Weather at your time over each leg, a side-on route profile and FLARM traffic. Enough to fill a whole debrief.

This update builds on the October releases bringing together a large run of planning, weather, traffic, community and club work from the development branch, along with a good deal of platform investment.

🌦️ Weather where and when you will be there

The planner now looks at the weather at the time you expect to pass each point, not just the weather now.

• Route profile weather: the route profile shows cloud layers, freezing level, icing band, carburettor icing by height, precipitation by type, visibility and head or tailwind by level, each at your estimated time over that point. A departure-time slider moves the whole picture (F1748).
• Cloud squeeze: the VMC band is drawn against the legal minimum height, so you can see where the gap between cloud and the legal floor closes (F1748).
• Conditions per leg and aerodrome: likely precipitation, cloud, wind and gust, crosswind on the probable runway, planning QNH and density altitude, all labelled as forecast. Planning outputs now reach 144 hours ahead, with an outlook label beyond 72 hours (F1650, F1651).
• Ceiling, cloud and visibility bands: these appear on planner legs and aerodromes, with the latest aerodrome report taking precedence over the forecast (F1653).
• Reports at your time of arrival: METAR and TAF are decoded more faithfully, with the TAF read at your ETA for departure, destination and every alternate. Report age shows amber at 60 minutes and red at 90. Runway wind components, runway state and a nearby station within 20 nm are shown where they apply (F1756, F1007).
• Your own minimums: forecast weather is compared with your personal minimums on the plate, the map rings and the briefing. Red means below minimums and amber means marginal. If no conflict is found, nothing is coloured and we never say “clear” (F1680, F1756).
• Weather alerts: worse conditions, special reports, a TAF outside your limits at your ETA and windshear now appear in the alert band and alert box, as visual alerts (F1756).
• VFR minima: UK and EASA minima follow SERA.5001, and the METAR VFR check uses the 1,500 ft aerodrome ceiling (F80, F79).
• Icing and convection: these now reach beyond 48 hours, and the soaring forecast shows convective inhibition (F1686, F1653).
• Winds aloft: the briefing scrubber runs to the last forecast frame your region has, up to 144 hours over Europe. The planner map’s barbs are valid at your planned departure (F1657).
• Soaring forecast: a new screen shows RASP-style thermal strength, thermal top, cumulus potential and a per-leg thermal indicator (F1653, F1652).
• NOTAM limits: flight levels are converted correctly and limits are rounded outward, on the safe side (F08).

🛩️ Traffic and airspace

• FLARM input: FLARM traffic over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi now appears alongside ADS-B. A FLARM unit’s own collision alarm raises the target to at least a threat. Stealth targets get no invented track, speed or climb (F1765).
• Clearer traffic: a clear target’s colour tells you whether it is above, level or below you. A target that has gone quiet looks distinctly lost, with its age shown. Labels sit away from your own aircraft (F1766).
• Climb cue for soaring pilots: each soaring target shows its 30-second average climb, so you can see who is climbing and how well (F1768).
• Labels in your units: map labels follow your units preference, and relative height is a signed figure rounded to a sensible step (F1767).
• One altitude datum: traffic altitude and your own GPS altitude now sit on the same datum, so vertical separation stays right on a low-pressure day (F1520, F401).
• Traffic that goes quiet: a target freezes at its coast horizon instead of drifting on, and turn rate and trails use one clock (F917).
• Warned airspace stands out: the zone you are being warned about is highlighted on the map, with an entry arrow and a pill showing hidden airspace (F1226).
• Reach fan: the fan has its own switch in the Safety menu, and gliders start with a glider bank angle (F542, F1162).

🗺️ Planning and the PLOG

• Route profile: the planner and the top of the PLOG show a side-on profile with terrain, the legal band, active airspace, obstacles, NOTAM areas and planned altitude. You can pinch to zoom, and drag a leg to set its altitude (F1747).
• Decision layers: thermals, glide-reach spans, the best altitude for each leg and an avoid-band with its reason (F1749).
• PLOG PDF and debrief: a PDF with profile strips at a scale you choose. After the flight, the debrief shows your flown track side-on against the plan (F1751).
• PLOG on one page: each leg’s heading, distance, time, altitude, wind, groundspeed and fuel, with totals, the alternate leg and a landscape table. It shows the speed and altitude in use, and says where to climb and descend (F1639).
• Legal minimum per leg: the SERA.5005 minimum height for each leg appears in the plan check and the PLOG (F1645).
• One ranked hazard list per leg: airspace, NOTAMs, icing, cloud, convective weather, low groundspeed, fuel and terrain, ordered by severity. An empty list never reads “clear” (F1686).
• Best cruise altitude: fastest and lowest-fuel altitudes for your route, filtered by your aircraft’s airspace rules (F1677).
• Routing preference: choose Shortest, Balanced or Easiest. Easiest weighs the effort of controlled-zone entries and level changes (F1687).
• Each leg at its own altitude: the planner and the plan check use each leg’s own cruise figures (F1299).
• Aerodrome reports at ETA: report columns follow your estimated arrival (F1748).
• Larger plans: plans of up to 1,000 waypoints are supported (F04).
• Great-circle profile: the altitude profile samples along the great circle, with distances on the WGS84 ellipsoid (F21).

🪂 In the cockpit

• Glide you can trust: a quadratic polar with reference mass, water ballast, pilot mass and a contamination setting. Speed to fly, outlanding margins and the reach fan use the full wind triangle and wind by height (F1675).
• Vario: the total-energy vario uses airspeed. Netto is calculated from estimated airspeed and local circling wind. Sink tone modes are available, and thermal rings are drawn on the vario map (F730, F1676, F1678).
• Engine runs: engine-run detection reads engine noise and motor-on-pilot data from imported IGC files, and gliders and motor gliders can record runs for competition scoring (F1679).
• Smoother moving map: predictive own-ship motion and an adaptive 30 FPS map (F1525).
• Your flight screens: a flight screen studio lets you build your own in-flight screens from rows, with a locked Vela page for each aircraft class (F1631).
• In-flight alerts and details: one alert box on the modern Fly screen, with the most urgent alert first. The info panel is restyled to read at a glance (F1566, F1659).
• Hill shading: one switch controls hill shading (F915).
• Search and rescue: time reminders and an end-of-flight prompt where your region asks for one (F1685).

👥 Sky Hub and your community

• One flight page: every flight opens on one page with map, height chart, key figures and actions. Connections’ flights can be replayed (F1605).
• My flying: your season, personal bests and flights by month (F1606).
• Add a flight: import IGC or GPX tracks, several at once, or log by hand (F1607).
• Home, flying first: a month strip, three clear actions and a richer feed card (F1608).
• Likes and comments: comments come with reporting, muting, blocking and a per-flight off switch (F1610, F1611).
• Activity: a list of connection requests, likes, comments and replies, with an unread count (F1612).
• Share card: share a styled image of a flight with the track, height chart and key figures (F1534).
• Who sees what: one audience switch everywhere and a Sharing and privacy section. You can hide where you start and finish within 500 m, 1 km or 2 km (F1609, F1604).
• Pilot pages: share your stats if you choose, and see a connection’s flying. Search, mute and remove from your connections list (F1681, F1682, F1683).

🏡 Clubs and the web app

• Club management: members and approvals, invites, a club finder, a noticeboard, a fleet board and aircraft booking, with rules the club admin sets (F1664, F1665, F1739, F1738, F1735, F1737, F1754).
• Flying day: check-in, the flying list and the launch log work offline at the launch point, and sync when you are back in signal (F1668, F1669).
• Hangar and airworthiness: one answer to “can it fly”, defects reported from the field with photos, and launch-based limits (F1695, F1697, F1700).
• Training: ratings, syllabi, lessons, sign-offs and instructor assignments (F1708, F1710, F1711).
• Web app: the web version now follows the phone’s layout, with a planner, map, hangar, flights and replay, profile, and sign-in with an email code (F1694, F1701, F1722, F1732, F1706, F1753).

🛠️ Under the hood: built to carry more

• Shared native data stores: terrain, ridge lift, land cover, obstacles, wires and airspace are now each held once on the device and read by every part of the app. This frees memory, so the app can keep more 30 m terrain cells around you (F1727, F1744, F1745, F1746, F1794, F1755).
• Wire hazard: wire hazard checks now complete in a single pass (F1743).
• NOTAM refresh: the activation refresh now reads 17,679 NOTAMs instead of 103,564, and its read time fell from 19.1 to 3.7 seconds (F1647).
• External weather requests: a wave route now makes 12 external weather requests instead of 36 (F1648).
• Weather platform: it publishes more weather products and a longer forecast range. The soaring forecast loads in under 2 seconds (F1649, F1651, F1653).
• Request budgets: every outside data source now has a managed request budget, so we stay within each provider’s limits (F1725).
• Rain radar: radar tiles are cached at the edge, so they reach you sooner (F1760).
• Memory limits: server-side requests are bounded so one heavy request cannot starve others (F1577).
• Performance suite: a repeatable performance suite measures our key routes against agreed targets (F1658).
• Monitoring: monitoring covers supplier calls, latency and rate limits, and the office disaster-recovery site (F1655, F1578).

🔒 Security

• Dependencies: we’ve applied security updates across the app, glasses and web dependencies, part of our continuing work to keep the platform current (F1494).
• Data protection: we’ve added further hardening around how app data is served and protected (F1684).

🔭 Coming next

• Ridge lift on the route profile, with the forecast rating at your time of passage (F1769).
• A CAP 393 fuel plan that flies each leg at its own cruise figures (F1770).
• Soaring and low-level winds forecasts on our own weather platform (F1366).
• Live engine-run detection on the phone (F1688).