeric read-out at each cell: metres for values below 1 km (e.g. 400 m), kilometres for 1–5 km (e.g. 2.3 km). Useful for quick CAT I/II/III minima checks. Decluttered with a slightly wider spacing than symbols.

The choice is saved and restored the next time the layer is switched on.

How it's computed: Open-Meteo's surface visibility (m) and temperature_2m (°C) are fetched on the same shared 80×80 viewport grid as the Clouds, Precipitation, and Temperature layers (48 h horizon; Nordic area uses MetNo Seamless). Classification is done entirely in the WebGL fragment shader — each pixel is assigned to exactly one band, with no interpolation between bands. At Now, the grid is then blended with live FMI observations — FMI's weather::simple AWS visibility readings and METAR visibility from every airport in view — using inverse-distance weighting within ~75 km of each observation. This pulls coastal-fog banks the model misses (Russarö, Utö, etc.) into the right place. Forecast hours use the model only. The layer is surface-only and does not have an altitude selector.

Use it for: Spotting valley-fog risk overnight, identifying freezing-fog corridors in winter, picking a safe diversion when your destination is below CAT 1 minima.

11.7 Icing

What you see: A GPU-rendered orange / red / magenta raster at the chosen pressure level, indicating Moderate / Heavy / Severe icing risk. Light icing is intentionally hidden — pilots don't plan around it and painting it drowned out the more serious bands. Optional horseshoe pictograms (∪ for moderate, ∪∪ for severe) can be enabled from the legend toggle; in the multi-level slabs (Total / Low / Mid / High) each pictogram also carries the FL band where the icing was detected.

How it's computed: Risk is non-zero only when:

1. Temperature at the level is in the supercooled-water window — full risk in the prime band 0 … −12 °C, then tapering off down to −24 °C as the cloud progressively glaciates (below roughly −15 °C the droplets increasingly freeze to ice crystals, which don't ice the airframe) — and
2. Cloud cover at the level is ≥ 50% (visible moisture is required for ice accretion).

A relative-humidity boost increases severity at high RH. The model draws from a slab of pressure levels — "Total" takes the maximum risk through the column; "Low / Mid / High" sample the corresponding slabs; FL050…FL240 sample one level each. A 3×3 averaging pass smooths single-cell hot spots. Temperature, humidity and cloud cover are fetched on the shared 80×80 viewport grid (48 h horizon), and the risk field is drawn as a WebGL raster — the colour comes from a GPU look-up table so it stays smooth at any zoom.

Freezing rain / SLD. The layer separately flags supercooled large droplets (freezing rain / drizzle) — the most hazardous icing, which the SWC calls out specifically. It detects the classic structure of a warm nose aloft (a layer above 0 °C) sitting over a sub-freezing, near-saturated layer near the surface. Such cells are forced to the severe band and marked with a distinct violet ∪∪∼ freezing-rain glyph (Total / Low slabs).

Use it for: Choosing a non-icing FL, knowing whether to file an alternate with non-icing approach options, validating route icing seen in the airgram.

11.8 Turbulence

What you see: A GPU-rendered yellow → red → magenta raster at the chosen FL slab, flagging clear-air (CAT) turbulence. Light turbulence is suppressed; only Moderate and worse paint. Optional wavy-line glyphs (1 / 2 / 3 waves for MOD / HVY / SEV) can be toggled from the legend; in the multi-level slabs they also carry the FL band where the shear lives.

How it's computed: Vertical wind shear is computed between closely-spaced Open-Meteo pressure-level pairs (25–50 hPa apart) so a thin shear layer isn't averaged away. Wind, wind direction and temperature for the slab's levels are fetched on the shared 80×80 viewport grid (48 h horizon) and the severity field is drawn as a WebGL raster (GPU colour look-up, smooth at any zoom). The shear in knots per 1,000 ft is mapped to the FAA's standard turbulence scale:

The raw shear severity is then refined by three physically-motivated steps, so the layer flags where the shear is actually likely to break into turbulence rather than every windy gradient:

• Richardson stability factor. Shear severity is multiplied by a factor derived from the Richardson number (N² / shear²): full weight in dynamically-unstable air, strongly damped in a stable, sharply-stratified layer where the same shear stays smooth.
• Boundary-layer suppression. Pairs sitting inside the model's boundary layer (the layer height is fetched per cell, so the cut adapts to a shallow nocturnal layer vs. a deep daytime one) are damped hard. The wind gradient there is the expected surface-friction profile, not free-atmosphere CAT — this removes the blanket of spurious low-level turbulence the layer used to show.
• Convective gate. Severity is raised only where convection has actually fired (CAPE and precipitation present together) — an intense cell (CAPE > 1500, precip > 5 mm/h) forces at least Severe, weaker cells at least Heavy/Moderate. Bare CAPE with no precipitation no longer paints, so the whole warm sector is no longer flagged.

Each altitude band (Low / Mid / High / FL050 … FL240) reads the worst refined severity across the pressure pairs within that band. All (Total) is the union of every band's pairs, so it always shows the worst turbulence anywhere in the SFC…FL390 column — never less than the individual band beneath it — with the glyph's FL label telling you the altitude.

11.9 Convective Activity

What you see: A single combined, GPU-rendered overlay covering everything convective. The colour encodes two things at once:

• Hue = severity: violet (TCU) → deeper violet (MOD CB) → magenta (STRG CB) → hot pink (SEV CB). The purple/magenta family keeps it distinct from the blue precipitation and orange turbulence layers.
• Vividness = active vs potential: a vivid, saturated cell is where the model forecasts a real convective cloud (or a thunderstorm code); a pale grey-violet wash is bare CAPE potential with no cloud developing yet (“loaded, not triggered”).
• Labels on the active cells: TCU, MOD CB, STRG CB or SEV CB, each with the real cloud-top flight level read from the model (e.g. FL340) — not an estimate.
• A lightning-bolt on each active storm cell that is thundering (WMO 95/96/99, or strong CAPE + LI) — one bolt per storm, above the label.

How it's computed: The layer samples Open-Meteo's DWD ICON model on a viewport grid — cape (Convective Available Potential Energy, J/kg), lifted_index (LI, °C), convective_inhibition (CIN, J/kg, negative = atmospheric cap), weather_code, and convective_cloud_top / convective_cloud_base (the actual forecast cloud, used for the “active” test and the top FL). The CAPE/LI/CIN values run through a continuous severity function with three guard-rails:

• CAPE-gated LI: Lifted Index can sharpen severity within a CAPE-supported tier but cannot promote a low-CAPE cell to severe-CB on its own. Pure LI without energy paints as TCU at most.
• SEV requires real energy: The severe-CB (red) tier needs CAPE ≥ 2500 J/kg, or CAPE ≥ 1500 paired with very steep LI (≤ −7). This stopped the previous "morning CAPE accumulating under an inversion" pattern from painting SEV when the cap was still intact.
• CIN attenuation: Strong negative CIN (< −50 J/kg) smoothly down-weights severity by up to 75 %. The classic "CAPE 2500 + CIN −200 → capped, no storms yet" case now paints faintly rather than as severe CB.

The weather code acts as a floor so observed showers / thunderstorms register even when the modelled CAPE/LI are mild. The whole field is anchored to world latitude/longitude, so pan and zoom never move the patches relative to the ground.

The CAPE/LI ranges above set the severity tier (hue); the top FL printed on each label is read directly from the model’s forecast convective cloud top, so it reflects the actual modelled cell rather than a CAPE/LI estimate. The “typical top FL” column is just the rough range you’d expect for each tier.

Caveats — what CAPE alone can and cannot tell you: CAPE is a potential, not a forecast that convection will actually happen. A capping inversion (CIN) can suppress it entirely; sparse triggers can leave it unused; vertical shear decides whether storms organise. Treat the layer as "where the atmosphere is loaded" — cross-check against radar, satellite and SIGMETs before launching when severity reaches MOD or higher.

11.10 MSL Pressure

What you see: A GPU-rendered, colour-filled pressure field — a diverging blue → white → red scale (deep blue for low pressure, white near the 1013 hPa standard, red for high) — with thin isobars drawn on top and H / L letters (and their core value) at the pressure centres. A legend radio lets you choose what's drawn: colour only, isobars + H/L only, or both (the default). The choice is remembered.

How it's computed: Open-Meteo's pressure_msl is sampled on the shared 80×80 viewport grid and drawn as a WebGL raster (the colour comes from a GPU look-up table, smooth at any zoom). A marching-squares pass extracts the isobars (4 hPa interval); a connected-component search finds the high- and low-pressure centres.

Use it for: Reading the synoptic situation — tightly spaced isobars mean strong wind, a closing "L" pattern means a deepening low.

11.11 SIGMETs/Warnings

What you see: Two complementary sources of issued (non-model) hazard polygons in one overlay:

• International SIGMETs — significant meteorological information from national MET offices: severe turbulence, severe icing, thunderstorms, volcanic ash, dust storms, etc. Coloured by phenomenon. A small arrow with a speed label is drawn from each polygon centroid when the raw SIGMET text carries a MOV direction + speed (e.g. MOV E 25KT); STNR SIGMETs get no arrow.
• FMI national weather warnings — CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) warnings issued by the Finnish Meteorological Institute, in English. Yellow / orange / red MeteoAlarm severity. Localised Finland-specific events (strong wind, snow load, freezing rain, thunderstorm, forest fire, frost, etc.) that complement the international SIGMET feed.

The polygon outline encodes activation timing — same SUA-style convention as Section 10.3: solid = active right now; dashed = activating later today or tomorrow. Polygons are only drawn when they are active now or activate within the next 24 h (already-expired entries and far-future ones stay hidden), so the layer reflects what is operationally relevant.

Hover any polygon for a compact two-line tooltip — a small severity pill on top and the event headline beneath. Click for the full popup: issuing source, validity window in UTC, phenomenon / event headline, plain-English description, peak wind / probability parameters, and the altitude band (SIGMETs only).

The unified time bar (Section 8) appears whenever the layer is on. Scrub forward to watch dashed polygons flip to solid as their activation windows open — useful for planning a flight window around an incoming warning.

How it's computed: Both feeds are pulled live, not model-derived. International SIGMETs come from the NOAA Aviation Weather Center isigmet feed. FMI CAP warnings come from alerts.fmi.fi/cap/feed/rss_en-GB.rss via the app’s server-side proxy (/fmi-warnings); the en-GB <info> block is selected so the popup text reads in English even when FMI also publishes fi-FI / sv-FI variants. Both refresh every ~5 minutes.

12. Radar / Satellite Menu (📡)

12.1 What it is

The radar-dish icon (📡) on the top-right control stack opens the observed-imagery menu. Unlike the Weather forecast layers (Section 11), every entry here is a near-real-time tile from an external WMS feed — pick whichever you need and toggle them on independently. Layers tagged (FMI) are sourced from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (ilmailusaa.fi / openwms.fmi.fi) and only cover Finland and the Baltic; the others are pan-European or global.

12.2 Available layers

All seven layers above ship to every user.

12.3 Time control for observation layers

When any radar/satellite layer is on, the unified time bar (Section 8) switches into observation mode tailored to short-cadence imagery:

• Fine-step buttons — the bar shows extra −15 / +15 minute buttons either side of the time label. The ±6 h buttons (« / ») hide in this mode because observation data only extends back ~2–3 h.
• Backward / forward clamp — the time offset is clamped to the most-permissive active layer's data window. Try to scrub further back than the data supports and the corresponding step button greys out instead of letting the bar drift off the end.
• Layer pills — small chips at the right end of the bar list each active observation layer with a short code (Radar, FMI, Ltng, CB, ETop, Sat, Fog, Turb) and a colour cue: green when the current offset is inside that layer's data window, red when outside. Hover for the full layer name plus its data window in hours.

Approximate data windows per layer:

If you also turn on any forecast layer (Weather menu), the bar reverts to mixed mode: ±6 h steps reappear, ±15 min hides, and the layer pills now sit alongside a Forecast-aware longer range (−12 h…+7 d).

12.4 Reading the colour palettes

Each painted layer carries its own palette — the same RGB value means different things on the radar overlay vs. the lightning heatmap. The table below pairs each layer with what its colour ramp actually encodes; ramps are listed from weakest to strongest.

Cross-checking tip: when verifying a CB forecast, the painted intensity in Radar / Radar (FMI) tells you how heavy the precipitation is, while Storm tops tells you how tall the cell is. A bright-magenta radar return at FL300 storm-top is a fully developed CB; the same magenta radar return at FL080 storm-top is just a stratiform-rain bullseye and far less hazardous.

12.5 How the satellite image is drawn

The satellite product is a photograph, and that is the problem it has to solve. Unlike every other layer in this menu, nothing in it is transparent while the sun is up: clear ground is painted just as solidly as cloud, so laid flat over the map it hides lakes, coastlines and airport labels everywhere — including where there is no weather at all.

Settings → Display → Radar → Satellite image offers three ways to draw it:

The choice applies to the printed briefing too: any map page you print with Sat. Image (FMI) switched on is drawn the same way as on screen.

13. LLF Menu (Nordic Low Level Forecast)

Where to find it: the dedicated LLF button on the top-right control stack (directly below the SWC button) — LLF used to live in the Weather menu but is now its own control with four independently togglable sub-layers.

LLF is a Finnish Meteorological Institute product covering Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Baltic. Polygons depict aviation-significant low-level conditions (vis < 8 km, ceiling < 2000 ft, icing, turbulence, CB/TCU) updated every ~30 minutes. Outside the Nordic LLF coverage the menu still works but every sub-layer will simply be empty.

13.1 Sub-layers

The FMI national CAP weather warnings (yellow / orange / red MeteoAlarm severity for strong wind, snow load, freezing rain, thunderstorm, forest fire, frost, etc.) live in the SIGMETs/Warnings overlay alongside the international SIGMET feed — see Section 11.11.

The three intensity-band badges (turb · ice · CB) are stacked vertically around the polygon centroid so they never overlap the G/L vis-cld cross at the same spot — turb above, ice below, CB further below.

13.2 Popup details

Click any LLF polygon to open the detail popup. Rows include flight category (G + L when local differs), VIS, CLD, present weather (decoded), 0°C freezing level, cloud TOP, ICE, TURB, CB/TCU, plus an "Active weather layers" verdict block. All band-type rows (ICE, TURB, CB) are filtered by point-in-polygon against the actual click location, not just the LLF area code — a sea-fog band 200 km offshore no longer surfaces in a coastal popup.

13.3 How the airport-popup LLF table relates

The Weather tab's Low Level Forecast section (Section 6.3) draws from the same FMI endpoints. The category row uses "G" for area and "L" only when local data shifts the category; VIS and CLD use FMI's bucket convention ("blw 1.5 km / 3 km / … / 8 km+", "blw 500 / 1000 / … / 2000+ ft"). Outside every returned sub-polygon the airport is treated as implicitly VFR (vis 8 km+, ceiling 2000 ft+) — matching FMI's convention of returning only non-VFR polygons.

How it's computed: FMI publishes the structured GeoJSON feed via ilmailusaa.fi (endpoints vis-cld, ice, mturb, cb, ctop, zero, wnd, overview). The app re-renders polygons locally and never mixes in model-derived data — everything in the LLF view is FMI's own forecast.

14. Significant Weather Charts

The SWC button (top-right) opens a small panel with three tabs:

SWCs are the official aviation-meteorology summary — jet streams, fronts, CB tops, icing/turbulence zones — and remain the gold standard for go/no-go decisions on longer flights.

15. The Airgram Tool (↗)

An airgram is a vertical cross-section of the atmosphere: distance (or time) along the X axis, altitude up the Y axis. It's the fastest way to spot icing, cloud, turbulence and convective layers along a route — before deciding which flight level to file.

15.1 Drawing a Route

The airgram-line tool supports multiple waypoints. The route can pass through airports or arbitrary map points.

The chart draws a climb → cruise → descent profile line from the departure elevation up to the cruise FL and back down. Its climb / descent angles come from your default aircraft (Settings → Aircraft → Default aircraft) — its climb & descent rates and TAS — so the profile reflects the aircraft you actually fly rather than a generic gradient.

Snapping

Tools while drawing

The tool adapts to the input device automatically — phones and tablets get the tap / pan / pinch flow, laptops and desktops get the click + drag-to-pan flow. A touch-screen laptop with a mouse uses the desktop flow.

15.2 Reading the Chart

The chart is built from Open-Meteo pressure-level data along ~16–60 samples spaced ~10 nm apart, interpolated bilinearly between samples and pressure levels. The Y axis is altitude from FL000 to the chosen Max (default FL300; FL250 / FL200 / FL150 / FL100 also available — see § 15.4 / § 15.7).

15.3 The Hover Popup

Hovering the chart (mouse) or tapping (touch) shows a context popup with the precise values at that altitude band and distance/time along the route. The popup adapts to which conditions are present — rows are added only when meaningful.

How to read the wind line

The wind row is the most condensed: e.g. 109° / 38 kt HW 27 / 27 LX means the wind is FROM 109° at 38 kt; relative to the segment's course you'll have 27 kt of headwind and 27 kt of left-crosswind. If HW is shown with a negative number it's a tailwind — e.g. HW −10 / 5 LX = 10 kt tailwind, 5 kt left crosswind. Crosswind sign convention: positive = from the right side of the track, negative = from the left.

What's not shown

Rows for clear-sky cells just show the header + wind + atmosphere lines — no icing/turbulence/convective rows are added when the hazard is absent. This keeps the popup compact so the rows that do appear are the ones that matter for that point in the route.

15.4 Panel Controls

The toolbar lives in two rows above the chart.

Row 1 (view + time + display options) carries the Side / Top toggle, the departure date+time scrubber, and two display selects (Scale, Max). Scale and Max apply to the Side view only and disappear from the row when Top is active.

Row 2 (flight-plan inputs + read-outs) has the cruise FL input, an IAS / TAS airspeed button with its number, and four read-only spans (Flight time, GS, Dist, Wind) computed from row 1 + 2 inputs and the per-leg winds.

15.5 Legend layer toggles

The legend at the bottom of the chart doubles as per-layer visibility control. Each named overlay (Cloud, 0°C, FL, Precip, Icing, Turb, CB/TCU, Wind) is a clickable button: a single click hides that overlay from the chart, a second click brings it back. Hidden items render in muted grey with a strike-through. Precip covers the rain / sleet / snow streaks and the RAIN/SLEET/SNOW top labels with cloud-base FL. Sky and Terrain are base layers and are not toggleable.

Hover-tooltip rows are not affected by toggles. Turning off the Icing overlay declutters the visual but the hover readout still says ❄ ICING wherever the underlying severity is positive — information stays accessible even when the colour wash is hidden.

Layer choices are ephemeral: never written to localStorage, and a full panel rebuild (e.g. fresh popup open or page reload) restores every layer to ON. Toggling is also a cache-free operation: the airgram re-renders from the already-fetched response data, so flipping a layer is instant and uses no network.

15.6 Turbulence rendering

Turbulence intensity uses the FAA shear scale (LGT / MOD / HVY / SEV), computed from vertical wind shear between sampled pressure levels. The overlay is drawn as diagonal yellow stripes over a bilinearly interpolated severity field in both distance and altitude — the same continuous-field approach as the icing blob — so the blob edges feather smoothly across pressure-level boundaries.

15.7 Vertical sampling and the Max FL cap

The airgram fetches Open-Meteo upper-air data at a set of pressure levels tailored to the chosen Max. Lower caps use denser low-altitude levels so VFR-band detail (FL025–FL100) is sampled finely; higher caps spread the same effort across the full troposphere.

Switching the Max cap changes the upper-air request (the cache key includes the cap), so a new fetch fires. This means the chart genuinely changes resolution rather than just zooming the existing data.

15.8 Per-airport airgram

The same chart is also available from any airport popup via the Airgram tab. The X axis becomes a 24-hour timeline anchored at the departure moment from the row 1 scrubber (so Today 14:00Z plots the next 24 hours from 14:00 Z onwards). Row 1 of the toolbar (departure scrubber + Scale + Max) is identical to the route airgram, and the legend toggles work the same way. Row 2 (FL / IAS / Flight time / GS / Dist / Wind) is absent because a single-point view has no per-leg geometry.

The Scale and Max selects share their localStorage state with the route airgram: a choice made on either view shows up on the other one the next time it opens. The departure scrubber state is ephemeral on both views and does not cross between them.

15.9 Closing

Click × in the panel header. The drawn line is cleared automatically and the airgram-line button returns to its idle state.

15.10 Save as Flight

The airgram panel’s action row has a Save as Flight button next to the print / maximize controls. Clicking it captures the drawn route — every waypoint with its lat/lon, the entered cruise FL and IAS/TAS, the departure-scrubber time, and the per-leg winds — and creates (or updates) a Flight in the Flight Planner (Section 16). The Flight Planner panel opens automatically with the new entry highlighted, ready for fuel planning, multi-leg expansion or a full print-briefing.

This is the bridge between quick what-if exploration (draw a line, read the airgram) and committing to a planned flight (fuel reserves, TOC/TOD, briefing). Re-saving an already-saved airgram updates the existing flight in place rather than duplicating it.

16. Flight Planner

The Flight Planner is a full multi-leg flight-planning panel: aircraft profile, fuel reserves, per-leg wind, TOC/TOD computation, airport-popup-grade briefing for every leg, and a printable navlog. Open it with the small briefcase-style icon at the bottom-left of the map (stacked just below the airgram-line button). The panel docks on the left side; drag the header to reposition.

Aircraft profiles — your fleet plus any overrides on the built-in presets — are managed in Settings → Aircraft (Section 4.2). The Flight Planner’s aircraft picker reads from that list. Per-flight tweaks to perf can also be made directly on the leg row; those edits are local to that flight (see the info box at the end of Section 4).

16.1 Flights Library

The top of the panel shows the Flights library — every saved flight with a name, departure airport / destination summary, leg count, total distance and a small action row (rename, duplicate, delete, set as current, Print briefing). A flight imported from the airgram (Section 15.10) or saved from the Route Planner’s Save as Flight button appears here automatically. Flights are stored on your account and sync across browsers (Section 3.3). Import / paste lets you bring in a flight exported from elsewhere via JSON.

Each flight remembers its own map-visibility preference. The eye button in the top-left control stack (visible whenever a flight is loaded and the planner panel is closed) hides the active flight from the map without unloading it — you can still edit it, brief it and file it. The choice is saved with the flight, so reloading the app keeps a flight you hid as hidden, and each flight restores its own state when you load it. A newly-created flight starts visible.

16.1.1 Showing only some legs

On a flight with more than one leg, the eye button opens a small Flight on map card instead of toggling straight away. The first row is the whole flight — Hide flight / Show flight — and below it every leg has its own row: colour swatch, leg number, route, distance and time, with its own eye. Multi-day flights are grouped by departure date. The same eye also sits in each leg’s header inside the planner panel, which is where you reach it while editing.

Two ways to get to “just this leg”, whichever suits you:

• Subtract: tap the legs you don’t want. The rest stay on the map.
• Start from nothing: tap Hide flight, then tap the one leg you want — with the flight hidden, a leg’s eye means “show only this leg”.

Show flight always brings the whole route back, so there is no separate “show all” button. The flip side, on purpose: hiding the flight forgets which legs you had picked. Per-leg taps never lose the selection; only the whole-flight row does.

• It is a display choice, not a plan change. A hidden leg stays in the flight: totals, fuel, weight & balance, filing and the flight plan itself are untouched.
• The printed navlog sheet follows it (Section 17.3), and the trip briefing pre-selects the same legs in its leg picker — you can always tick them back on there.
• Hiding the last visible leg is the same as hiding the flight: the eye switches off, and switching it back on gives you the whole route rather than an empty map.
• The button shows a small “2/3” badge whenever only some legs are on the map, so a choice made last week is never a mystery.
• Every eye shows what the map shows: with the flight hidden, all the leg rows read off too.
• While Track my flight is running with a leg of this flight bound to it, the map already shows only that leg, so the button goes back to being a plain on/off toggle.

16.2 Aircraft profile

Pick an aircraft from the dropdown — the list is built from the presets and your custom aircraft as configured in Settings → Aircraft (Section 4.2). The selected aircraft populates fuel capacity, cruise TAS and burn rate plus the climb/descent perf needed for TOC/TOD math. To change the aircraft itself, head to Settings; to tweak perf only for the current flight, edit the numbers inline on the leg row — the badge will read “Edited for this flight” and Reset snaps back to the aircraft’s Settings values.

16.3 Flight rules

Pick VFR, IFR or leave it as —. The selection feeds the AI route brief (so it can recommend "needs IFR" / "VFR-only with caveats" against the actual weather), enables the matching reporting-point overlay (VFR Points / IFR Points), and turns on the Terminal Airspaces overlay automatically.

16.4 Legs and waypoints

Each flight is one or more legs; each leg is two or more waypoints. Add a leg with + Add leg. Each leg header carries an eye to show / hide that leg on the map (Section 16.1.1), ▲ / ▼ buttons to reorder the leg up or down (disabled at the ends) and a × to remove it. Reordering re-cascades the departure times down the chain (each leg keeps its turnaround gap after the previous leg’s new arrival); if a moved leg no longer starts where the previous one ends, a small ⚠ appears on its title so you can reconnect the route via its waypoints. Per-leg fields:

• Departure UTC — sets the departure instant (date + time, both UTC). Used for ETA, daylight check, TAF/METAR window selection, and the Route AI brief’s time framing. Type it directly, or use the quick buttons described in Section 16.4.3.
• Cruise altitude (ft / FL) — drives airgram cruise line, wind fetch level, and TOC/TOD math.
• Start fuel (gal) — per-leg starting fuel. For an aircraft with a registration that has flights in the Aircraft Log, leg 1 defaults to the airframe’s last known fuel on board (not a full tank), so planning starts from reality. Two one-tap chips sit under the field on leg 1: “On board X gal · date” (the last logged remaining) and “Full Y gal” — tap whichever matches, or type the actual figure if you part-fuelled. Subsequent legs continue from the previous leg’s landing fuel.
• Wind — manual or fetch forecast at cruise FL. Per-segment winds are stored when the forecast is fetched, so each segment’s ground-speed and ETE reflect the wind it actually flies through.

16.4.1 Adding waypoints

There are four ways to add a waypoint to a leg. They all target the currently-expanded leg in the accordion (or the last leg if none is expanded explicitly).

• Click / tap the map in “Add on map” mode — adding waypoints by clicking is an explicit mode, so opening a plan just to view or inspect it never drops a waypoint by accident. Toggle it with the 📍 Add on map button in the panel toolbar (and in the edit-on-map banner). It turns on automatically while you’re building a new / empty route and off when you open an existing plan; a deliberate toggle sticks until you switch legs. While on, the cursor is a crosshair and a blue “Tap the map to add waypoints” hint bar shows with a Done button (or press Esc to stop). Each click lands on:
  • An airport marker → airport waypoint with the published ICAO and name.
  • A VFR / IFR reporting point → custom waypoint named after the published code.
  • Empty map (incl. inside a CTR / TMA / SUA / TSA polygon) → custom “WP n” waypoint at the click point. A background reverse-geocode tries to fill in a place name (Hamina, Lappeenranta…) within a second or two.
  • An existing waypoint marker on the route → the same point is appended again to the active leg (handy for stop-and-return profiles).
  With Add-on-map off, a click on an airport on your route opens its popup (weather / info) instead of changing the route — so you can review a finished plan freely.
• + Waypoint button on the leg row — opens a search picker that resolves four kinds of input:
  • Airport by ICAO / IATA / name (e.g. EFHK, HEL, Helsinki).
  • VFR or IFR reporting point by code (e.g. DOPGA, ROBVU, NUMSU).
  • Free-form coordinates — the picker accepts decimals (64.711, 26.867 or 64.711,26.867), European decimal commas (64,711;26,867), hemisphere letters (60.32N 24.96E) and degrees-minutes-seconds with a variety of separators (60°10'N 24°58'E, 60 10 30 N 24 58 12 E). The candidate result is shown with a crosshair icon and the reverse-geocoded place name.
• Edit waypoints button on the leg row — opens a bulk-text FPL editor: a free-text field where each space-separated token resolves live. Recognised tokens chip green/blue/purple beneath the textarea; unknown tokens chip red and block Apply. Recognised airport / RP codes auto-uppercase as you type. Coordinate tokens show the reverse-geocoded place name below the coords. The Apply button replaces the leg’s waypoints with the new list — so this works equally well for editing an existing leg or composing a flight from scratch (e.g. paste in EFKI 64.3803,27.2994 MAINU EFHK and click Apply).
• Drag the route line on the map (editor open only) — grab the polyline anywhere between two waypoints and drag to drop a new waypoint at the release point. The temp marker and the route segments update live during the drag; a tooltip on the temp marker shows the live lat/lon, and if you release within ~1 nm of an airport the tooltip flips to "Release to snap to EFXX" and the new waypoint locks onto that airport instead.

16.4.2 Editing waypoints on the map

With the editor panel open you can also reshape an existing route directly on the map:

• Drag a numbered waypoint marker to move it. The route line bends with the drag in real time. Works on touch and on desktop. The waypoint tooltip refreshes with the live lat/lon throughout the drag; if you release within ~1 nm of an airport marker the wp snaps to that airport (ICAO + name preserved). Drag an airport waypoint off-snap and it demotes to a free-form custom waypoint at the drop coords — an amber "→ custom on drop" warning appears in the tooltip while you’re dragging so you know what will happen.
• Hover any waypoint marker for an info card: airports show ICAO + name + elevation + runway list + headline frequencies (TWR / ATIS / AFIS); custom waypoints show name + coords; VFR/IFR points show the published code and type. Hover info works whether the editor panel is open or closed.
• Click an airport waypoint to open that airport’s full popup (METAR / TAF / runways / frequencies / NOTAMs — same content the bare airport icon shows). Click any other waypoint type or click the route line to open the editor instead.
• The route polyline and numbered markers always render above every other overlay (airspaces, weather, observation icons) so a busy chart never hides your flight plan.
• Undo any map edit. Adding a waypoint by clicking, moving one by dragging its marker, and inserting one by dragging the route line each pop a brief “Added / Moved X — Undo” toast at the bottom of the screen (a few seconds). One tap reverts that single change — a moved waypoint snaps back to its exact previous position and identity (e.g. an airport that demoted to a custom point during the drag is restored as the airport).

The waypoint list inside the leg accordion mirrors the on-map state:

• Airports show the ICAO and name (e.g. EFHK · Helsinki-Vantaa).
• VFR / IFR reporting points show the code and "VFR reporting point" / "IFR reporting point" label.
• Custom waypoints show the name (or the reverse-geocoded place) and the lat/lon to 4 decimals (~11 m precision).

16.4.3 Setting departure times

Each leg has its own departure time, and the legs chain together so the plan reads as one continuous timeline. Beside the date/time field is a row of quick buttons:

• Now (first leg) — sets the departure to the current time, rounded up to the next quarter-hour.
• At arrival (later legs) — anchors the leg to the previous leg’s computed arrival, so a multi-leg flight stays consistent end to end.
• +30 min / +1 h — the same anchor plus a turnaround gap, for a refuel or a break on the ground.

Setting one leg’s departure cascades through the legs after it: each downstream leg keeps its existing gap from the previous arrival, so a 30-minute turnaround stays 30 minutes when you shift an upstream departure. When you add a new leg, its departure is pre-filled to the previous leg’s arrival plus about 30 minutes, ready to adjust.

When you open a saved flight whose departure has already passed, the planner asks whether to re-anchor the whole plan to start now (keeping every turnaround gap) rather than silently rewriting your times — answer Cancel to keep the stored times and edit them yourself.

16.4.4 Route labels on the map

From about zoom 9.5 the route line labels itself, so the map reads like a kneeboard navlog. Everything here is drawn for the current flight and updates as you edit it — you don’t have to be flying.

• Segment arrows. Each leg segment carries an arrow-shaped tag, rotated along the line with its tip pointing the way you fly it. It grows with the room available: heading first, then distance, then the segment time — HDG 343M · 53 nm · 32 min. A segment too short on screen for even the heading shows no tag.
• Heading, not course. The line already shows you the course; the tag shows what you steer. It uses the same chain as the printed navlog: true course → wind correction (that segment’s forecast wind and your TAS) → magnetic (WMM 2025 at the segment midpoint). The prefix tells you which number you have: HDG = wind correction applied, CRS = no wind available for this leg, so the figure is the uncorrected course. A T suffix instead of M means you are outside the declination grid and the value is true.
• Waypoint labels. Non-airport waypoints show their name (airports are already labelled by the airports layer), and the destination — plus the next waypoint while you’re flying — shows label · ETA · fuel on board.
• ⛽ Fuel horizon. A flag pinned to the point on the route where planned fuel on board reaches your final reserve. It is drawn only when that point falls before the destination — so seeing it at all is the warning.
• In flight. With Track my flight recording against the leg, flown segments drop their tags, the active one highlights, and the times and fuel become live ≈-estimates shifted by how far ahead or behind you actually are (the ⛽ flag moves with real consumption).
• Turning them off. The ⓘ legend panel (bottom-left) has a Route labels block with two switches: Courses & distances (the arrow tags) and Waypoint names & times. Both are on by default and your choice is remembered. The ⛽ flag has no switch — it is a safety warning, not a label.

16.5 Leg summary

Each leg shows a live summary: departure date+time (weekday + UTC), distance, flight time, fuel used, fuel required (= fuel used + reserve), fuel-at-end with reserve OK/below badge, and arrival UTC. Numbers update as you edit waypoints, FL, IAS or wind.

16.6 Flight totals

Below the legs the panel shows flight totals: leg count, departure UTC of the first leg, total distance, total flight time, total fuel used, fuel required (used + reserve + taxi), and the final-leg arrival UTC. Same fuel-required math as the per-leg row, summed across all legs.

16.7 Per-leg tools — airgram, AI brief, print & export

Open a leg and its body shows, below the editable fields, a row of per-leg tools: two collapsible panes (Airgram, AI brief) and three action buttons (Print leg, FPL, Handling). When you’ve connected an autorouter account (Section 4.4), the leg also gains ✈ Auto route, Validate route and a flight-plan filing control — covered in Section 16.12.

The two collapsible panes:

• ▶ Airgram renders the same vertical cross-section as the standalone airgram tool, with the leg’s waypoints, cruise FL and departure UTC pre-loaded. The chart updates whenever you edit the leg.
• ▶ AI brief streams a route briefing from Claude. The brief sees the leg’s METAR/TAF for every airport waypoint, structured TAF periods with absolute UTC timestamps (no DDHH decoding), per-leg SUA list within a 30 nm corridor (multi-sample classification across the flight window), SIGMETs / national CAP warnings sampled along the track, LLF, the airgram, and the full aircraft perf. The output is exactly two blocks: a colour-coded dashboard (WIND / CEIL / ICING / TURB / CONV / NOTAM as Green / Yellow / Red) plus a hazards table.

⎙ Print leg

The Print leg button opens the same printable briefing as the whole-flight one (Section 16.8) but scoped to that single leg — the cover/summary, navlog, airgram, AI brief, that leg’s airports and a route map covering just this leg. The leg keeps its real number in the flight (so leg 3 still prints as “Leg 3”) and the PDF filename suggestion is the leg’s own label. Use it when you only need a fresh briefing for one leg of a multi-leg trip rather than re-printing the whole flight.

PLOG & Log flight

Two leg buttons tie the plan to what you actually fly. PLOG opens Track my flight (Section 19) in follow mode with that leg pre-selected and the PLOG open — recording starts from the ▶ Start flight pill. Log flight creates the matching logbook entry (Section 21), or, once a flight is already logged for the leg, the button becomes ✓ Edit log and opens the existing entry instead.

⤓ Export to ForeFlight (.fpl)

The FPL button (to the right of Print leg) exports the leg as a Garmin .fpl flight plan — the standard route format that ForeFlight (and Garmin avionics) import directly. It downloads one file per leg, named DEP-DEST.fpl, so a multi-leg trip becomes several ForeFlight routes. Waypoints map as follows: airports carry their ICAO; named fixes and navaids carry their identifier; other points export as user waypoints with their coordinates. The leg’s alternate is not included (it’s a divert field, not a route point).

To import on an iPad / iPhone: open the downloaded .fpl (from Files, an email attachment, or AirDrop) and choose Open in ForeFlight. The route loads on the Maps view, ready to drop into a flight.

✉ Announcement

The Announcement button opens a pre-filled flight-announcement email in your mail app for the leg’s destination. The recipient is left blank (address it to the field’s handling agent yourself); the subject and body are filled from the leg and the trip’s aircraft:

• Subject: Flight announcement: {registration} - {arrival date} {arrival time}Z.
• Body: destination, aircraft registration, type and MTOW, flight type, and a Crew X / PAX X placeholder line, followed by two blocks and the Services requested block.
• Arrival: From {origin} and ETA {date} {time}Z — this leg into the destination.
• Departure: To {next destination} and ETD {date} {time}Z — the next leg out of this same field. On the final leg there is no onward departure, so the whole Departure block is hidden.
• Services requested: always AC parking. Fuel: when the next leg starts with more fuel than this leg lands with — i.e. you refuelled here — a Fuel {grade} line is added. The grade is Jet-A1 or AVGAS per the aircraft’s Fuel type (Section 4.2). No refuelling between legs → no fuel line.

The registration and MTOW come from the aircraft profile — set them in Settings › Aircraft (Section 4.2). All times are UTC.

16.8 Print briefing

A flown leg is debriefed, not briefed. Once a leg carries an actual track — recorded by Track my flight or imported from Flightradar24 — its pages change purpose. Out go the heads-up flags, the airport weather overview, the airgram, the AI route briefing, the area weather and the model overview page: none of it applies to a flight already made. In their place the leg’s navlog becomes a planned-vs-flown table — ETA against ATA with the difference in minutes, planned fuel against what was actually logged — followed by an actual summary (OUT/OFF/ON/IN, air time against plan, distance, maximum altitude, average and maximum ground speed, any fuel checks). Actual times come from the in-flight recording when it has them, and are otherwise derived from the track’s closest approach to each waypoint — which is what makes a Flightradar24 import comparable at all. Fuel is only shown where it was logged; it cannot be derived from a track. Airspace activation and the NOTAM lists go too — they are read at print time, so on a flight already made they describe today rather than that day, and the heading would even stamp today’s state with the old flight’s window; the R/D/P shading is dropped from the map for the same reason, while CTR / TMA outlines stay because those are structural. The route map draws both: the plan as a dashed line, the track flown over it. A pack whose every leg has been flown is titled debrief and the airports section is dropped with the rest of the current-weather material; in a mixed flight each leg gets the treatment it deserves and flown legs are marked FLOWN.

Past legs carry no weather. No source in the app reaches backwards: METAR and TAF are the current issue, and the model is queried as a forecast starting now. A leg whose time has passed therefore gets no weather verdict — its phase cards read “time has passed — no weather is available for a past time” and show only current conditions, labelled now, and its airgram carries a banner saying the cross-section is current weather along that route rather than the weather that was there. Past legs also raise no heads-up flags, so today’s CB can’t masquerade as a hazard on a flight you already made. (Reviewing what the weather actually was is a job for an archive service, not for this briefing.)

Which legs get briefed. A flight whose legs span several days — out on Friday, back on Sunday — doesn’t need Friday’s pages on Sunday morning, and those pages would carry forecasts for an hour that has already passed. The briefing toolbar therefore shows a leg picker, pre-ticked with the legs still ahead of you: a leg counts as past once you attach an actual flown track (or log it), or once its departure is more than 6 hours ago — the grace window means a delayed departure never makes the leg you are about to fly disappear. Undated legs are always treated as upcoming, and if every leg is behind you the whole flight is briefed rather than nothing. Tick any leg back on, or use All legs / Upcoming only to flip between the two. Nothing vanishes silently: omitted legs are listed on the cover page (“Not briefed: Leg 1: EFHK → EFTU (flown 2026-07-26)”), so the paper pack still accounts for the whole flight. The picker is hidden for single-leg flights and is never printed.

The Print briefing button (in the flights library row, the panel toolbar, and the Route Planner) renders a complete printable briefing. The dialog opens in landscape orientation by default and the content is auto-scaled to 90 % so the wide navlog table + side fuel panel fit comfortably on each sheet. The browser’s "Save as PDF" filename suggestion is the flight’s own name ({flight} — briefing.pdf) instead of the host page’s tab title.

The page order is fixed and each section is forced onto its own sheet so the print is easy to flick through on a kneeboard:

1. Heads-up — review first. A deterministic scan of the whole flight, at each airport’s relevant time, that surfaces what you should look at before anything else — bad news first (■ serious / red, ▲ advisory / amber, • informational). It reuses the same verdict math the rest of the briefing uses, so nothing is double-computed. Every weather flag says where and when it applies and what it rests on — “EFTP CB/TS — leg 2 arrival (TAF 1704Z ±1h)” — so an airport that is one leg’s destination and the next leg’s departure can’t leave you guessing which phase was flagged. The leg number is dropped on a single-leg flight. It flags: aerodrome / runway closures and critical NOTAMs (ILS / navaid U/S, restricted / danger areas, taxiway closed); reduced flight category (incl. LIFR on IFR legs); strong wind / runway crosswind; CB / TS; tower / AFIS closed; fuel short or a thin margin; weight & balance out of limits or not completed; alternate below planning minima (or required but not set); night arrival; per-leg notes (SLOT / CTOT / PPR); active SUA and altitude- / time-filtered SIGMETs over the route; enroute icing / convective (CB / TCU) / turbulence; and life jackets required over water (see the over-water note below). If nothing flags, a green “no flags” box confirms you should still review the full briefing.
2. Page 1 — Flight summary cover. Trip name, generation timestamp, full route line (chained airports), then a 2-column grid: legs / departure / distance / flight time / fuel used / fuel required (with taxi + reserve breakdown) / final ETA / airport count. An Aircraft sub-block lists the assumptions used for the math — cruise TAS / burn, fuel capacity, reserve (min + gal), taxi (min + gal), climb perf, descent perf — so the briefing is self-contained.
3. One page per leg. Navlog-style header (route, ETD/ETA, distance, time, winds, fuel), a side FUEL + INFO column, and a VFR-simplified navlog table: Waypoint / Alt / Wind / CRS·HDG / GS / Dist / Fuel rem / ETE / ETA. The heading column prints both figures in one magnetic reference — course to make good, then the heading to steer (352·343) — so the gap between them is exactly the wind correction, and you can re-derive a heading yourself if the forecast wind turns out wrong. A single figure means the correction rounded to zero (head- or tailwind), or that no wind was applied. TOC / TOD pseudo-rows appear inline. The airgram cross-section for the leg sits at the bottom of the page, ~10 % taller than before so the climb / cruise / descent bands have more vertical resolution.
4. One page per leg — AI route brief. The streamed AI briefing for each leg lands on its own sheet so it doesn’t crowd the navlog.
5. Airports section. An "Airports" heading followed by the first airport block on the same sheet, then each subsequent airport on its own page. Per airport: ICAO + name header, Info + Weather columns (METAR / TAF parsed table / hourly / LLF / runways / frequencies / refined hours / tower schedule).
6. Route map. Clean SVG of the whole flight with active R/D/P / TSA polygons drawn in (corridor-distance filter: only items within ~30 nm of the route, classified across the full flight window, not just print time). Items where the planned cruise penetrates an SUA’s vertical band get a red ⚠ marker on the map polygon.
7. Active Special Use Airspaces. Dedicated page with the table of relevant SUAs (the ones flagged on the map above): type, code, location, altitude band, status, time-of-day windows, source. A banner above the table summarises the count and the time window evaluated. NOTAM details (Q-code, F/G limits, full E-line) follow underneath.
8. Footer. PIC + date/time signature lines and a brief disclaimer reminding the pilot to verify against official sources.

16.9 Flight summary

The ☰ Summary button in the panel toolbar opens a quick fixed-width popup summarising the whole flight — one block per leg with departures, arrivals and refuels, each shown in both Zulu and local airport time. Local time is resolved from the airport’s ICAO region (DST-correct for the planned date; a day-rollover is flagged, e.g. 0230L+1), with a longitude-based fallback for airports outside the covered regions. Each leg lists distance, ETE and the start → end fuel; between legs a GROUND line shows the turnaround time and, when the next leg starts with more fuel than this one lands with, a refuel +N gal line (grade per the aircraft’s fuel type). A TOTALS line follows (distance, flying time, leg count, refuels), and an AIRPORTS list closes it out — every airport on the flight (plus alternates) as code · name · country. Copy puts the text on the clipboard for a logbook or email; Close or Esc dismisses it. All times shown with Z are UTC and L are local.

16.10 Persistence

Every change is written to your account in real time (with a per-browser cache for instant load). Saved flights and aircraft profiles survive reloads, new app versions, and follow you to any browser where you sign in — see Section 3.3 for the full sync list. The library’s JSON paste / file controls are still there for offline export when you want a local backup.

Reopening a flight whose departure has already passed prompts you to re-anchor it to start now (Section 16.4.3); your stored times are never rewritten without that confirmation.

16.11 Actual flown track vs the plan

After a flight you can attach the actual flown track (from Flightradar24) to a leg and compare it against the plan — deviation from the planned route, actual block / airborne times and an altitude profile, with the real track overlaid on the map. Each leg carries an ✈ Actual chip to attach or toggle it. The full workflow is covered in Section 20, The Flown Track Tool.

16.12 Auto route & flight-plan filing

With an autorouter account connected (Section 4.4), each leg can be routed and filed under your own account. You can file both IFR and VFR flight plans — the channel follows the leg’s flight rules (Section 16.3). Until you connect, the buttons still appear but prompt you to connect first.

✈ Auto route (IFR)

Finds and validates an IFR route for the leg using your autorouter account and the leg’s aircraft. It returns a valid routing — with SID/STAR and airway structure — and writes it onto the leg: the route string, the detailed waypoints and the cruise level. The map then draws the procedural points. Re-running re-routes the leg. If no matching aircraft is found in your autorouter fleet, you’re guided to create / match one. (Auto route applies to IFR only; for VFR you enter the route yourself.)

Validate route (IFR)

Checks the leg’s current IFR route against Eurocontrol (IFPS / CFMU) validation without re-routing — useful after hand-editing waypoints. Any errors are listed so you can fix the route before filing.

File a flight plan

Each leg shows a flight-plan control labelled with its current status (e.g. File, then Filed). Click it — or the leg’s FPL tool — to open the ICAO flight-plan view. How a filed plan is transmitted depends on the flight rules (field 8):

• IFR — validated and filed through IFPS (Eurocontrol); once accepted the plan carries an IFPLID.
• VFR — sent over AFTN to the relevant ATS reporting offices (a pure VFR plan is not processed by IFPS); it’s tagged AFTN rather than given an IFPLID.

The flight-plan form

The view is the full ICAO flight plan, pre-filled from the leg and the aircraft profile. You can edit any field; an Assembled FPL preview at the bottom shows the exact message that will be sent and updates live as you type. The boxes follow the ICAO item numbers:

Item 19 C/ (pilot-in-command), and a contact phone in RMK/, pre-fill from your captain profile (Settings → Captain). Three buttons sit above the filing bar: Validate (IFPS) runs the route / format check (for a pure VFR plan it notes that IFPS isn’t applicable), Copy FPL copies the assembled message, and Reset to computed discards your edits and rebuilds the plan from the leg.

The stages

The filing bar at the bottom of the view offers only the actions valid for the current stage. You confirm before anything is transmitted — the prompt names the channel (IFPS or AFTN).

1. Not filed (draft) — File flight plan.
2. Filing… — sent and being processed; the status refreshes automatically (or use Refresh status). You can still Cancel filing.
3. Filed — accepted (IFR plans now carry an IFPLID; VFR plans show an AFTN tag). From here: Mark departed, Change departure time, Re-file (if the plan changed), Refresh status, or Cancel flight plan.
4. Airborne → Arrived — after departure you can Mark arrived; arrived / closed plans are read-only.
5. Rejected — fix the flagged problem and Edit & re-file. Cancelled — you can File a new flight plan.

The leg header and the FPL tool both carry a colour-coded status chip mirroring this state. Every filed plan is also reachable from Settings → Autorouter → Manage filed flight plans.

Editing & re-filing

Edits you make in the form are stored on the flight (so they survive reload and sync) and flow into both the assembled message and Validate route. When a plan is already filed, the form keeps the two versions clear:

• The form shows the current (to-be-filed) values, and a banner reports how many fields changed since filing.
• Each changed field gets a clickable ↵ filed: X chip — click it to revert that one field to the value actually on file.
• A changed flag also shows on the leg / status chip. Re-file replaces the filed plan with the current one, re-evaluating the channel from field 8.
• Change departure time reschedules a filed plan (a quick ±15 min nudge or a new EOBT) without rebuilding the whole plan.
• Cancel withdraws the filed plan; a cancelled leg can then be filed afresh.

16.13 Weight & Balance

Prepare Flights includes a data-driven Weight & Balance tool: set up your aircraft’s W&B once, then load each flight and see the take-off and landing mass and centre of gravity checked against the envelope — on screen and in the printed briefing.

Set up your aircraft (once)

Open Settings → Aircraft, edit one of your aircraft (a custom aircraft, not a built-in template), and find the Weight & Balance block. There are two ways to start:

• Import from autorouter — if the aircraft has a registration linked to your autorouter account, one tap pulls the full W&B model (empty mass, limits, stations, tanks and the CG envelope). This is the quickest and most accurate route.
• Start blank — build the model by hand: set the empty mass & arm, the four mass limits (MTOM / MLM / MRM / MZFM), then add load stations, fuel tanks and consumables (each with an arm and a max), and enter the CG envelope as a list of points. You can switch mass and arm units (kg / lb, cm / m / in) at any time — values convert automatically.

De-icing fluid (TKS) and other consumables are entered in litres and converted to mass using their fluid density.

Load a flight

With a flight open in the Flight Planner, expand the Weight & Balance section. It is per leg — each take-off and landing is checked with that leg’s own fuel, so a multi-leg trip’s intermediate stops aren’t missed:

• Enter who and what is on board (people, baggage, fluids). Loads carry forward to the next leg, so you only change what actually changes — e.g. a passenger who leaves at the turnaround.
• Fuel is taken from your plan automatically (ramp, taxi and that leg’s burn), so landing weight reflects the fuel burned en route.
• A collapsed roll-up shows a green / amber status per leg at a glance; expand a leg for the full loadout, the ramp / take-off / landing / zero-fuel figures and the CG envelope with your points plotted.
• Save a loadout (a named people-and-bags preset) to reuse on future flights; loadouts are per aircraft and sync across your devices.

Need a quick check without a flight open? The Flights library has a standalone Weight & Balance button that opens the same calculator with an aircraft picker.

In the briefing

When you’ve entered loads, the printed briefing gains a Weight & Balance load manifest per leg — an itemised list (people / cargo / aircraft items), a full weight table with fwd/aft CG limits, a CG chart, and a captain-signature line — a document you can sign and file.

16.14 Add to calendar

The 📅 Add to calendar button (in the open flight’s actions) downloads an .ics file you can open in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or any calendar app — so your planned flight shows up as an appointment, and is easy to share with a passenger.

• One event per leg — each take-off/landing with a departure time becomes its own event (start = departure, end = departure + estimated flight time).
• Details in the event — route, distance and ETE, start fuel and any refuel (in gallons and litres), fuel burn, flight rules and alternate.
• Re-add to update — each event has a stable id, so re-adding the flight refreshes the existing entry instead of duplicating it.

Set a departure time on at least one leg first. This is a one-off snapshot (no live subscription): if you change the flight later, add it to your calendar again.

17. Print Briefing (⎙)

The printer-icon button in the bottom-left corner of the map opens a print-ready briefing of the current view. The briefing opens in its own window for review; click Print there (or Ctrl/Cmd+P) to print to paper or “Save as PDF” for a paperless kneeboard reference. The pages are laid out in landscape — some browsers (notably Safari) don’t switch orientation automatically, so pick Landscape in the system print dialog if needed.

If you have saved presets (Section 9), the print button opens a small menu: Current view prints exactly what’s on the map now, or pick a preset to print its saved layer set in one click. With no presets, it prints the current view directly.

17.1 What gets printed

• The map(s) — one chart per page. A clean snapshot framed exactly to your current view, with the same basemap, overlays, airport labels and routes you can see on screen. All controls, panels and buttons are hidden.
  • Because each kind of overlay obscures the others, layers are split into up to three per-purpose maps, each on its own landscape page, in this order: “Weather” (forecast + radar / satellite), “Low Level Forecast” (LLF polygons), and “Airspace & info” (TMA / CTR, SUA, points) — the airspace map last, where it’s easy to find for cross-checking the navlog.
  • If only one of those groups is active (or none), you get a single combined map.
  • When a preset has the SWC option on (Section 9), a Significant Weather Chart page is inserted just before the Airspace map.
• Appendix pages — everything that normally hides behind hover or popup, auto-collected from the map state at print time:
  • Active Special Use Airspaces intersecting the view — R / D / P / TSA / TRA areas with the NOTAM IDs, time windows and altitude bands that activate them. Only operationally active variants are listed (active now, activating later today, or a currently in-force triggered AIP SUP). Inactive or future-day areas are skipped so the appendix stays short and decision-relevant.
  • Terminal airspaces (TMA / CTR) intersecting the view, with their controlling unit and frequencies.
  • Active SIGMETs covering the view.
  • Aerodromes visible on the map — ICAO, name, METAR category and current observation in compact form.

17.2 What gets captured from your view

The print map is rendered in a hidden iframe so it doesn’t disturb your live session. The iframe receives the full view state via URL parameters: bounds (so the printed map matches the on-screen frame exactly), basemap choice, the list of enabled weather and observation overlays, the currently selected altitude key, the time-bar offset, and the label-visibility toggles. The browser’s print stylesheet then lays each map (Section 17.1) on its own landscape page, with every appendix heading starting on a fresh page so the packet reads cleanly. The aerodrome table also fills in unofficial weather (EFLA Flyk, EFNU CloudATIS, nearest IL AWS — Section 6.6) for fields with no official METAR, before falling back to the Open-Meteo model.

17.3 Printing the flight that is on the map

With a flight loaded, the print menu gains two more entries:

• Current flight plan — the full trip briefing (Section 16.8): cover, per-leg navlog, weather, NOTAMs and route maps.
• Current flight (navlog) — one map sheet framed on the whole route with course, distance and leg time along the line, followed by the navlog table. The kneeboard sheet.

Both follow the leg visibility you set on the map (Section 16.1.1). The navlog sheet frames itself on the legs that are shown, draws only those, prints only their navlog tables, and stamps a line under “Printed:” saying which legs it carries — e.g. “Legs 1–2 of 3 shown — leg 3 hidden on map” — so a sheet in your lap is never mistaken for the whole flight. The trip briefing pre-ticks the same legs in its picker and lists the omitted ones on the cover.

One exception, on purpose: if you have hidden the whole flight with the eye and then ask for the navlog, you still get it. Asking for the navlog is asking for the route on paper, not a repeat of the decluttered screen. Legs hidden individually are still left out.

18. Pre-Flight Workflow Tips

The workflows below walk through the app the way the tool is meant to be used — from the synoptic big picture, down to the route, down to the cruise level, then back out to airspace and observations. Times are rough budgets, not deadlines: a clear-blue-sky day might end at step 2.

19. Track My Flight (☉)

Once you’ve planned a flight you can fly it with a live moving map: own-ship position with course guidance on the chart, a running PLOG (planned vs. actual), and automatic OOOI timing that feeds straight into your logbook. It all starts from the ☉ button at the bottom of the top-left control stack.

What you need: you must be signed in, and your browser must allow location access. Recording keeps the screen awake and works fully offline — see Section 19.8.

19.1 Two-stage start: follow first, record on purpose

• Tap ☉ once → Follow mode. The button turns blue, your position appears and the map follows you — nothing is recorded. Use it freely to check where you are.
• ▶ Start flight. In follow mode a pill at the bottom offers to start the actual flight recording — and names the flight-plan leg it will link to (e.g. “EFHK → EFTP”) when a current plan matches your position. Tap it when you mean it: this starts the track, OOOI timing and the elapsed clock.
• Tap ☉ again in follow mode to turn following off. While recording, the button shows a red ● REC clock and tapping it only re-opens the panel — a recording can never be stopped by accident; stopping is always the panel’s ■ Stop.
• From the planner: a leg’s PLOG button (Section 16) opens follow mode with that leg pre-selected and the PLOG open — recording still starts only from ▶ Start flight.

19.2 The HUD

While a flight is running, a compact panel sits at the bottom of the map:

• Control row — the linked-leg chip, ⛽ Fuel check, ▤ Log (the PLOG), ■ Stop and ×.
• Readout row — distance and ETE to the next waypoint, XTK (cross-track), TURN (see 21.3), ground speed, track, GPS altitude and a running fuel estimate.
• ▴ expands the panel to show the OOOI strip (tap a time to nudge or confirm it in flight) and the VFR/IFR rules chip; ▾ collapses it back. Your choice is remembered.
• × minimizes the panel — recording continues (the ● REC clock stays on the ☉ button); tap the button to bring the panel back.

19.3 Leg navigation & course guidance

• Leg linking — on the first fix the app links the nearest leg of a plan that is dated for now and whose route you are actually on; old plans never attach silently. The HUD chip shows the linked leg — tap it to pick another leg or unlink.
• Magenta guidance on the map — the active route segment draws as a bold magenta line, and a dashed magenta line runs from your own-ship straight to the next waypoint. Waypoints sequence automatically as you pass them (corner-cutting included — you don’t have to overfly the point).
• TURN — one glanceable instruction in the HUD: ◀12 means “turn 12° left to point at the waypoint”, ▶5 right, ▲ on course.

19.4 OOOI times

The app stamps the four OOOI events — off-block, take-off, touchdown, on-block — from your movement, and derives block and airborne time. You don’t need to touch them in flight: everything is reviewable with ±1 min nudges on the finish sheet (21.6), or live on the expanded HUD’s OOOI strip if you prefer.

19.5 The PLOG (planned vs. actual)

▤ Log opens the PLOG — one row per waypoint, plan against reality. On phones it is a bottom sheet: drag the handle to resize, drag it down to close.

• Numbers match the map — each row leads with the same numbered circle as the waypoint on the chart.
• ETA / ATA / Δt and fuel — planned and actual time over each point, fuel on board planned vs. actual (in your aircraft’s fuel unit), with live ≈ estimates projected onto the points ahead when you run early/late or over/under burn.
• Tap a row to fix its time (−1 / now / +1) or log the fuel there; skip a point you’re not going to pass. Marking a point reached chains straight into an (optional) fuel reading, pre-filled with the estimate.
• ⛽ Fuel check (HUD) logs a gauge reading any time, re-anchoring the running fuel estimate; entry is a big-buttoned sheet designed for a bumpy cockpit.
• Rules — switching VFR ↔ IFR in flight (expanded HUD) is time-stamped so the logbook can split air time by rule.

19.6 Finishing & saving

• Landing is noticed. Shortly after on-block is detected, a green 🛬 Flight complete — Finish & log pill appears (with a system notification if permitted) — so a finished flight doesn’t keep recording in a forgotten tab.
• One finish sheet. ■ Stop (or the pill) opens a single sheet: flight summary (block / air time), OOOI review with ±1 min nudges, post-flight fields (take-offs and landings, fuel remaining, anti-ice and oil where applicable, approaches), function and rules — and the destination: Link to flight plan (default when a leg is linked) or Logbook only. Both capture the same details.
• Into the logbook — the saved track, its OOOI times and post-flight details become a logbook entry automatically.
• Keep recording closes the sheet without ending the flight (e.g. a touch-and-go stop); Discard asks for confirmation.

19.7 Never lose a flight

The track is autosaved every few seconds. If the session is interrupted — crash, reload, dead battery — the next launch either resumes the live recording seamlessly (fresh interruptions) or offers a recovery banner with Save to plan, Save to logbook and Discard. Even if the original flight plan has been deleted, the flight is saved to the logbook rather than lost.

19.8 Offline

Your upcoming flight’s data — weather, NOTAMs, charts and basemap tiles along the route corridor — is packed automatically in the background (see Section 23, Offline). GPS itself needs no connection, so own-ship, course guidance and the PLOG keep working in the air; the saved track syncs once you’re back online. Before heading somewhere without coverage, open Offline packs and press Refresh packs now for the freshest weather.

19.9 Charts in flight

While a flight is running, a button appears at the bottom of the top-right control stack showing an aerodrome’s ICAO code. One tap opens that field’s charts in the plate viewer (Section 6.8) — with your position on the page wherever the chart carries it. The button exists only while a flight is live and disappears when you finish.

Which field it offers changes with the flight, and the code on the button is how you see it change:

Whatever it opens, the viewer’s own picker and the ‹ › edge arrows reach every other chart at that field in one more tap, so the button only has to get you to the right aerodrome.

Flying without a plan? A recording that is not linked to a planned leg — a local flight, a session started from the map, the simulator — still gets the button: it then offers the nearest aerodrome within 15 NM, which is the field you are taxiing on or the one you are arriving at. Linking the recording to a leg (tap the HUD’s “Link to plan” chip) gives the better answer, because the plan knows where you are going before you get there.

The button is hidden when the field in question has no charts at all, so it never opens onto nothing.

20. The Flown Track Tool (✈)

The Flown Track tool shows the route you actually flew — pulled from Flightradar24 — so you can review the flight and compare it against your plan. Open it with the ✈ button at the bottom of the top-left control stack. (To record a flight live from your own GPS instead of pulling it afterwards, use Track my flight, Section 19.)

What you need: the lookup is keyed on your aircraft’s registration, so add your aircraft (with its registration) in Settings → Aircraft first. The flight must have been seen by Flightradar24’s ADS-B network.

20.1 Finding a flight

Pick an aircraft from the dropdown; the tool automatically lists that registration’s flights from the last 14 days, newest first (route, date, off/on times and type). Click one to load its track. Each lookup uses your Flightradar24 quota, so a flight you’ve already opened is cached — reopening it costs nothing.

20.2 The track on the map

• Coloured by altitude — the route is drawn in altitude bands, with a legend from ground to 7 500 ft+.
• Scrub for detail — hover or drag along the track or the profile chart (works with a finger on touch screens) to read time, altitude, groundspeed, vertical speed, heading and flight phase at any point.
• Play — replays the flight, running a marker along the track.

20.3 Flight detail

Selecting a flight opens a detail card with:

• Stats — airborne time, distance flown, max altitude, max and average groundspeed, max climb / descent.
• Block & flight times (OOOI) — off-block, takeoff, touchdown and on-block, plus block, airborne and taxi times. Takeoff / touchdown come from Flightradar24 when reported; off-block / on-block are inferred from ground movement in the track. Inferred values are marked with a ~.
• Altitude & groundspeed profile against time, with a flight-phase strip (ground / climb / cruise / descent).

20.4 Comparing with your plan

You can attach a flown flight to a leg in the Flight Planner and keep it with the trip. There are two ways in:

Once attached, the leg’s chip turns to ✓ Actual and the leg gains a comparison block: actual block / airborne times, distance flown, max altitude / speed, and how far the track strayed from the planned route (max and RMS cross-track distance). The profile draws your planned cruise altitude for reference.

• Show on map — overlays the colour-coded actual track on top of the planned route.
• Saved with the trip — the track is stored on the leg (compressed), so it travels with export / import and sync, and is available later offline without another Flightradar24 lookup.
• Re-attach / Remove — replace the attached flight or clear it.

20.5 Export

The GPX button downloads the flown track as a GPX file (lat / lon, altitude and timestamps) for use in other tools.

20.6 Notes & limits

• Flightradar24 serves roughly the last 30 days of history but limits each query to a 14-day window, so the tool offers the last 14 days.
• ADS-B coverage on the ground is patchy for light aircraft — if taxi movement wasn’t captured, off-block / on-block times can’t be inferred and show as “—”.
• Groundspeed (not true airspeed) is shown; there is no wind / TAS estimate.
• This is for review and situational awareness, not a certified flight record.

21. Logbook

A built-in pilot logbook that fills itself from the flights you fly — EASA-style — and is fully editable. Reach it from the Flights library on the Logbook tab. Like the moving map, the logbook is available to signed-in users.

21.1 Where entries come from

• Automatically — every flight you save an actual track to becomes an entry: from the in-flight recorder (Section 19) or the Flown Track tool (Section 20).
• From a plan leg — the Flight Planner’s Log flight action on a leg creates (or opens) the matching logbook entry.
• By hand — + Add flight manually for a flight with no track.

21.2 EASA basis

The logbook follows EASA conventions so it can stand in for a paper logbook:

• Flight time = block time (off-block to on-block), per FCL.010.
• Night is computed on the SERA definition — the sun 6° below the horizon (civil twilight) — for the actual date and position.
• Columns follow AMC1 FCL.050: single- / multi-engine, multi-pilot, PIC / dual / instructor function time, day & night take-offs and landings, IFR / VFR and night time. Class (SE/ME) and function are derived from the aircraft and the flight.

21.3 Editing & summaries

Tap any row to open the inline editor — adjust times, function, landings, fuel or remarks; times cross-fill (OUT↔OFF, IN↔ON) so block and airborne stay consistent. Summary cards at the top total your time (block time, per the EASA basis above), IFR / VFR, night, PIC and SE / ME hours, plus a rolling 90-day landing count.

For a flight on a recognised aircraft (its registration matches a saved profile in Settings → Aircraft) a Consumables section appears: fuel at start / remaining, TKS at start / remaining (anti-ice only) and oil added. These feed the Aircraft Log and the Flight Planner’s fuel-on-board estimate — the remaining you log becomes the aircraft’s known fuel state for your next flight.

21.4 Filters & deleting

• Filters — narrow the list by date range (from / to or last x days), PIC or aircraft.
• Delete — remove a single entry from its editor, or bulk-delete the whole shown (filtered) list with the Delete button below it; a confirmation spells out whether it’s the filtered subset or every flight.

21.5 Export & import

• Export (▾ menu) — CSV, Excel (.xlsx, with durations formatted as h:mm that sum correctly) or ForeFlight logbook-import format. Exports include only the rows currently shown by your filters.
• Import — load an existing logbook from an Excel (.xlsx) file. A preview pairs each row against your existing entries and flags likely duplicates, so you choose per row whether to add, update or skip.

21.6 Print an EASA page

The Print button renders a printable EASA logbook page — the standard column layout with running and page totals and signature columns — covering the rows currently shown. It opens in its own window; use “Save as PDF” for a paperless copy or print it for a physical logbook.

22. Aircraft Log

The Aircraft Log tracks an airframe’s utilisation — air time plus fuel, TKS and oil — separately from your personal pilot logbook. Where the logbook answers “what did I fly?” (EASA hours), the aircraft log answers “how much has this aeroplane flown, and what has it burned?” — across every flight, including ones flown by other pilots. Reach it from the Flights library on the Aircraft tab. Like the logbook, it is available to signed-in users, and it never affects your EASA hours.

22.1 One log, two sources

Each flight has a single home, so you never enter it twice:

• LOG rows — your own flights, surfaced automatically from the pilot logbook for that registration. They are read-only here; tap one to open it in the logbook. Anything you log against a recognised aircraft shows up in its aircraft log with no extra work.
• MAN rows — flights you didn’t fly, added by hand: ferry legs, maintenance runs, or trips by other pilots. These are the only rows the aircraft log stores itself.

Because your own flights come straight from the logbook, the + Add flight button is meant only for flights that are not already in your logbook.

22.2 The view

• Aircraft picker — choose the registration. It lists every aircraft that has flights (in the logbook or here) plus your saved aircraft profiles, and opens on the one you flew most recently. Registrations match regardless of hyphens (OH-KAO and OHKAO are the same aeroplane); an aircraft with a saved profile shows its tidy form (OH-KAO).
• Top cards — Air time, Flights, Fuel remaining and (for anti-ice aircraft) TKS remaining. Air time here is airborne time (wheels-up to wheels-down), not the logbook’s block time.
• Flight rows — date, route, air time and pilot, each with its LOG / MAN badge. The detail line shows that flight’s consumption — fuel used with a gal/h burn rate, TKS used, and oil added. Fuel/TKS used is simply at start − remaining for that flight.

22.3 Adding a flight by hand

+ Add flight opens an editor: date and registration, From / To (with ICAO search and auto-uppercase, like the logbook), OFF / ON times (air time is computed as ON − OFF, or type it directly), and consumables — fuel at start / remaining, TKS at start / remaining (only for an anti-ice aircraft) and oil added. “At start” pre-fills from the airframe’s last known remaining, so each flight continues from where the previous one ended. Tap any MAN row to edit or delete it.

22.4 Duplicates & deleting

• Duplicate warning — if a manual row turns out to be the same flight as one already in your logbook, it is flagged in red (“also in your logbook — delete this manual copy”) and excluded from the totals so the flight is never counted twice. Delete the manual copy to tidy up.
• Delete (N) — the button below the list bulk-deletes this aircraft’s manual rows only. Your logbook flights are never touched from here.

22.5 Export

The Export (▾) menu writes the selected aircraft’s flights as CSV or Excel (.xlsx, durations as h:mm). The export includes the logbook-sourced flights too — so it is the airframe’s complete picture — minus any duplicate manual rows. Export works even with no flights, giving you a headers-only template to fill in for an import.

22.6 Import — bringing data in

Import loads flights from an Excel (.xlsx) file — handy for back-filling an aircraft’s history, or for adding air times and fuel to logbook flights that were imported with block time only.

File format. One flight per row, with these column headers (the export template has them ready):

The import preview. Every row is checked against both the aircraft log and your pilot logbook, then classified so you decide row by row what happens:

• NEW — not seen before. Default Add (creates a manual aircraft-log row).
• DUP — already in the aircraft log. Choose Skip, Update existing (overwrite that row) or Add as new. Default Skip.
• IN LOG — already in your pilot logbook. Choose Add to logbook, Skip or Add as new.

“Add to logbook” — the key action. For an IN LOG flight this fills the file’s air time and consumables (fuel/TKS at start and remaining, oil) into the matching logbook flight, but only where those fields are currently blank. Your EASA-critical figures — block time, IFR/VFR, night, landings, function — are never changed. This is exactly how you give air times to flights you imported into the logbook with block time only: the logbook keeps its block time, and gains the airborne time the aircraft log needs. When a logbook flight is missing its air time, Add to logbook is the default for that row; if it already has an air time, the row defaults to Skip.

How duplicates are matched. A row is treated as the same flight when the date, registration and route agree — deliberately tolerant of a time difference, because a logbook flight may carry block time while the file carries air time for the very same leg. The bulk buttons act on all duplicates at once: Skip all, Update all (store rows update, logbook rows get the “Add to logbook” fill) and Add all.

23. Offline

The app works offline automatically — there is no offline mode to switch on or off. The app itself is installed into the browser, your upcoming flights’ data is packed in the background while you have network, and whenever the connection is slow or gone the app silently serves the freshest cached data it has — with a visible amber cached data pill so stale weather is never silent.

23.1 How it works

• The app always opens. The complete app (map, planner, logbook, this manual) is stored locally, so launching with no network boots the full app — never a white screen. If a launch ever fails, a built-in recovery screen offers Try again / Repair.
• Flight packs build themselves. Every flight departing within the next 3 days gets a data pack fetched and kept fresh in the background — see 24.2. No buttons to remember.
• Graceful degradation. If a data request stalls (~5 s) or the network only pretends to work, the answer comes from the local pack instead and the amber cached data pill appears at the bottom of the map. When the network recovers, live data resumes by itself.

23.2 Automatic flight packs

For each upcoming flight (departure within −6 h … +72 h, up to three, plus the flight open in the planner) the pack contains:

• METAR, TAF and NOTAMs for the route’s airports — refreshed every ~15 minutes while the app is open, so packed weather is at most ~30 minutes old;
• Divert fields — weather for every airport within 30 NM of the route (the pack row shows “+ N divert fields”), so an en-route diversion decision has data too;
• AIP summaries, frequencies and airspaces, per-waypoint winds and the leg airgrams (these age slowly and refresh weekly);
• Chart PDFs for the route’s airports from national AIP sources (autorouter documents are never fetched automatically — they consume your account quota). Charts available offline show a badge in the popup’s chart list. The pack also carries what the plate viewer needs — the georeferencing and the viewer itself — so a packed chart opens with your position on it and no connection;
• Basemap tiles along the route corridor plus close-up tiles for the route’s airports — fetched for the soonest flight, so the moving map stays complete with no signal.

Each packed flight shows a small ✈ Offline · wx X min chip on its card in the Flights library, and a row in the Offline packs view.

23.3 Country pack (optional)

Flight packs cover your planned route. For ad-hoc flying, a country pack adds whole-country coverage: the bottom-left menu → Offline packs → Country pack…, pick your countries. It downloads the country basemap, close-up tiles for every airport, and weather / NOTAMs / AIP for all the country’s airports.

• Base-pack weather refreshes itself roughly every 3 hours while the app is open (the view shows “Weather refreshed X ago”).
• Map tiles never expire on their own. The view shows the pack’s age and warns when it is older than an AIRAC cycle (28 days) — aeronautical chart content may have changed; re-download to refresh.
• It is a large download — start it on Wi-Fi. It is never fetched automatically.

23.4 The Offline packs view

Avatar menu → ✈ Offline packs is the one place to see and manage everything:

• Per-flight pack rows — route, weather age, tile status, divert-field count.
• Automatic flight packs toggle (on by default).
• Country pack status with age, AIRAC warning and weather-refresh time.
• Storage counts (airports, chart PDFs, tiles) and any edits still waiting to sync.
• Actions: Refresh packs now — force-refetches all pack weather including divert fields (useful right before engine start or leaving coverage); Country pack…; Clear offline data.

23.5 What works offline — and what needs network

Works offline (from packed data): airport popups with METAR / TAF / NOTAMs / AIP / charts, the Flight Planner and library, the briefing print, the in-flight moving map and Track my flight (GPS needs no network), PLOG, logbook and aircraft log, the basemap in packed areas, Help and this manual.

Needs network: live map weather layers (winds, clouds, icing, turbulence…), radar and satellite, SWC and LLF charts, webcams, live traffic, AI summaries, autorouter (validation, filing, CTOT), Flightradar24 import, and forecasts for arbitrary map points outside your packed data.

23.6 Edits made offline

Saving a flight, logbook entry or setting while offline stores it locally at once and queues the server push. The queue drains automatically when the network returns — no buttons. Anything still waiting is listed on the Offline packs view’s storage line.

23.7 Storage and clearing

Packs, charts and tiles live in the browser’s local storage. Clear offline data (Offline packs view) wipes them all — your flights, logbook and settings are not touched, and packs rebuild automatically afterwards. If the device runs critically low on space the app protects itself by skipping large downloads until space is freed.

24. Reading Wind Barbs

Wind barbs follow standard meteorological conventions. The staff points into the wind direction — a barb pointing north means wind from the south. Speed is encoded as additive flags on the staff:

Wind speed is rounded to the nearest 5 knots. Barbs are additive: a pennant + two full barbs + one half barb = 75 kt.

25. Reference Tables

25.1 Flight-Category Cheat Sheet

25.2 Common METAR Weather Codes

Modifiers stack: +SHRA = heavy rain shower; -FZDZ = light freezing drizzle; VCFG = fog in vicinity.

25.3 Cloud Cover

25.4 Units

26. Data Sources & Disclaimer

26.1 Where Each Layer's Data Comes From

How often the aeronautical data is rebuilt. Three cadences, worth telling apart when you are judging how current something is:

Weather, NOTAMs and traffic are live and are not part of this — see their own sections.

26.2 Disclaimer

Prepare Flights — User Manual
For pilots, by pilots · Updated August 2026