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Prepare a route

Every Navigator flight — live or scored afterwards — starts from a route file: a ForeFlight .fpl, which is a small XML document listing your waypoints in order. Navigator turns that list into legs, and the legs are what get timed and scored.

Do this on the ground. It takes two minutes and it is the one step you cannot improvise in the airplane.

1. Build the route in ForeFlight​

Enter your route on the ForeFlight Maps page as you normally would. A few things matter more to Navigator than they do to ForeFlight:

  • Every checkpoint must be a waypoint. Navigator scores what is in the file. A visual checkpoint you plan to hit but did not enter as a waypoint is invisible to it. Use user waypoints for road junctions, towers, lakes — anything that is a checkpoint on your route card but not in the database.
  • Order is everything. Navigator flies the waypoints in file order and builds one leg between each consecutive pair. A four-waypoint route is three legs.
  • First and last waypoints are not checkpoints. Course penalties apply only to the intermediate waypoints, on the reasoning that departure and destination are not precision targets. See scoring rules.
  • Two waypoints is the minimum. Navigator rejects a route with fewer.

2. Export the .fpl​

In ForeFlight, open the route editor, tap the share or export control, and choose to send the route as an .fpl file.

Where you send it depends on which device you will run Navigator on:

  • Same device — share it to Files (On My iPhone/iPad, or iCloud Drive). Navigator's importer is a standard file picker and can reach anything in Files.
  • A different device — AirDrop it, email it to yourself, or save it to iCloud Drive and pick it up on the other side.

Navigator accepts .fpl and .xml. Any other extension is rejected with "Please select a .fpl or .xml file."

3. Know your planned leg times​

Navigator does not compute your flight plan — it grades you against it. Before you fly you need a planned time for every leg you intend to have scored, worked out the usual way from leg distance, true airspeed, and forecast winds.

You will type these into Navigator one leg at a time. It accepts three formats, and mixing them within one flight is fine:

EntryMeans
600600 seconds — 10 minutes
10:0010 minutes 0 seconds
1:05:301 hour 5 minutes 30 seconds

Times must be greater than zero. Anything else is flagged inline as "Invalid time. Use seconds or MM:SS."

Unscored legs

A leg you do not want timed — a departure leg to the first checkpoint, a repositioning leg, a leg the event does not score — gets its Scored toggle switched off. Unscored legs need no planned time and contribute no timing points. Note that their actual time still counts toward the flight's elapsed total; see elapsed points for what that means.

4. Decide where position comes from​

For a live flight, Navigator can take position from either source:

  • Device GPS — Core Location on the iPhone or iPad. Simplest, and the right default. Note that a Wi-Fi-only iPad has no GPS receiver at all and will not work.
  • GDL90 — a panel-mount GPS or portable ADS-B receiver broadcasting over Wi-Fi. Better accuracy and update rate, and it works on a Wi-Fi-only iPad. Requires setup on the ground; see GDL90 sources.

You choose this on the Start Live Flight screen, and it cannot be changed mid-flight.

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