[ACARS] Air Nav 4 - Feedback Invitation

[Jacob Struben]

Hello all,

Mike's point about the database also applies to the AirNav ACARS
Decoder, and may well apply to AirNav Lite and the Selcal Decoder from
the same stable.  There is no way of updating the database other than
doing it one-by-one, manually.

See my review of ANAD at
http://www.acarsonline.co.uk/Reviews/ANAD/ANAD10.HTM (conclusions at the
bottom of the page especially).

Cheers,

Jacob
-----------------------------------------
Jacob Struben
Location: Galway, Ireland (N05316 W00903)

Mike wrote:
> 
> From: acars@mailman.qth.net
> 
> Date: 16 April 2002 15:30:22
> 
> To: ACARS Group
> 
> Subject: [ACARS] Air Nav 4 - Feedback Invitation
> 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I have provided the following feedback to the Airnav 4 team on the limited
> 
> use I have so far made of the product. I now invite your comments if you so
> 
> wish but also request that you CC Airnav so they can get a handle on user
> 
> feedback.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am sure that this product was well "beta" tested on a range of computers
> 
> but feel that some user feedback on the released product may be warranted
> 
> given some of the well documented problems with its predecessor. I have held
> 
> of ordering Airnav 4 based on my experience with, and problems encountered
> 
> with Airnav 3, a summary of my thoughts and findings follow:
> 
> a. I own a computer that lives in room with plenty of daylight and find the
> 
> colours chosen for the map do not show up well at all in daylight. In Airnav
> 
> 3 there was a utility to change the colours but in version 4 this seems to
> 
> have either been missed by the developers or I cannot find the tool for
> 
> changing the colours. Is this meant to be?
> 
> b. I have the Airnav Selcal Decoder running on one soundcard and the Airnav
> 
> ACARS Decoder running on a second sound card, which seems to be working OK
> 
> but when I try to interface the Selcal decoder with Airnav 4 it doesn't work
> 
> I have removed the ACARS decoder and runn the Selcal decoder on bothe sound
> 
> cards but still the Airnav 4 interface does not recognise the Selcal decoder
> 
> I cannot integrate the selcal decoder into Airnav 4.
> 
> c. Airnav 3 had a utility to automatically plot the proposed route of an
> 
> aircraft if two or more waypoints were entered. This does not happen now in
> 
> Airnav 4 causing additional work to find out the advancing track of an
> 
> aircraft. Again, is this missing on purpose?
> 
> d. On ocassions during the 30 minutes trial period. opening up the Help tool
> 
> slows down the overall processes running on the computer until the computer
> 
> freezes and a reboot is required. This may be because I am trying to do too
> 
> much within the limited time but I don't think it shoul crash my system!
> 
> e. When running the acars interface to the Airnav ACARS decoder, position
> 
> reports being reported by aircraft are displayed on the map but no aircraft
> 
> label can be found. There is no effect when I try to Show/Hide Label Details
> 
> I cannot get the details of the flight displayed on the map.
> 
> f. In the Flight Management Mode there is no Flight Number box to enter
> 
> flight number details, therefore I cannot manually create a flight unless I
> 
> do so in a Terminal Mode window.
> 
> g. Someone has omitted the South West Pacific (SWP) HF frequencies from the
> 
> list!
> 
> h. There appears to be no speed indications anywhere for a flight. In Airnav
> 
> 3 this feature displayed in the Flight Management mode was really useful to
> 
> confirm that the times heard from listening to a HF position report were
> 
> entered into Airnav correctly by checking that the speed was something
> 
> realistic.
> 
> g. On one of my computers running Windows XP Airnav 4 will not download data
> 
> from the internet.
> 
> The things I like about Airnav 4 are:
> 
> a. the dynamic map,
> 
> b. the display of waypoints, airports and flight routes, although the
> 
> program crashed when I displayed the flight routes and zoomed out,
> 
> The things I hate about Airnav 4 are:
> 
> a. the database still sucks!!!! I cannot think of a more restricted, least
> 
> accessible database known to aviation enthusiasts. The concept of only being
> 
> able to edit a single entity is really outdated. I want to be able to remove
> 
> hundreds of records from my Airnav database to speed up performance, tailor
> 
> the system to my needs and have control over which database tools I use for
> 
> the job. As an example, the SW Pacific airlines and aircraft are not
> 
> particularly up to date so the add 8 Boeing 737s to the Air New Zealand
> 
> fleet in the Airnav database I have to do this one by one. If I could use MS
> 
> Access or a text delimited database I could block copy or cut and paste
> 
> repetitive data to ease the method of updating. The same goes for deleting
> 
> records, why can I not select 20 records and delete them without having to
> 
> do it one by one? The databse is the one BIG let down that won't sell Airnav
> 
> 4 to me. I have expressed my dislike before on the database issue but it
> 
> sounds like my voice hasn't been heard (and I am sure others feel the same
> 
> way) and cheap and nasty solution has been used.
> 
> The product has been run with varying levels of reliabilty over the 30
> 
> minute trial period on the following two computers:
> 
> Pentium 2 300MHz 256 Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, trial versions of the Airnav
> 
> Selcal and ACARS decoders.
> 
> Pentium 4 1.6 GHz 256 Mb RAM, Widows XP, Airnav 4 standalone for internet
> 
> flight tracking (see above).
> 
> I am sorry but I will not pay for another Airnav despite it's appealing
> 
> nature and specky GUI.
> 
> Regards and good luck with the support issues as they arise.
> 
> Mike Jackson