User Customisations
Your Home Airfield
The 'Home' button on the toolbar enables you to quickly zoom the map back to your chosen home airfield, avoiding the necessity to search for the waypoint each time you wish to view it on the map. In addition to zooming to your home airfield, SkyDemon also gathers local weather and nearby NOTAM, so you can see at a glance the conditions close to home without needing to first plot a route.
You can also choose your preferred map scale, so when the map pans to your home airfield after hitting the Home button it also zooms in or out to the scale you have specified. Pressing and holding the orange scale button in the left-hand corner of the map on your iPad will also have the effect of zooming in or out to your selected scale preference, wherever you are on the map.
To set your home airfield and preferred zoom level you'll need to open up the Setup menu and select Planning Options, where you will see the option to do so within the General section of the window.
Changing Units
Many of the distances, volumes and weights expressed throughout SkyDemon can be changed depending upon what you are familiar with or what your aircraft uses. To change units, open the Change Units window from the Setup menu.
Distances and speeds are tied together for obvious reasons. The options are nautical miles and knots, statute miles and miles per hour, and kilometres and kilometres per hour. Vertical distances cannot currently be changed; feet is the only option. Fuel volume options (for showing fuel price in the Planning Options menu) are litres, US gallons and imperial gallons. Weight options are kilograms and pounds. Display of position can be changed between degrees minutes and seconds format or degrees with decimal minutes. It is also possible to choose between Hectopascals (Hpa) and inches when looking at pressure in weather bulletins, and visibility can be shown in either metres or statute miles.
Options for fuel measurements for individual aircraft can be altered when editing your aircraft profile by accessing the Flight Details tab, tapping on the current Aircraft in use and selecting Edit from the Tools menu.
User Waypoints
You can create an unlimited number of your own waypoints to use for flight planning. Click on the Waypoints button on your PC toolbar or click Setup then Waypoints to open the Waypoints window on your iPad, which lists all the user waypoints you have created. They are grouped into categories, to make life easier for those who like to create a lot of waypoints. To create one, press the Add (+) button. You can also create a user waypoint by right-clicking on the map (or pressing and holding the empty area on the iPad map where you would like your new waypoint to be) and choosing Create User Waypoint.
The user waypoint creation window allows a number of waypoint characteristics to be entered. First is the name, which appears beside the waypoint on the map. You can also specify an identifier, which can simplify searching for a waypoint and which is output on the PLOG if you route via the waypoint. The category box allows you to specify any category name you like or choose an existing one. The position can be entered using standard latitude and longitude notation (Nddmmss Wdddmmss) , or it will have been pre-populated if you launched the window by clicking on the map. You can also choose the symbol used to represent the waypoint on the map.
In some cases you may wish to create a user waypoint whose position is defined with reference to an existing waypoint; for example a distance and radial from a VOR or along the extended centreline from an airfield. Press the Relative button to enter this information. When calculating the position of your new waypoint from an existing one, SkyDemon assumes the bearing you have entered is magnetic if you specified a VOR or true for any other type of waypoint. At the time of writing, however, this particular feature is not supported in the iPad.
Once your waypoint has been created it can be used for route planning just like any other. To delete one, open the Waypoints window, select it and press Remove. You can also select it on the map and press the delete key on your keyboard. Remember that if you plot a route via a user waypoint then delete the turning point at that waypoint, the waypoint itself will not be deleted
TIP: To delete user waypoints on the iPad swipe your finger across the box and a red Delete button will appear. Swipe again and the button will disappear.
Sharing User Waypoints
User defined waypoints can be saved to our Cloud storage facility, which means that if you have SkyDemon on your PC and iPad you do not need to manually transfer the files from one platform to another. Simply select Save to Cloud in the Waypoints window on your PC, and all of your waypoints will automatically be saved there. Then open up the Waypoints window on your iPad and select Load from Cloud from the Tools menu. This process also works in reverse, so you also have the option to save waypoints to the Cloud on your iPad and load them from the Cloud onto your PC. When you choose the Save to Cloud option all waypoints currently saved and subsequently loaded to and from the Cloud will be overwritten to avoid duplication of waypoint files.
NOTE: It is important to remember that all waypoints saved to your PC or iPad will be replaced by the ones loaded from the Cloud.
You can also share user waypoints with your friends if you're using SkyDemon on the PC. To do this, first select all the waypoints you'd like to share in the Waypoints window then press Export. You will be prompted to save the file, and this file can be sent on. To import waypoints from another source, open the Waypoints and press Import. You will be prompted to locate the source file, and the waypoints found in the file are imported and selected, so if you don't like them, you can just press Remove.
Postcode Database
We provide a file containing the UK postcode database which can be added to your SkyDemon installation enabling you to search for a specific postcode in the Find window. Once the file has been installed (see our downloads page for more details on how to do this) simply click the 'Find' button on the toolbar, or click Ctrl + F, and type in a complete postcode. SkyDemon will search through the entire waypoints database, and, unlike a normal search with a waypoint name or identifier, a result will only be produced after entering an entire postcode. Using capital letters will help speed up this search, although it's not strictly necessary.
The search result will bring up a list of nearby waypoints to choose from, or you can simply select the postcode at the top of the list to pan to that exact point on the map, marked with a yellow cross.
The postcode database can be used to create user-defined waypoints at precise locations by right-clicking that particular spot on the map and selecting 'Create Waypoint' from the menu. You might like to add your own house to the map, or any nearby landmarks. Alternatively you can use the marker to simply route via points of interest on the map.
To use the UK Postcode database on your iPad you must first download and extract the file onto your PC desktop and use iTunes to copy it across to the SkyDemon folder on your iPad. See our section on iTunes data sharing for more detailed instructions on how this is done.
Searching for waypoints on the iPad works in the same way as the PC version: just use the Find button on the toolbar to type in a complete postcode, then select the corresponding waypoint, or a nearby airfield, from the list of results.
SkyDemon's in-flight 'Direct To' feature also works with postcodes, and you can read more about this in the Navigation Documentation.
Custom Data
We include a utility with SkyDemon Plan that can be used to create your own air data for use with the product. This can be used to supplement data in existing charts. You may wish to use it to add a landing site that we do not include in the official charts, for example. To access the Data Creator, open the Setup menu and choose Create Custom Data.
The Data Creator is a graphical tool that makes it easy to create and edit the sometimes complex data that makes up a SkyDemon chart. The best way to learn to use it is to experiment with it; don't worry, you can't use it to accidentally change official chart data installed on your machine. If you are interested in using this tool to create charts for an unsupported country based on its AIP, please contact us and we can help with this. Once again, this tool is available for PC users only.
Sharing Custom Data with iPad
Unlike routes and waypoints, it is not possible at this stage to use iTunes to transfer your Custom Data folder to SkyDemon on the iPad, however there are other similar applications that do make this possible, such as i-Funbox. It's important to bear in mind that we cannot offer support on using such third-party applications.
