Skyvector.com Free Online Flight Planning

[Bartman]

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm kind of old school when it comes to flying for fun. I still enjoy flying around with paper charts, using pilotage to figure out where we are and where we're going. For longer flights I'll use my cell phone with AVARE but when I'm out flying for fun I like charts.

I know it's goofy but I'm still amazed at how much is available online and on our phones when it comes to flight planning and navigation. The best site I've found so far for online flight planning is SkyVector.com. Sure there are probably more elaborate sites out there but at 107 mph, how much more do I need???

SkyVector.com

If you're stuck in the past like me, you'll find it easy to use and pretty darn helpful.

Bart

 

[aftCG]

I'm a fan of SkyVector for cross country planning. Last summer I had cause to fly from the Pacific Northwest to Minnesota, leave the plane for a month and then retrieve it after the wet wings weren't wet anymore.

The flight was roughly 1150 miles so I broke it into two days, then further refined by making legs that were about 2 hours long and using waypoints that might be interesting (Devil's Tower, Mt Rushmore, Crow Agency, old missile silos, Sturgis and who could leave out Wall, SD for crying out loud?).

Where SkyVector became even more useful was by then further refining my intended landing spots by fuel availability (and price!), cross wind runway available (it was a big tail dragger that I don't want to ding up), and hotels/attractions, etc.

I saved each of the legs as an individual XC flight and was able to share with my son (who went with me Eastbound) and my girlfriend (who flew the return leg but really just wanted her friends to know where the wreckage would be found).

As the date of the trip came near I used the various legs to create flight plans in iFly (an Android app that I like quite a bit) to key in all the legs and go.

Eastbound we made every waypoint and fuel stop as planned, and our chosen overnight location of Spearfish, SD turned out to be an excellent choice. On the Westbound leg we weathered out, cutting the first day by landing at Rapid City and waiting out a snow storm. The next morning was severe clear and we made it home just as the sun disappeared.

 

[Bartman]

iFly is like AVARE I guess?

There were a handful of planes that I almost bought and with each one I'd start the plan with SkyVector. It was amazing to me at the time how easy it was to lay out a line between departure and destination and then work along the route to nail down waypoints while avoiding restricted airspace, major airports, etc.

I would do screen shots of the chart and then print them on legal paper so I'd have a hard copy in the airplane. I'll have to check out iFly, thanks for the tip

 

[JimParker256]

For those who use ForeFlight and/or FlyQ EFB, both offer a web planner that are great for planning "the big picture" on a big-screen PC, and will transfer the flight plans (automatically) to their corresponding EFB apps. Since I have one of those "huge-screen" Macs, I use this a lot. I plan a lot of flights that I will probably never make, just because it's so fun to do...