What is Navigator?
Navigator is an iPhone and iPad app for precision navigation flights — the kind flown in NIFA-style navigation events, proficiency contests, and personal timing practice, where the goal is to cross each checkpoint on course and on the second.
It does two jobs:
- In the air, it is a timing instrument. Load your route, enter your planned leg times, and Navigator shows you — leg by leg — whether you are running early or late and what ground speed will put you back on plan.
- On the ground, it is a scorer. Feed it a route and a track log and it computes timing, course, secret-checkpoint, and fuel penalties, then hands you the numbers and a shareable export.
Everything runs on the device. There is no account, no sign-in, and no server.
The two workflows
| Live flight | Post-flight scoring | |
|---|---|---|
| Start from | Start Live Flight button | New Flight button |
| You import | A route (.fpl) | A route (.fpl) and a track log (.kml) |
| Position comes from | Device GPS or a GDL90 source | The track log |
| You get | Live guidance, then a score | A score |
| Guide | Fly a live flight | Score a flight afterwards |
Both paths end at the same place: a scored flight saved to your Flights list, which you can rename, re-grade, and export.
In the air — the live panel.
On the ground — the scored result.
What Navigator measures
A flight is scored as penalty points — lower is better. Points come from five independent sources:
- Timing points — how far off your planned time each scored leg was, one point per second.
- Elapsed points — how far off your planned total time the whole flight was.
- Course points — how far from each intermediate checkpoint you actually flew.
- Secret checkpoint points — checkpoints you missed or called incorrectly.
- Fuel points — how badly your fuel estimate missed the fuel you actually burned.
The exact formulas — including the thresholds, the linear course-penalty ramp, and the exponential fuel curve — are written out in the scoring rules.
What you need
- An iPhone or iPad running iOS 26.2 or later.
- A route exported from ForeFlight (or any tool that writes a compatible
.fpl). - For post-flight scoring: a track log, typically the
.kmlForeFlight exports after a flight. - Optionally, a panel GPS or ADS-B receiver that broadcasts GDL90 over Wi-Fi, if you'd rather not rely on the iPad's internal GPS.
Navigator is a timing and scoring aid for flights you are already navigating by other means. It has no moving map, no terrain or airspace awareness, and no traffic display. Fly the airplane, navigate with your normal tools, and use Navigator the way you would use a stopwatch.
Where to go next
- New here? Install the beta, then read Prepare a route.
- Flying today? Jump to Fly a live flight and Reading the instrument panel.
- Scoring someone else's flight? Score a flight afterwards.
- Want to know exactly how a number was produced? Scoring rules.