Frequently Asked Questions

I don't live in Sydney. Can I change the default timezone?

Yes you can. In fact you can change a whole lot of defaults about new waypoints. Go to the preferences and click the waypoint editor tab. You can select the default timezone, hemisphere (default settings for north or south and east or west) and country. Have a look through the preferences dialog and see what other preferences you might like to change.

It won't let me drag a waypoint to the flight plan table!

Do you have a departure waypoint set? Before the main table will accept dropped waypoints, you have to drop a waypoint into the departure box in the top left of the flight plan document window.

The sunrise and sunset times don't match the newspaper.

Your newspaper probably uses an azimuth of the sun of 90.5° to define sunrise or sunset. This is the point at which the top of the sun is just below the horizon. As you know there is plenty of light available for flying or other activities at this time of the morning or evening. Most countries define nautical twilight sunset and sunrise times using an azimuth of 102°. This is the number MFP uses by default. Check with your countries aviation regulatory body to find out what azimuth you should use and then enter that number into the preferences window.

The Generate Map button is always disabled.

For the Generate Map button to work, you need to have latitude and longitude information entered for each runway at an airport. You also need to include the width of each runway. When all these pieces of information are present, the button will become enabled.

I can't launch FlightMath from within Mac Flight Planner

Because FlightMath has it's version number as part of it's filename, it's not a simple process of just asking the computer to launch FlightMath. MFP has to find out exactly what the filename is first. It does this by searching the standard Application directories (/Applications, /Network/Applications, /Developer/Applications) for a program whose name starts with "FlightMath". It then saves the name to the preference file so that next time it doesn't have to search.

If you have FlightMath in another location, it will never be found and therefore MFP will never learn the full name of the program. To get around this problem, place FlightMath within one of the directories specified above and launch it from within MFP. MFP will record it's full name and save that to it's preferences file. Now you can move FlightMath to anywhere on your computer (external drives, iPod, etc) and MFP will be able to launch it.

Other users on my computer can't access my waypoint database

MFP stores your waypoint database file and all plugins in your personal Library folder (~/Library/Application Support/Flight Planner). This means the file is only accessed when you are using MFP. When another user on your computer runs MFP, they use their waypoint database stored in their Library folder. If you want to share the database and plugins amoung the other users of your computer then you have to do a little work within Terminal. Making an alias won't fool the underlying file handling system, you have to make what's known as a symbolic link (alomst the same thing). This will point MFP to the actual files when it searches for them in your Library directory.

First of all, you have to move your MFP files from your Library folder to the systems Library folder. Open your home folder, go to Library then Application Support. Drag the Flight Planner folder to your desktop (it will only exist after running MFP for the first time).

Next go to the root of your hard drive. Go to Library and then Application Support and drag the Flight Planner folder from your Desktop to the Application Support folder.

Now for the link. Open Terminal (it's in /Applications/Utilities) and type in the following commands

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support
ln -s /Library/Application\ Support/Flight\ Planner

This will fool MFP and it will read the files in the system Library folder rather than your Library folder. Now log in as the other users who want to use the MFP database. Remove the Flight Planner folder from their Library folder if it exists, start Terminal and type in the same commands to make the link. After each one, make sure it works by starting MFP.

Do you have a question not answered here? Then shoot me an email.