Weather forecast, flight planning and airspaces at once. A great extension for pilots

[pavelneuman]

Pilots will love this flight planning tool. Although Windy recently released its own route planner (Distance & planning) that has VFR chart built in, this plugin is coded specifically for pilots. It extends Windy's forecast layers with feature-rich flight planning and airspaces (Airspaces is available as a separate plugin too - see our list of Windy plugins).

Here's a short tutorial on how to use Flight Planner plugin..

Getting started

To load Flight Planner plugin, enter it's short name (fp) to www.windy.com/plugins and click Load plugin.

After plugin is loaded, you can access Flight Planner via contextual menu (right-click or long press).

Now you can use the weather picker to add a waypoint.

Or click an airport icon to add a waypoint.

You can also use the search option to add a waypoint.

Or enter coordinates in the search bar.

You can also load a flight plan, supported formats: gpx/efp or ep1 (easycockpit or easyplan).

1. You can set the altitude, airspeed and estimated time of departure for each leg. To set the time, select a single leg, by long-pressing the row.
2. Once the flightplan is completed, you can drag the aircraft icon to view the weather at the point where you will be, and at the selected time and level. The program will use the interpolator function to obtain the weather info for the current overlay.
3. For wind: the ground speed is calculated and the aircraft icon will crab.

You can also use the elevation strip at the bottom, to move the aircraft icon.

The plugin can collect the weather data for overlays that you select.

1. First select the overlays and select alert values.
2. Then click Read Wx. The program will zoom in and fly along the route to collect the weather data for each overlay. This will take a few seconds, but can take about a minute for a long route. Do not drag the map while this is happening.
3. When you now slide the aircraft icon, all the selected data will be shown in the box.

Once the Wx data have been collected, the program will calculate the corrected ETE, average ground speed and the ETE for the entire trip.

You can also drag waypoints, first click "allow drag" (1) then drag them to the new position (2) and click OK. Then "lock drag" (1) again, to prevent accidentally dragging when sliding the aircraft icon.

The plugin contains the previous airspaces plugin, airspace data is obtained from openAIP.net.

[a6644890]

Hello Pavelneuman, thanks for the tutorial. Well done, we say BEN FATTO. I saw your icon .... are you an autogyro pilot ??

[rittels]

@a6644890

Hi Thanks for using my plugin!!! Yep, I fly an autogyro.

[a6644890]

@rittels Me too, Red Baron Club in Fondi central Italy province of Latina ....
  with Autogyro airplanes also amphibians and helicopters. Sea, sun, lake ... now all blocked x covid19 ... unfortunately. Where are you??

[igor 320]

A *.GPX route from SkyDemon doesn't work. Can you fix it?
Skydemon is free you can grab a PC installer on their website (requires email registration and EU ip-address).

[Korina]

@igor-320 You have a problem with uploading a GPX file?

[igor 320]

@korina yeah, for some reason, the flight planning plugin doesn't read SkyDemon's GPX-file.

[Korina]

@igor-320 Hello, could you please send us the file at info[@]windy.com? We will check it. Thank you.

[igor 320]

@korina check your email. SkyDemon is the most popular VFR navigation app in Europe and it's compatibility with the flight planning plugin is crucial for users comfort :)

[rittels]

@igor-320

Will have a look this weekend.

[Korina]

@igor-320 Hi, as i mentioned in my email, I have tried the file and there was no problem with it. Please try again.

[igor 320]

@korina do you plan to bring up route function into the app? A simple data sync (read-only, without editing) of your planned route in a browser or a file upload option would be a good start :)

[Korina]

@igor-320 Hello, thank you for suggestion, we may consider it.

[ken.miller.fly]

Elevation issues:
Something has changed recently and now the plug app defaults to the surface elevation in the map and profile views. I've tried it in 2 different web browsers and get the same results. Attempts to reset the elevation in the flight plan or the map elevation slider does work. The map and elevation profile jumps back displaying the data for the surface, not the set elevation.

I've loaded old flight plans from November that I know that worked at that time, and they too no longer work with respect to the elevation profile, and showing / computing the information at the desired altitude.

Thanks
MK

[rittels]

@ken-miller-fly I think there is an issue with the server providing elevation data. Will let you know.

[rittels]

@ken-miller-fly

It should work now.

[ken.miller.fly]

That fixed it. Thank You!!

MK

[dnone1]

Hi everyone and Merry Xmas!

Is there a way to increase the visibility of the pressure /altitude levels and respective temperatures on the screens: I do struggle to discern them since they’re so faint.
The same with the freezing line throughout the timeline.
Thank you in advance!
Love the route planning ability by the way!

[idefix37]

@dnone1
Thank you and Happy New Year to you!
You are probably talking about this table:

[dnone1]

Indeed.

Is there a way to make FL100 etc markings more visible, change the color or make them bold?

Same with the freezing level altitude line?

Thx in advance