Enroute in practice

A few years ago, I introduced Enroute¹ and was immediately excited.² For the first time, there is an ‘uncluttered’ app for both (Linux) desktop and mobile devices for VFR navigation and planning. And it’s free and open source and covers all of Europe. A lot of progress has been made since then and I have been able to thoroughly test the operational capability of Enroute on various trips. I would like to share one of these trips here.

News from Enroute

In 2022, I criticised the restrictive handling of charts and flight information in Germany, but the situation has improved significantly. The DFS portal for general aviation³ not only offers an AIP with all approach charts (VAC) of German aerodromes,⁴ it also provides a usable web API for programming retrieval for third-party applications. Bravo!

One such third-party software is the freely available but unfortunately proprietary AIPBrowserDE.⁵ It can be used to create trip kits with the official charts. Enroute can import this data and display it geo-referenced inside the moving map.⁶ Further improvements in handling and information processing complete the user experience. The font sizes for different end devices can be freely selected and weather information (e.g. density height) derived from the METAR data is shown aswell.

Real World Experience

The aim of the mission in winter 2022 was to transfer a sports aircraft repaired by the manufacturer to its owner. From Prievidza in Slovakia to Münster in Germany. A 900 km crossborder trip across Europe through Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany. Doesn’t sound like much of a challenge. In recent years I have travelled more longer and further in the Scandinavian Wilderness as far as the North Cape⁷.

Screenshot of Enroute with the air zones of the Czech Republic

The season is the highlight of this mission. Deepest winter with snow and frost. The effective flying time is reduced to just a few hours on the shorter winter days, as the flight is flown in VFR visual flight conditions. At the same time, you have to plan more time for everything and pay attention to things which usually have no relevance in summer. There were a few challenges and risks:

• Short preparation time. Orders for transfers usually come at short notice and quite spontaneously. After the phone call the day before the scheduled flight, I immediately took a regular commercial flight to Vienna and then an overnight taxi ride from Vienna to Prievidza in Slovakia. Arrival at the hotel was shortly before midnight. Takeover of the aircraft was already scheduled for 9.00 am. There was not much time for planning, MET and NOTAM briefing and flight plan submission, which was done shortly after getting up from the hotel room.

• The LZPE take-off site is less than an hour’s flight from the western border of Ukraine and there were numerous NOTAMS and active restricted military areas along the route to be observed.

• Flying through the controlled airspace around the metropolis of Prague in the Czech Republic.

• Finding a suitable airfield for refuelling in Germany. Not an easy task on this day due to icy runways. The original planning was to use the EDCJ Chemnitz Jahnsdorf airfield. Shortly after take-off it was clear that it was closed and I had to switch to my alternate EDAC Leipzig.

Flight planning in Enroute on the laptop in the hotel room

The integration of the European maps in Enroute is done in an exemplary manner. All relevant airspaces can be loaded quickly on the Linux notebook, iOS tablet and Android navigation smartphone. Enroute’s ability to hold everything completely offline should not be underestimated. Only a sync via WebDAV (with your own Nextcloud) would be desirable.

This is the aircraft to be transferred, shortly before take-off in wintry Prievidza

Thanks to the preparation, the flight itself was unproblematic and pure relaxation. At FL70, I was able to enjoy the Slovakian and Czech winter wonderland from above. There was a bit of work due to the frequent frequency transitions and the separation of traffic around Prague. On Decent, light ice formation on the wings close to the hazy ground added some excitement.

Flightdeck on FL70 over Czech Republic

The schedule included a generous time reserve for refuelling, which I had to make full use of. In the freezing cold, the fully refuelled plane refused to start. But the problem was quickly solved and I was able to catch up on the delay in flight. As planned, I landed in EDLT Münster on time with the last remaining sunshine.

Winter wonderland landscape during the flight

Thanks to Enroute, even short-notice flights across Europe can be reliably planned and carried out. It runs on my iOS tablet as well as on an Android smartphone that I only use for navigation as a backup. In my cross-checks with the available DWD online services and the aircraft’s built-in Garmin avionics, I couldn’t find any deviations or errors. On none of my flights in the last two years. For me as a VFR pilot, Enroute is a fully-fledged replacement for commercial software. Kudos!

I would like to make three suggestions to the Enroute development team, who maintain this wonderful piece of software in their spare time:

• A sync function of plans via WebDAV with one’s own Nextcloud
• Hosting the project at Codeberg⁸ and not at Microsoft GitHub.
• An installation package for F-Droid

Yours,
Tomas Jakobs