Navigraph Charts offers a lot of functionality, however I haven’t been able yet to find how to speedily perform in there what I’m going to describe.
As everybody knows, all IFR flightplans consist of a succession of waypoints (together with routing plus FL changes if required). SID/STAR may or not be included (in some countries is mandatory not to include them, as they remain an ATC choice). In Navigraph Charts, having an airport charts selected, SIDs/STARs can be chosen by runway (Show Overview) or filtered, which allows to get only those connected to a specific waypoint.
My issue comes when requesting clearance (for SID) or getting approach instructions (for STAR) in particular when weather is not stable, therefore the traffic patterns are less predictable. I may have carefully planned and set with a specific SID or STAR (often times as suggested by Simbrief), then ATC instructs for a different one. Some airports I use have up to 10 procedures to/from a waypoint, so unless I can restrict possibilities (by runway or else) predicting the correct one is a rare occurrence.
Then what I need is a way to find and select, on Navigraph Charts, the SID/STAR cleared. The runway may change, but not the connected waypoint: therefore my procedure is to manually filter by waypoint, then to look for the correct designation (which shows only shortened on the left selection bar, so I have to look each SID/STAR until I find the right one). Of course I need to verify the SID/STAR very fast so my readback remains informed: have had a few times when either the ATC wasn’t clear enough or I heard garbage, so I’m less than willing to take chances reading back what I haven’t clear.
I have taken the habit to carefully prepare each flight writing down on a sheet every possible SID and STAR for the waypoints in my flightplan, this allows me to fast check against only those on my sheet instead of searching with Navigraph.
However preparing this sheet takes time, so I believe it would be an improvement if Navigraph Charts had a feature to automatically show all possible SIDs or STARs (with their full designation) related to the current flightplan, better yet if showing also the runway(s) connected, allowing to choose one from such list.
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Hi…,
Welcome.
Thank you for your suggestions.
We are about to start beta testing for a new Charts version, which has a new user interface. You might like to hold your suggestions until you see the new version.
Cheers
Ian
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