NOTAM Software Review by John Wright

Whenever you set off on a cross-country flight, it is very advisable to check the NOTAMs before you depart.  Stumbling into some temporary restricted airspace or danger zone is a bad idea, and pleading ignorance, as some pilots has discovered, will not prevent large fines being demanded by the courts.  The BGA web site includes a very brief description of some software available to display NOTAMs, but a couple of lines is not enough information with which to evaluate these programs, so this article provides a more in depth view of four free programs.

1) NavPlot v0.3.2

Author: Alan Sparrow, www.freeflight.org.uk , 3.99Mb
NavPlot is a very simple, lightweight application. Before using it, you must first register with the AIS Self Briefing service (which is free), then add your user name and password to the software's Settings tab. Next, you select the day and area (London, Scottish or both) for which you wish to view NOTAMs.

On clicking the Get NOTAMS button, a PDF document is created and displayed, with a map of the UK, below which is listed all of that day's NOTAMs.  The map includes a few gliding sites to help you orientate yourself, as well as some key permanent airspace. There is no filtering of the information other than by date, but all plotted navigation warnings are numbered, described, and their position indicated on the map. The non-plotted navigation warnings are listed as well.  There is no way to draw a task from within the software.  It is extremely easy to use however.

There is no documentation supplied with this product, but the bigger the width used under Settings, the wider the area displayed on the map. The latitude and longitude values in Settings define the geographical position of the lower left corner of the map.  Everything else is obvious, mainly because there is little to alter anyway.

2) SPINE v3.6 (Soaring Pilot's Intelligent NOTAMs Editor)

Author J Goodenough, www.enborne.f2s.com/gliding/spine.htm , 0.39 Mb
After the minimalist interface of NavPlot, SPINE will come as a severe shock to most users. 19 text boxes, 20+ labels, 20+ buttons all on a single screen - research shows that overloaded interfaces are harder to use.  A nice menu would make a huge difference to this program.

SPINE has many options that can be set, and a reasonably good Help file explaining what it can do.  On clicking Get NOTAMS, it fetches those for the current and next few days, which can be viewed in its crowded interface along with the distance from your home airfield.  You can work through this list manually, or plot them on a map. The map is one of SPINE's strong points.  It is fully zoomable, centred on wherever you click and scrollable, shows the BGA tps, major airspace, danger areas and of course the NOTAM areas, based on the date range you select at the top of the map window. Check this matches the day you intend to fly on, as you could be viewing several days worth of warnings at a time.  On holding the mouse over an area, information about it pops up, while clicking it adds a small cross. Unfortunately you have to note down its reference number if you wish to check it in the more detailed control panel.  After clicking on a point, you can measure its distance from any other place by right clicking there.  Under settings there is a powerful filter facility to reduce the clutter on the map.  NOTAMS include many things of no interest to glider pilots (information on de-icing, oil, ILS, etc.) and these can be removed from the output by selecting the standard gliding filter. Other filters are available and can be manually altered.

The main feature missing from SPINE is that you cannot plot your task on the map.  The addition of this would be a major improvement.  But SPINE can still help with in-flight navigation. The output can be saved in either Open Air or TNP format, and then imported into XCSoar, Winpilot, GlideNavigator II and other soaring software, and displayed on your iPaq.

3) NotamView v0.8.2

Author: David Nisbet, www.notamview.org.uk 1.69Mb
This program is very easy to use and some operations you are likely to repeat require very few mouse clicks.  Downloading the latest NOTAMS requires just two clicks.  The title bar also indicates how long since you last downloaded the data.  By default it collects today's data, but this can be altered to other dates if necessary. The data is shown in tree view in the NOTAM panel, and can be expanded by clicking on items.  To the right is a map, centred on your chosen home site. The Map Panel is a tabbed view, and the NOTAMS are listed in full in the other tabs.  The map is zoomable from the menu, and right clicking a point re-centres on the new position.  As well as the actual NOTAMS, important airspace, danger areas, and parachute drop zones are also shown.  The items on view can easily be altered from the drop-down menu.

Warnings are marked in red, and clicking on the map marks the nearest warning area with green cross and orange circle. This was about my only real complaint - I felt some of the colours used were a bit low contrast. The actual warning text is displayed in the Details panel below the tree view.

You can configure the program to use your home airfield as its starting point.  Task setting is particularly easy in NotamView, which comes with the current BGA TP list and ICAO codes.  Simply select Task from the menu and enter the trigraphs in the appropriate boxes - if you miss-type one, on clicking Draw it will be highlighted in red.  This is very much faster than NotamPlot's approach to drawing a task. As a bonus, it also calculates the task distance as well, and auto-scales the map around the task area. With the task drawn on the map, checking which of the warnings are likely to affect you is then very straightforward. I liked the ease with which the task could be altered if a conflict occurred. Just open Task again, change a single TP and click Draw, rather than redefine the entire task. However TPs' names (trigraphs or full names) are only visible on the map when you zoom in - I'd have liked the trigraph to also be shown on mouseover of a TP.  As with SPINE, there are several useful filters available to reduce map clutter.

A newer version will soon be available, and among other improvements, you will be able to set an AAT, and choose your own colours for map items and airspace. The current version has the old AIS web site URL, but straightforward editing instructions to alter this are included.

4. NotamPlot v2.1

Author: Ian Fallon, www.notamplot.flyer.co.uk , 4.9Mb
This program comes in a free and paid version. The free version adds a nag screen and downloading the data takes more steps than any of the others.  Specific airfield NOTAMs can also be downloaded, making it useful for power pilots. You must sign up with Avbrief.com (free) to use this program. The paid version includes several extras, such as METARS, airfield information on the map, and FIRs.

There is no facility to set a home airfield and, unusually, danger areas, parachute drop zones and airspace are not displayed, which I felt was a major oversight. BGA TPs and ICAO codes can be displayed or hidden on the scrollable, zoomable map which, unfortunately, is not centred on screen in any useful way. On mouseover of a TP, its trigraph is shown, while airfield names and ICAO codes are also displayed.

The screen layout is similar to NotamView, using three main panels the same way.  Clicking on a warning either adds a colour fill, which is more noticeable than NotamView's current coloured cross, or changes the warning area outline from brown to blue. A full description is also shown in the lower left panel. A filter limits warnings to a given day's, but activates an annoying red flashing bar.

Tasks can be drawn on the map to check for conflicts, but this is a much longer process than it needs to be, using long lists to find a TP, and unless you store a set of frequently used tasks, you will find  NotamView much more convenient to use. It took at least ten times as long to set up a new task using NotamPlot!  Of course once saved it can be recalled quickly, but changing a single TP is more involved than necessary, as you have to rename and save that route too. Task distance is not calculated for you.  Built-in Help is non-existent, but online there is a good User Guide that covers most of what you will need to know.

Both NotamPlot and NotamView are written in Java, and so you may have to download that as well. But this means they will run under any OS, while the other two are Windows only. Installation of all four programs was extremely easy.  Of the four, SPINE has the most features, but lacks the vital task drawing facility.

A version of this review, which may include some of the commercial packages as well, will be placed online at www.sky-web.net/notamsoftware.htm.