In France we had already fully covered all ICAO airports in our AIRAC AeroData maintenance. However, few non-ICAO airfields were maintained in an irregular manner.
As part of our AeroData maintenance innovation - like the new in-map VFR arrival routes we just released - we have significantly improved our maintenance procedures for France which means all non-ICAO airports are now regularly updated using the BASULM's data!
So what's BASULM? It is the French federation of the ULM community. It has an extensive database of all (non-)ICAO airfields in France. At the moment of writing it contains 469 ULM, 87 Altisurface, 37 Paramotor and 23 water airfields. But first a big disclaimer!.. All the data is in French and as French is an official ICAO language we decided to not translate it.
Update frequency
BASULM does not follow the AIRAC cycle, but updates airports whenever there is an update. We decided however to include their updates still following this cycle as all of our users update their data mostly using this cycle as well (after getting a message their aerodata is outdated).
What data is included?
The BASULM data contains general data like the airport name, code and addressing and contact details. Furthermore it includes operational messages like circuit information and accessibility. Also there is a PDF of every airfield (see LF1456 underneath as an example). This PDF contains a summary of all important information plus some visualizations, hence it can be seen as some kind of a visual operation chart. BASULM provides links to these PDF charts. Therefore we currently show you this link. It is a wish however to have the PDFs in the EFB for future versions. In order to open the PDF an internet connection is needed.
BASULM+ (enhanced runway details)
By default BASULM does not provide runway coordinates. We have therefore developed advanced data collecting techniques to collect coordinates of ALL European runways. Including the ones of BASULM database. Not only EasyVFR users will benefit from this, but our Avionics dataset users as well!
A limitation of BASULM is the fact the runway data in their format is only limited to a maximum of two runways. If it happens to be the case there are more runways, this info will be contained as a note in the operational remarks. This third runway will then not be drawn by EasyVFR as it is described in plain text without a fixed structure. In the future we would like to use machine learning to also extract this information.
How to load this data into your EasyVFR app?
To get the BASULM data you just have to update your aerodata as you are used to do. That's all! Update AeroData within EasyVFR 4 via EasyVFR 4 menu -> Download menu -> AeroData Validity Info -> Update All Data.
Also available for Dynon SkyView, AFS and MGL!
Of course, the improved data for France is also available in the latest dataset for Dynon SkyView, Advanced Flight Systems and MGL. Especially the enhanced runway coordinates will greatly complement these systems. BASULM and the runway coordinates are included within the datasets released from and after AIRAC-cycle date October 6th 2021.
Visit BASULM's website
If you don't know BASULM then please visit their website! All of their data is free and publicly available
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