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Entering Canadian Plates into GRT HXr

P

petersb

Well Known Member
How do you extract pdf files into individual pages

I have downloaded the CAP for Ontario which gives plates for all Ontario IFR approaches , it is a 472 page pdf.

I need to break this into seperate subdirectories for each airport.

I do not have the expensive Adobe full program and the free programs will only allow you to extract individual plates.

If however, you have say three plates covering one airport they will create one pdf of three pages, the efis requires seperate pdf's for each plate under a subdirectory with the airports designator.


Any cheap and easy way to do this.

Seattle does not have Canadian plates, Jepp does but they will not work with the GRT HXr efis, FLtPlan Go has Canadian plates and they are Geo Referenced, not sure if it is possible to strip their plates data out of an iphone, android app.

Over to the Computer experts

Peter
 
Last edited:
Canadian Approach plates

Peter,
I am sure you know that there is a way to get US plates on your GRT EFIS there is a link on the GRT site here http://www.grtavionics.com/approachplates.html
I tried this solution and found it to be cumbersome and no Canadian plates so it really wasn't a solution at all since I, like you, live in Canada. I suspect that even if you find a solution to load Canadian plates that it will be a cumbersome process.

The best solution, in my view, is for you to get an iPad Mini 32 or 64GB WiFi/Cellular. You don't have to have a sim card for it (I don't) but you do have to have both WiFi and Cellular capable to get the internal GPS to work.

Load up FltPlan Go and download the appropriate files and now you have Geo-referenced approach plates, sectional and lo/Hi enroute charts and much more for both Canada and the US as well as most of the Caribbean. The best part is that it is all free of charge.

FltPlanGo enables you to electronically file ICAO cross border IFR or VFR flight plans. I have used this program for 5 years to file many cross border IFR flight plans both to and from Canada and the Caribbean and never missed a single one.
 
Ivan Kristensen said:
Peter,
I am sure you know that there is a way to get US plates on your GRT EFIS there is a link on the GRT site here http://www.grtavionics.com/approachplates.html
I tried this solution and found it to be cumbersome and no Canadian plates so it really wasn't a solution at all since I, like you, live in Canada. I suspect that even if you find a solution to load Canadian plates that it will be a cumbersome process.

The best solution, in my view, is for you to get an iPad Mini 32 or 64GB WiFi/Cellular. You don't have to have a sim card for it (I don't) but you do have to have both WiFi and Cellular capable to get the internal GPS to work.

Load up FltPlan Go and download the appropriate files and now you have Geo-referenced approach plates, sectional and lo/Hi enroute charts and much more for both Canada and the US as well as most of the Caribbean. The best part is that it is all free of charge.

FltPlanGo enables you to electronically file ICAO cross border IFR or VFR flight plans. I have used this program for 5 years to file many cross border IFR flight plans both to and from Canada and the Caribbean and never missed a single one.
Click to expand...


Ivan

Thanks for your reply, I do have FltPlan Go on an ipad mini and it works great.

Installing the plates into the HXr is quite easy, create a folder "Plates" then a subdirectory, containing that airports plates, for each airport

All I need is an easy way to extract, into seperate pdf's, each airports plates from the master pdf that is 472 pages long,

Peter
 
Peter,
Dynon would love to add Canada data to our systems for our customers. Can you point us at the location of the PDF so we can see if the license terms allow us to use it?
 
petersb said:
Ivan

Thanks for your reply, I do have FltPlan Go on an ipad mini and it works great.

Installing the plates into the HXr is quite easy, create a folder "Plates" then a subdirectory, containing that airports plates, for each airport

All I need is an easy way to extract, into seperate pdf's, each airports plates from the master pdf that is 472 pages long,

Peter
Click to expand...

Peter, Microsoft Word (the later versions at least) have the ability to edit (and save) PDF files. You can do the same thing with the free version of Google Docs (now integrated into Google Drive) but it's a bit more cumbersome. Here's a good link to show you how...
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-PDFs-Editable-With-Google-Docs

If you do get this setup, I'd love to get your file/folders as I'm in Ontario too.
 
dynonsupport said:
Peter,
Dynon would love to add Canada data to our systems for our customers. Can you point us at the location of the PDF so we can see if the license terms allow us to use it?
Click to expand...

Go to the Nav Canada website and you can download the plates for each Province for $20 each

Peter
 
dynonsupport said:
Dynon would love to add Canada data to our systems for our customers. Can you point us at the location of the PDF so we can see if the license terms allow us to use it?
Click to expand...
I'm fairly certain they do not.

Peter, if you have an Android device and you have root access, you can download the plates for free, and once downloaded the plates are accessible through the file system as PDF files.
 
Snowflake said:
I'm fairly certain they do not.

Peter, if you have an Android device and you have root access, you can download the plates for free, and once downloaded the plates are accessible through the file system as PDF files.
Click to expand...

Rob

You have to setup a user account and then download from the Nav Canada site, that is exactly what I did. I believe this gives you a years worth of downloads which covers the update cycles.

Now wether you can then do this for commercial purposes I am not sure.

FltPlan go has them and they are identical to the ones I downloaded. Theirs are marked " Do not print" mine are not, theirs are also Geo Regerenced, mine are not.

Thanks for the tip re. Android root directory access, will have to Google on how to do it, I have a Nexus 7.

I could send you a copy of the plates but it is 472 pages and I do not know how to send such a large file

Peter
 
"Strip out" a pdf page from a large file

There's a a free program I have used to do this called "Cute pdf" http://www.cutepdf.com/.

Once installed just open the large NavCan pdf file in Acrobat reader and select a single page to print, but instead of printing the page to the printer select "Cute pdf" as the printer. It will ask you to name and save the file and now you have a single page as a separate pdf. I have created single pdf pages from many sources including Van's plans CD using this method. Works well unless the creator of the original pdf has a security setting on the original file disabling the ability to do this. If that's the case, there's another free program called "PDFSAM", (PDF Split And Merge) http://www.pdfsam.org/ that will also do what you want, but the interface is a bit clunky.

Both these programs' installers will offer to install some optional "extras" which I simply deselected during the install process and they work fine for me without any adware. YMMV.

I'm not involved with or endorsing either of these products just noting that they have worked for me.
 
Andy612 said:
There's a a free program I have used to do this called "Cute pdf" http://www.cutepdf.com/.

Once installed just open the large NavCan pdf file in Acrobat reader and select a single page to print, but instead of printing the page to the printer select "Cute pdf" as the printer. It will ask you to name and save the file and now you have a single page as a separate pdf. I have created single pdf pages from many sources including Van's plans CD using this method. Works well unless the creator of the original pdf has a security setting on the original file disabling the ability to do this. If that's the case, there's another free program called "PDFSAM", (PDF Split And Merge) http://www.pdfsam.org/ that will also do what you want, but the interface is a bit clunky.

Both these programs' installers will offer to install some optional "extras" which I simply deselected during the install process and they work fine for me without any adware. YMMV.

I'm not involved with or endorsing either of these products just noting that they have worked for me.
Click to expand...

Andy

Thanks for the reply. I do have a free program that allows you to extract one page at a time into a pdf, unfortunately it would take a long time to extract each plate one at time. They do allow you to extract a page range, eg 15 to 20, however they are extracted into a single multi page pdf, not separate PDFs,s for each plate.

Peter
 
Peter,

There are free tools that can split the pdf into a whole pile of separate, one page pdfs. I've used pdftk for this purpose. The tricky part is what happens after you have a whole bunch of one page pdfs.

Is there some special naming convention that must be used for the individual pdf files? What naming convention is required for the folders for each airport?

Depending on the details, there might be easy solutions. For example, I've got an OS X program called Hazel that is smart enough to look into pdf files and pull out data that matches specified patterns. It might be possible to teach Hazel to recognize the airport ID of each plate, create folders with the needed names, and put each plate in the right folder.

How big is the pdf file you are starting with? I assume it is too large to email. If we can figure out how to get an example pdf to me, I could take a look at the problem.
 
Kevin Horton said:
Peter,

There are free tools that can split the pdf into a whole pile of separate, one page pdfs. I've used pdftk for this purpose. The tricky part is what happens after you have a whole bunch of one page pdfs.

Is there some special naming convention that must be used for the individual pdf files? What naming convention is required for the folders for each airport?

Depending on the details, there might be easy solutions. For example, I've got an OS X program called Hazel that is smart enough to look into pdf files and pull out data that matches specified patterns. It might be possible to teach Hazel to recognize the airport ID of each plate, create folders with the needed names, and put each plate in the right folder.

How big is the pdf file you are starting with? I assume it is too large to email. If we can figure out how to get an example pdf to me, I could take a look at the problem.
Click to expand...


Kevin

Great, this is exactly what needs to be done. The pdf's have to be stored under a sub directory using the airport designators ( CNC3 )

The current master file from Nav Canada is 472 pages. All Canadians with EFIS systems will love you.

I will try to cut it down to a more manageable size for you

Peter
 
If the pdf is less than 25 MB, you might be able to email it to me at my Gmail address (I'll PM it to you if that is an option). Alternatively, if you have DropBox, you could load it up there and share the file with me. I suspect you could do something similar with Google Drive, or MS One Drive (I've got accounts on all these services).
 
I've been working on a Perl script to automate splitting the Nav Canada approach plates document into single page files, renaming them, and putting them into airport folders. Peter has been testing it, and it seems to be working.

Peter only has the Ontario data, as that is where he lives. Are there any other GRT HXr users who are interested in purchasing approach plates from Nav Canada for display on their EFIS? If so, please PM me. I'm particularly interested in users from other provinces, as I've only tested this with data for Ontario.

After I get it fully debugged, I'll release the code.
 
good news, bad news

...so, does this mean that the fact I JUST learned how to fold a sectional, may not be as great as I think? :rolleyes:

ahhh, when flying used to be about the smell of avgas, mirro glaze, and rubber.

now we have to know 'code'. ( sigh) ( crawling back into my cave now)
 
CutePDF Writer

petersb said:
Kevin

Great, this is exactly what needs to be done. The pdf's have to be stored under a sub directory using the airport designators ( CNC3 )

The current master file from Nav Canada is 472 pages. All Canadians with EFIS systems will love you.

I will try to cut it down to a more manageable size for you

Peter
Click to expand...

What about using the free printer driver app called "CutePDF Writer". Once installed it becomes a printer driver which writes to your selected location and name, and as a PDF file.

You would open your large PDF file containing all the approach plates, then 'Print' each plate into the required directory with the required file name. On a PC you might be able to automate the process using a batch file....
 
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