Search Patterns in Foreflight

Okay, thanks.  I was wondering if there was a clear winner, and I guess not.

BTW, anyone thinking about buying an iPa(i)d for a GPS, everything I've found is that the internal GPS is little more useful than an afterburner on a turtle.  For about $100, you can get a good external GPS antenna which links with Bluetooth (or a jailbroken iPa(i)d can use GPS from an Android phone).  This means that unless you want the model with the cellular connection, you can get the WiFi model and not have to pay for phone service.

The 16GB units will work, but you're going to be happier with at least 32GB.

 

BTW, anyone thinking about buying an iPa(i)d for a GPS, everything I've found is that the internal GPS is little more useful than an afterburner on a turtle.  For about $100, you can get a good external GPS antenna which links with Bluetooth

The internal GPS also sucks major battery power, disabling the internal GPS and switching to an external bluetooth GPS will give the tablet much longer battery life.

BTW, anyone thinking about buying an iPa(i)d for a GPS, everything I've found is that the internal GPS is little more useful than an afterburner on a turtle.  For about $100, you can get a good external GPS antenna which links with Bluetooth (or a jailbroken iPa(i)d can use GPS from an Android phone).  This means that unless you want the model with the cellular connection, you can get the WiFi model and not have to pay for phone service.

I bought the 16GB model with no 3G or GPS, so no cellular contract there. Instead, bought a Duel Electronics external GPS for the iPad and turned on my iPhone's WiFi hotspot. Much cheaper over time compared to buying a more expensive iPad and having a more expensive cell contract.

I bought a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 Android tablet.  I buy month-to-month 3G service from Verizon for $20/month for 1GB of data, I can start/stop service any month, there's no contract.  It works fantastic and the ability to get weather, check NOTAMS, process credit cards (I'm a CFI), check email, etc... is just perfect.  With Avilution AviationMaps as my chart/GPS/flight planner (think Foreflight but for $5/month data updates), I love it.

With Tom Ireland's okay, here is an updated Numbers spreadsheet for SAR use with Foreflight.

A 5 pt star pattern had been requested and that has been added.
The Parallel Track pattern can now be calculated for any heading.
The Expanding Square now includes both cardinal direction option and diagonal option.

Enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qbcp0ltflt9dg1k/SAR%20V03.0.numbers

Great addition but the output result appears to be a creeping line search rather than a parallel track or grid search.  The original speadsheet did a grid search.  It would be good to have both a regular grid search as well as the creeping line search as both are useful tools. 

Another useful tool would be the offset route search especially one that could search parallel to the route covering a section from point A to B out to 20 NM either side of the center line.  Basically what you already have but going parallel to the route centerline rather than across it.

I've also found the output from these speadsheets work well in the Garmin Pilot app.  The input is just a little different from ForeFlight in that you enter your departure and destination airport in the Active Flight Plan window and then paste the route coordinates in the Trip Planning window route line minus the airports.

No joy in WingX so far.

Keep up the good work as these make the flight apps very CAP useful. 

Sorry about that. You're right of course. The original Parallel Track is back in along with the Creeping Line.  I'll give some thought to the offset route. The problem there is going to be the calculation of the offset distance at the apex of each turn.

SAR V03.1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pek5k31x03or2gc/SAR%20V03.1.numbers

Let me know of any problems, bug, suggestions.

Works well!

One of my guys was playing with the flight plan share function in ForeFlight and discovered that it is basically creating a URL that, if opened in the iPad, will launch ForeFlight and enter the route without having to cut and paste.

Example: foreflightmobile://maps/search q=APT@KDTO+33N/97.90063W+33N/98W+33N/98.09937W+33.05N/98.09937W+33.05N/97.90063W+33.1N/97.90063W+33.1N/98.09937W+33.15N/98.09937W+33.15N/97.90063W+33.2N/97.90063W+33.2N/98.09937W+33.25N/98.09937W+33.25N/97.90063W+33.3N/97.90063W+33.3N/98.09937W+33.35N/98.09937W+33.35N/97.90063W+33.4N/97.90063W+33.4N/98.09937W+APT@KGLE
 
Could you add a macro button in the Numbers sheet to to build the URL and launch it?

The whole route is appended/connected or strung along with + and it seems to work with any of the formats shown on page 23 of the Foreflight Pilot's Guide.  LAT/LONGS can be entered as 33N/98.09937W, Airports are APT@xxxx = xxxx is the identifier like KDTO, VORs, Intersections and userdefined waypoints are entered as NAV@aaaa = aaaa is the name of the navaid.

If you change it to the example below it will open WingX but it won't accept the route as it seems WingX didn't implement that part of the query string.  Will try to get it to work in Garmin Pilot if we can figure out what the query string is if they even support it.
 
wingxpro7://maps/search?q=APT@KDTO+33N/97.90063W+33N/98W+33N/98.09937W+33.05N/98.09937W+33.05N/97.90063W+33.1N/97.90063W+33.1N/98.09937W+33.15N/98.09937W+33.15N/97.90063W+33.2N/97.90063W+33.2N/98.09937W+33.25N/98.09937W+33.25N/97.90063W+33.3N/97.90063W+33.3N/98.09937W+33.35N/98.09937W+33.35N/97.90063W+33.4N/97.90063W+33.4N/98.09937W+APT@KGLE

Unfortunately, the iPad version of Numbers doesn't support macros. I can work on setting up an output format that can be copied and pasted
for WingX users. Would that format be as you provided?  Would it have to include the "q="?

I need some help!
I'm setting up a Track Line Search flight planning module for Tom Ireland's SAR Worksheet but I
have no experience in either planning or flying that type of search pattern.

Since Numbers for iPad does not support macros, I can't set up a looping routine with variables,
so each waypoint has to be separately calculated.

What I need are suggestions as to how many turn points to include in the missing targets presumed
route and how many parallel tracks to include per sortie.

I realize the answer is more likely a function of time, distance to be covered, available fuel, crew
fatigue, bladder factor and any number of other variable.  I'm looking more for real world average
numbers based on experience, but all suggestions would be appreciated.

I've been playing around with this, maybe I'm missing something obvious, is there any way to run the parallel track search to the south rather than north? It almost looks like you could click the cells to toggle the direction, but I'm not figuring it out.

Thanks.

Try entering the Spacing as a negative number. If that doesn't do it, let me know.  BTW I'm going to post an update shortly that adds a Route Search module. It's being beta tested right now

Here is the latest update to the SAR Worksheet.
A Route Search module is now included and Degree converters have been modified to adjust for rounding errors.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qn1nevrv2k9ipaw/SAR%20V04.1.numbers

Enjoy.

In response to several requests various changes and additions have been made to the SAR worksheet.  Here is the latest revision:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yg31ucwbs66dwx/SAR%20V04.2.numbers
Hope it is helpful.