gjw

I seem to recall recently one of the Ontario airports (CYXU?) specifically telling pilots on the ATIS to contact Flight Service to close their flight plan. I have a vague recollection that back in the mid 80's when I was doing my private license at Buttonville that the ATIS advised pilots to use Flight Service to OPEN their flight plan...am I mis-remembering? If not, when did the "auto-open" process here come into place here? On a side note, it seems the flight plan and the search and rescue notification are two separate things, on an IFR plan at least. When I did my IFR at an uncontrolled airport (Brampton) we would be talking to the Toronto Terminal controllers for the approach clearance back into Brampton. I think they have issues with potential conflicts with Pearson traffic either on their missed or us at Brampton and they always seemed to encourage us to cancel IFR. So, they would ask what our intentions were and we would tell them we want to fly the approach but will cancel IFR at KAPIK (the intermediate T-Turn to final fix) and that made them happy. When we crossed KAPIK and asked to "Cancel IFR" they would ask "Do you also want to cancel Search and Rescue as well?" and an "affirmative" was met with an acknowledgement that they would cancel IFR AND Search and Rescue. Flying into an uncontrolled airport outside of Toronto, or into Brampton in actual IFR they will offer an 1-800 number to the Area Control Centre (not FSS) to cancel and then clear you out of controlled airspace and off frequency. If your IFR is open, they have the airspace blocked off for IFR traffic, so they want to know at the ACC when they can free that airspace up ASAP. So, I guess it is possible to cancel the IFR "flight plan" when still far from a remote uncontrolled airport but leave SAR notification in place, cancelling that when on the ground.

Any idea why that is (has to see GPS satellites to update). I've been having a slightly different problem and wondered if this might be related. The update is fine, but during start-up FliteCharts sometimes takes a long time doing the validation. Occasionally, it does fail validation, but I also get a "Charts unavailable" even if it passed validation...Could this have something to do with not seeing the satellites during start-up (boxed in by hangers etc)? This is for the Garmin Charts, not the Jepp ones.

My GNS430W has two physical data cards, which load one on each side of the C V knobs. You can kind of see here The one on the outside is for the Jepp "Nav Data" (updating this works with JDMApp on the Mac) for the Instrument Procedures. The other card holds data from Garmin for Terrain and Obstacles. It is labelled "Garmin TAWS/Terrain Data". Do you have two cards and update both with Jepp?

I am able to update the Jepp NavData card with the Jepp writer and the JDMApp on my Mac, but was never able to get the FlyGarmin website to see the Garmin USB Aviation Data Card programmer even though the Garmin Plugin communicator install seems to run. Rather than fight city hall, I had been using an old Windows laptop running Vista to update the Garmin Card. However, something changed. Either Garmin changed the page or there were changes to how Firefox and other browsers handle the plugin, but now even the Windows Laptop won't update the Garmin card . The FlyGarmin App claims to be able to run under Vista, but when I download that and click on the file, it won't launch. Has anybody been able to update the Garmin Data card for a 430W using a Mac? I also have a GTN750 and I was able to update the Garmin SD card for that device using a standard SD card writer. It just doesn't seem to recognize the older Garmin USB Aviation Data Card Writer...This guy: