SAR Patterns

[zaph...@gmail.com]

A nice feature to add would be search patterns (expanding square, grid, sector, etc.) that we use in Civil Air Patrol. While coding this in Avare would take a bit of work, a quick and dirty approach would be to permit importing route files (e.g. kml format). There are several other desktop apps that can build the search patterns, which could then be imported into Avare and displayed as a flight plan.
Dr.T

[Zubair Khan]

There is another request on this:

The US Civil Air Patrol (CAP) makes use of the SAR (Search and Rescue) mode of the Garmin Apollo GX55 GPS.

I have searched your public forum for references to 'SAR', and haven't come across other requests like what follows...

I think would be useful to many CAP members if Avare were to create a US SAR plugin (packaged akin to the External I/O Plugin) to generate pre-flight planning waypoints as Avare Flight Plans for one or more of the standard SAR search patterns:
 - 'creeping line' search
 - 'parallel line' search
 - 'expanding square' search
 - 'route' search

o Inputs to be
  - flight plan name (to be created)
  - type of pattern (one of the above)
[non-route search]
  - pattern entry point (pre-selected Lat/Lon, manual input Lat/Lon, or SAR grid reference (e.g. '299B1' of selected grid region **)
  - search direction orientation (1 to 360 degrees true)
  - line spacing  (typically 1 NM (to 0.1 resolution))
  - line extent (typically 10 NM (to 0.1 resolution)) or longest leg for expanding square
[route search]
  - existing Avare plan name as the base route (select available, rather than have to type the name in)
  - route offset (left or right in NM (to 0.1 resolution))

o Output to be an inactive flight plan in the existing Avare plan feature.

There is likely enough information in the public domain about the technical nature of each of these search patterns for Avare developers to find. In fact, I'm attaching an introductory powerpoint slide deck I located online searching for "GX-55 SAR". It covers the above standard SAR patterns starting around slide 34, as well as an introduction to the grid reference system in the GX55 ***.

I believe this would be both beneficial to CAP, and an intellectually interesting task for Avare developers! It would likely need to contain a new database for Grid Reference mapping to Lat/Lon, though grid-reference capability certainly could be added later during phased upgrades to such a plugin.

Pre-flight display of these SAR patterns on Avare would be a very nice sortie planning capability.

Once these plans are generated, having Avare as a backup in-flight verification/sanity check of actual vs planned (via the existing Flight Plan capability) would be an added benefit.

Wrapping up... I am not a pilot. However I've been aboard during a few of these search patterns, flying low and slow, sometimes in turbulence and above challenging terrain. There is understandable pressure in such situations to 'get it right' safely, so any pre-planning tool to make SAR execution easier is very appreciated.

My primary reason for suggesting delivery of such a feature in the form of a plugin is that I expect the interest for this by the GA community would be quite limited.

The disclaimers that come with the use of Avare are well understood and well appreciated. But what a great app!

I do have a disclaimer or two of my own: The above reflects my personal interest, and in no way reflects any official position or request of the Civil Air Patrol. Any errors or omissions in representation of the current 'state of the art' are my own, and no others... and expect some!

Notes:

(**  US Supplement to the International Aviation and Maritime Search And Rescue Manual (IAMSAR), Grid Area Reference System (GARS))
(*** one of several systems, ref: GEOTRANS software from NGA used in various other GPS receivers to do datum/coordinate system translation)

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 3:04 PM, <zaph...@gmail.com> wrote:

A nice feature to add would be search patterns (expanding square, grid, sector, etc.) that we use in Civil Air Patrol. While coding this in Avare would take a bit of work, a quick and dirty approach would be to permit importing route files (e.g. kml format). There are several other desktop apps that can build the search patterns, which could then be imported into Avare and displayed as a flight plan.
Dr.T

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Zubair Khan
apps4av.com
zk4u.blogspot.com
Sudbury, MA 01776

[zaph...@gmail.com]

Yes, I think that captures it. ForeFlight for the iPad does these sort of things, but there is no comparable app for Android.

http://blog.foreflight.com/2013/09/17/foreflight-adds-annotations-comprehensive-search-rescue-functionality/

However, just being able to import a route file (flight plan) would seem to require only a little bit of coding, and one could use an external application such as Google Earth to develop the search pattern on a laptop.

DrT

[John Wiley]

> - 'creeping line' search
> - 'parallel line' search
> - 'expanding square' search
> - 'route' search

...

> interest for this by the GA community would be quite limited.

Some parts of the work could find wider application. From my own
experience with donating aerial photos of research areas for local
scientists and volunteers, it seems likely that a KML shape import
feature in Avare could have other uses. For example, doing my most
recent photos of an indigenous plant re-establishment plot. A small
section of coastal scrub was fenced off, cleared of invasive non-native
species, replanted and monitored. By comparing my aerials of before and
during the test period, scientists can more easily monitor the big
picture changes. Having a KML outline during the flight would help me,
and scientists could use the same KML for their work.

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 4:04 PM, Zubair Khan <gove...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think would be useful to many CAP members if Avare were to create a US SAR
> plugin (packaged akin to the External I/O Plugin) to generate pre-flight
> planning waypoints as Avare Flight Plans for one or more of the standard SAR
> search patterns:

Actually, some kind of standard API for flight planning would be
useful for many other situations as well, such as importing plans
created by other software, saving/loading from files, maybe
interfacing to a Sim or navigation hardware, and so on.

Rich

[Peter Gustafson]

Rich. Great idea!