Flight Plan

Flight Plan

The flight plan page is where you build, edit, store and fly a route on the device. On the bench panel it is the Flight Plan tab of the right-hand tab column. The instrument type is flight_plan.

pyEFIS is the screen. fix-gateway's flight-plan engine flies the plan: it sequences the legs, works out the course and deviation the HSI shows, and handles Direct-To, holds and suspend. Every edit you make here is sent to the engine at once. How the engine works is in the fix-gateway wiki: Flight Plan Engine.

Reading the page

Header, first line: the plan's name (or FIRST-LAST, or NO FLT PLAN), a state badge in orange, and the remaining distance and time in cyan.

Badge	Means
LEG	Flying the plan leg by leg.
DIRECT	Flying a Direct-To.
SUSP	Sequencing is suspended: the engine holds the current leg and does not move on.

Header, second line, in green: the approach state, APR ARM, LNAV or MISSED. A red LOI means the GPS has lost integrity.

The list. Each row is a waypoint: a symbol for its type, the ident and any procedure role (IAF, FAF, MAP, MAHP), then the columns.

Column	Shows
DTK	The magnetic course of the leg into this waypoint.
DIS	The leg's length, in whole nm.
CUM	The distance from the start, in whole nm.
ETE	Time to go, on the active row only. Not shown by default.

The active leg is magenta, the legs flown are grey, and the legs ahead white. An airway is one row: its ident in bold, entry → exit, and the number of fixes and the highest minimum en-route altitude. While you fly along it, the row opens to show the fix you came from, the one you are going to, the next, and how many more.

The list scrolls by drag, fling or wheel, and follows the active leg unless you scrolled it in the last 20 seconds.

A strip reading SUSP AT MAP, with an orange Fly the missed button, appears when the plan is suspended at the missed approach point. The button starts the missed approach.

Building a plan

1. Touch ADD WPT. The entry page opens.
2. Type the ident on the keypad, or pick it from a tab: Recent, Nearest, FPL (waypoints already in the plan) or User. As you type, the best match is completed in cyan, and the five best suggestions show above the tabs. Each row in a tab gives the bearing and distance from the point where it would go.
3. Touch ENT. The waypoint is added to the end of the plan and sent to the engine, and the page goes back to the list. NO MATCHES means nothing has that ident; DUPLICATE FOUND gives you a list to pick from.
4. Repeat. Touch X to leave the entry page without adding anything.

There is no separate step to activate a plan: each change is sent as you make it.

If the engine refuses a change, a red strip above the soft keys reads EDIT REFUSED: and the engine's reason in plain words, naming the waypoint (for example ARC AT RFFIX: NO TURN DIRECTION), or NO ENGINE ANSWER when none comes within 2 seconds, and the list goes back to the plan the engine is flying. Edit draft brings the refused route back to correct; the strip then reads DRAFT - NOT LOADED: and its button, Flown plan, goes back. The draft ends when the engine loads a change. This needs an engine that publishes FPLLDSEQ.

Touch a waypoint row for its menu:

Item	What it does
Insert Before / Insert After	Open the entry page to add a waypoint there.
Load Airway	Pick an airway through this waypoint, then its exit fix. The whole airway is inserted.
Activate Leg	Fly the leg to this waypoint now.
Direct To	Fly direct to this waypoint.
WPT Info	Its details: position, elevation, frequency, bearing and distance from you.
Set Role	Mark it IAF, FAF, MAP, MAHP or none.
Remove	Take it out of the plan.

Touch an airway row for Change Exit, Change Entry, Show Fixes (each fix with its course, distance and MEA), Activate to its entry, and Remove Airway.

A plan holds up to 100 waypoints. An airway that will not fit is refused with ROUTE FULL.

The page does not load departures, arrivals or approaches yet. A procedure reaches the engine only as a route written to it from elsewhere; that is how the approach in the picture at the top was loaded.

Direct-To

Touch DIRECT TO, choose the destination on one of three tabs, and touch ACTIVATE:

• Waypoint: type an ident.
• FPL: a waypoint in the plan.
• NRST APT: the nearest airports, with bearing, distance and longest runway.

While a Direct-To is active the button reads REMOVE, in red, and cancels it. With nothing chosen, SELECT A WAYPOINT reminds you.

On a panel with a knob, pushing it on the plain list opens Direct-To with the active waypoint already chosen, so a second push flies direct to it.

You can also go direct from the map: touch the waypoint there and choose DIRECT TO on its banner. See Moving Map.

The menu

Item	What it does
Invert	Reverse the plan.
Store	Save it to the catalog.
Clear	Empty the plan, after a confirmation.
Suspend / Resume	Stop or restart sequencing. At the missed approach point, Resume reads Fly the missed.
CDI Scale	Step the HSI's full-scale deflection through 0.3, 1.0 and 2.0 nm and back to AUTO, which scales by phase of flight. See The HSI.
Delete	Delete the plan, after a confirmation.

Confirmations put Yes in red and No in green, and the knob starts on No.

Stored plans: the catalog

CATALOG lists the routes saved on the device, newest first: name, distance to the first waypoint, number of waypoints and any comment. A lock marks a route that is managed for you; it cannot be edited or deleted here.

Touch a route for Activate, Invert & Activate, Edit (load it without flying it), Copy and Delete. NEW starts a new plan, asking first if the current one has unsaved edits; DELETE ALL removes every unlocked route.

Routes live in <flightplan_dir>/routes/ as JSON files, beside user_waypoints.json and recent.json. With no directory set, the catalog cannot store, and the Recent and User tabs are empty.

User waypoints

Make your own waypoint from the entry page's User tab (+ CREATE USER WAYPOINT), or from the map's CREATE WPT, which fills in the position you touched. You are asked for an ident (blank picks one), a comment, and the latitude and longitude. The waypoint is saved with the plans and shows on the map as a filled diamond when it is in the plan. Open it with WPT Info to edit or delete it.

The knob and a keyboard

• Knob: turning moves an orange outline through the same targets you can touch. In an ident field, turning steps the character through A-Z, 0-9 and space, and a push moves to the next character, or accepts on a blank. With an outer ring, the ring moves the cursor and a push always accepts. A long push (600 ms) goes back.
• Keyboard (with Physical keyboard on): type the ident, Backspace to delete, Enter to accept, Escape to cancel, Up and Down through the suggestions, Tab through the tabs.

The nav status line

A panel can carry a one-line summary of the plan, the nav_status instrument. The bench panel does not have one.

It reads [BADGE] FROM > TO > NEXT distance time PHASE:

• The badge is LEG (white), DIRECT (magenta) or SUSP (yellow). With no plan there is no badge and the idents show as ____.
• The waypoint you are flying to is magenta.
• Distance is in nm; time is H:MM, or a grey --:-- when it is unknown.
• The phase is shown as fix-gateway publishes it (ENR, TERM, LNAV and so on) in green, and LOI in yellow.
• A red XXX replaces a failed field; the whole line greys when the plan state is stale.

Touching it opens the flight plan page.

Customizing

In the configurator

Flight Plan

Option	Default	Bench	What it does
Flight plan directory (flightplan_dir)		~/makerplane/pyefis/flightplans	Where routes and user waypoints are kept.
Airport db path (nasr_db_path)		the installed pack	For idents, Nearest and NRST APT.
Navaid db path (navaid_db_path)		the installed pack	For navaid and fix idents, and airways.
Procedures db path (procedures_db_path)		the installed pack
Columns (columns)	DTK,DIS,CUM		Any of DTK, DIS, CUM, ETE, ETA. ETA is accepted but left blank today.
On-screen keypad (keypad)	on
Physical keyboard (keyboard)	off	on
Default page (default_page)	fpl		entry opens on the entry page.
List row height (row_height_mm)	14 mm		Taller rows are easier to touch; shorter ones show more legs. Needs the screen size set right.
Active / future / past leg colour	#ff00ff / #ffffff / #808080
HMI group (hmi_group)			The name screen buttons use to open this page.

On a panel with a knob, give it an encoder_order to put it in the knob's order.

Nav Status

Option	Default	What it does
Show distance / Show ETE / Show phase	on
Tap screen (tap_screen)		Screen to show before opening the flight plan page; blank stays put.
HMI group (hmi_group)		Which flight plan page a tap opens.
Active waypoint colour / Text colour	#ff00ff / #ffffff

In YAML

From the bench panel:

- type: flight_plan
  options:
    flightplan_dir: ~/makerplane/pyefis/flightplans
    nasr_db_path: /data/makerplane-data/navdata/current/airports.sqlite
    navaid_db_path: /data/makerplane-data/navaids/current/navaids.sqlite
    procedures_db_path: /data/makerplane-data/procedures/current/procedures.sqlite
    keyboard: true
    encoder_order: 1

A screen button can open the page with the action flightplan page (fpl, dto or catalog), or start a Direct-To with flightplan direct to <ident>.

Feeding it

The page needs fix-gateway's flight-plan engine. It writes the whole route (FPL1ID..., FPLCOUNT, FPLNAME, then FPLSEQ last) on every edit, the Direct-To target (DTOID, DTOLAT, DTOLON, DTOTYPE), and commands to FPLCMD: ACT, DTO, DTOX, SUSP, RESUME and SCALE. It reads the engine's state back (FPLSTATE, FPLACTLEG, FPLAPR, FPLINTEG, FPLREMDIS, FPLREMETE, WPETE, FPLSUSPMAP, FPLLDSEQ, FPLMSG). Without the engine's keys the page shows the plan read-only, with FPL: GATEWAY KEYS MISSING in red. See FIX Database Keys.

See also

• Moving Map
• The HSI
• Flight Plan Engine (fix-gateway wiki)