Tips Star your STARs!
Have you wished you can have particular plates or taxi diagrams handy, regardless of what airport you’re viewing in the […]
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Whether it’s making notes to yourself or highlighting important text, the plate drawing feature in the Terminal pane can come in very handy.
To access it, locate the page you wish to annotate via any method you choose (for example, you could use the book icon and search the list, or tap the En Route map/Nearest Items). Tap the Options button (pencil/notepad icon) at the top of the Terminal page. You can now select one of the three different pens under the Drawing Options subheading.
Now you’ve selected a pen, you’ll see an “Editing” banner appear at the top of the screen. You can now proceed to draw to your heart’s content on the page.
You can draw/write with any combination of the pens you desire. Any annotations placed on a plate are stored for future reference, even if you are flying a different flight plan.
Stored annotations can be removed from a plate by tapping the Options button once again and selecting Clear Chart.
What are some possible uses for this feature?
You could use it to highlight important text, or to make sure you’re aware of the circuit direction for particular runways.
Before departing on a recent cross-country flight, I noticed that my fuel stop airport had one of its runways NOTAMed that it was temporarily out of service. To make sure I didn’t forget in the heat of the moment, I placed a big red reminder for myself:
Finally, if you are operating at a busy or large airport with long or tricky taxiways, you can draw your taxi clearance to make it even easier to follow:
So, here’s the best part: the shortcut!
Simply double-tap the screen to quickly enter Editing mode. When you’re done, double-tap once again to exit Editing.
Keep it in mind the next time you’re working with pages in the Terminal pane.
