VFR Flight planning on Linux

Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Thomas Sailer

WARNING! All data is presented for reference only. You assume total responsibility and risk associated with using this program. This means in particular (but not limited):

• Always check frequencies and airspaces with your local AIP
• Always check headings, distances and altitudes on an ICAO map
• Always check navigation with other sources (eg. maps, VOR, NDB) and be prepared to navigate using traditional means

Features

• Preflight Navigation Planning:
  • Synthetic Vector Map, with terrain features and elevations
  • Scanned Maps
  • Database containing Airports, Navaids, Airspaces, Fixes and Airways
• Inflight Navigation
  • Synthetic Vector Map
  • Time based (with manual "next waypoint" button) or GPS based navigation

Download

The source code

The source code http://download.gna.org/vfrnav/ is released under the GNU General Public License, GPL, Version 2.

Databases

The tools to generate the databases on Linux are included in the source code. The data itself is taken from the following publicly available data sources:

• Large Airports (longest runway at least 1km long), Navaids, Airspaces from DAFIFT Ed. 7
• Small Airfields from Michael Meier's WELT2000.TXT database
• X-Plane data resource
• Map elements from Vector Map Level 0
• Elevation data from SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission)

The databases can be downloaded from this repository. They are provided in RPM form. Users of yum based linux distributions can just install rpm -ivh http://www.baycom.org/~tom/vfrnav/data/vfrnav-data-1-1.fc10.noarch.rpm and then use yum to install and keep the database files up to date.

Caveats

• DAFIF prefers military ICAO airport designators over civil ones, so check the ICAO designators, especially on colocated CIV/MIL airports (I fell into this trap in Klagenfurt, Austria)