5.2 Navigation data
FlightZoomer emulates the structure and elements of a real air space. There is a navigation database, consisting of waypoints, navigation aids (radio beacons), airports and runways, which can freely be defined wherever you like.
Navigation data is used to fly the aircraft in a controlled manner. There are several possibilities: create and fly routes that follow waypoints, capture simulated radials of radio beacons or follow the glideslopes of a simulated ILS (Instrument Landing System).
The system does not need real radio equipment to implement radio beacons or ILS-approaches. A radio navigation aid is nothing but a data record, which consists typically of an ID, a location and a frequency. If the simulated navigation receiver in the Cockpit-app (on the NAV RAD page of the FMS) is tuned to the frequency of a navigation aid, the cockpit displays will simulate the appearance of the real instruments based on the aircraft location, the navigation aid location and some other parameters.
The navigation database is maintained with the Cockpit-app. The application has convenient features to create or modify navigation elements.
Creating navigation aids and airports is one of the preparation steps. With the present version it is not possible to change the airspace structure (e.g. the number and the location of navigation aids) during the flight. This reflects full scale operations, where the air space configuration and definition are also done mostly somewhere in an office and not in the cockpit while flying. What pilots later in the cockpit do before performing a flight, is entering the planned route dynamically (using the predefined navigation aids) or load a predefined company route (both methods are supported by FlightZoomer). Only in rare cases routes would be modified during the flight by defining waypoints on the fly (this not supported by FlightZoomer).
The navigation database consists of text files (ending with *.txt) which are stored in the following two folders:
|
|
What |
Folder |
|
1 |
Navigation aids |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\ 63417ModelInstruments.FlightZoomerCockpit3_<code>\ RoamingState\Navigation.Navaids\NavaidsStorage.txt |
|
2 |
Airports (and runways) |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\ 63417ModelInstruments.FlightZoomerCockpit3_<code>\ RoamingState\Navigation.Airports\AirportsStorage.txt |
Navigation data is stored in the two text files named NavaidsStorage.txt and AirportsStorage.txt. Records can be imported or exported by manually copying records to or from these text files.
As these files are stored in the roaming folder of the Cockpit app’s dedicated storage area, the navigation database is automatically replicated between any device, on which the Cockpit app is installed and operated.