Important: These forums are for discussions between SkyDemon users. They are not routinely monitored by SkyDemon staff so any urgent issues should be sent directly to our Customer Support.

Skydemon for HEMS operations


Author
Message
eivissa
e
Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)
Group: Forum Members
Posts: 2, Visits: 0
Dear Skydemon Team,

I am flying in the German HEMS sector and have found Skydemon to be an excellent tool for my operation.
Though some additions to the current state of the software would make my life even easier:

-‌‌As a HEMS Pilot I also rely on the NOTAMS for Heliports, like temporary closed Hospital Helipads. This information is currently provided to me via the app VFRiNOTAM‌‌. This essential information doesnt show up within Skydemon. Any chance you can also feed this information into the Skydemon system?

-I have‌‌ manually imported the HEMS Heliport Database of Germany into Skydeamon as User Waypoints which is very handy. I would be very helpful if the "Direct To" suggestions would also list the User waypoints and also the Heliports within your own database. At the moment this tab only suggests airports. As a HEMS pilot I rarely ever fly to a place which has a runway. I always have to hit FIND and then search for my destination.

-HEMS is very time critical, so a button on the main map/flight planning screen with direct adress entry would be very helpful.

-W‌‌hen flying towards our destination/accident site, we start to discuss which hospital would be suitable for the reported sickness/injury. A button showing the closest user waypoints / heliports at my destination would be a valuable tool in that very moment.

-Since a lot of the HEMS aircraft are not equiped with TCAS a partnership with Flightradar or preferrably GliderTracker would be of huge help for traffic avoidance. I guess this is the least likely feature to get as it involves another party and their willingness, but I think it should be brought up anyway. For now I rely on the limited features of Pilotaware.

-The weather/rain tab is useful for planing, but a view similar to lightningmaps.org that shows lightning and when it happened‌‌, would be even more useful. Its hard to distinguish rain from actual thunderstorm at the moment, since the colors also dont match the colors of our weather radar and in the past Ive seen actual lightning come our of areas that only showed a light blue on the map.

‌‌-Fuel planning is currently not taking into account that we always land were we go and never go "via" a waypoint to our destination. HEMS is basically always a tringle from the base to the accident to the hospital and back to base. So we have three startups/shutdowns. This is not really selectable within Skydemon at the moment.

-For fast performance calculations it would be handy to have a button to directly enter the current fuel. Since our weight of the machine, crew and equipment doesnt change during the day, we would have a direct output of useful load for the current situation.

-We also fly‌ secondary HEMS night missions (long distances all across Germany) and heavily rely on information regarding the ED-R150 military low flying areas. I can see this has been discussed in the past, but I would also like to emphasize that bringing this data into the software is very important for us HEMS pilots flying at night through German airspace.

I guess most of the suggestions fit our mission environment in HEMS, but do clutter the screen for other users. In that case a HEMS or Helicopter selection would be a way to adapt the software for rotary usage and keep the status quo for our colleagues in fixed wing.

My 2 cents after happily using Skydemon for one year now.

Cheers,
eivissa‌‌‌‌‌
‌‌

Reply
eivissa
e
Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)Too Much Forum (77 reputation)
Group: Forum Members
Posts: 2, Visits: 0
Hey Tim,

the German (HEMS) Heliports are classified in several categories.
Category 1: Elevated Heliport certified according to §6 LuftVG -> Visible in Skydemon
Category 2: Ground Heliport certified according to §6 LuftVG -> Visible in Skydemon
Category 3, 4 and 5: Public Interest Site (PIS). These are usually heliports at hospitals that have been in use for a long time, but never got officially certified. Sometimes because of laziness of the hospital operator, but usually because they dont have the required obstacle clearance to be certified according to §6 LuftVG. These heliports are a lot more common in Germany than the certified ones and in HEMS we go frequently to both. I have a databse with all Heliports in Germany, which I am able to share if you want to implement those uncertified (but important) heliports as well.

Example for a PIS / CAT3-5:
50.347966 7.592929 (elevated)
53.467815, 7.499439
53.715980, 7.171412
51.636428, 13.698331
51.503416, 14.631475

In regards to NOTAMs missing in Skydemon. It looks like its not the problem that the NOTAM isnt transmitted to Skydemon, but that it only shows if you actually go to the aerodrome that the NOTAM is for or your radius is very close to it. This problematic in the following scenario:

Berlin Steglitz Heliport is closed due to construction

In the morning I check the radius around the HEMS base on Skydemon, but no information is presented, that this very essential hospital heliport in Berlin is not available for the time being. This is critical for HEMS operation, since this is one of the most important hospitals available to me during the day.

I plan to transport a patient from one hospital to the other. Can I stop enroute at Steglitz Heliport in case the patient gets unstable? I still asume that I can.

Now I am forcing the NOTAM to show-up by flying exactly overhead Steglitz Heliport and then finally I get the information that I cant land there.

I guess the Skydemon filter doesnt want fixed wing pilots to bother about NOTAMs that only affect you if you land at an airport that you pass enroute, but especially the RADIUS around me function, should not filter out any NOTAMs within the circle.

Cheers,
eivissa

GO

Merge Selected

Merge into selected topic...



Merge into merge target...



Merge into a specific topic ID...





Reading This Topic

Login

Explore
Messages
Mentions
Search