In Web you can find lists of airfields, thus it is unnecessary to create them all using the new airfield wizard. Skylog is able to import lists of airfields, which are formatted like those FluPP 1.07 can read. FluPP is another popular program to manage flights, see http://www.flupp-flightlog.org/. On this Web site you also find files for airfields of various countries: http://www.flupp-flightlog.org/airports.php.
The import wizard needs three inputs: the path to the file containing the airfields, the encoding of that file, and a policy to handle cases where the imported airfield already exists. The following picture displays the wizard.
The
correct encoding is important! An incorrect encoding can lead to
wrong names. To be sure make a backup of the Skylog-database (simply
copy the file) before importing, to prevent the consequence of wrong
encodings.
The encoding of the files on the FluPP Web site above is the one shown in the picture (at least for version 1.07 it was).
If the file to import contains airfields, which are already known in Skylog, you can select the policy to handle them in the options shown on the wizard page.
While importing the file the progress is shown in the wizard page. Afterwards you will be informed how many airfields have been imported, rejected, replaced, and merged. The rejected airfields have most likely format errors in one of their fields (see below for the format expected), e.g. a erroneous coordinate in the position. You can also see the result in the airfields view.
The format of the file is as follows: Every airfield is defined in one line of the text file. Each line has four fields separated by semicolons (no semicolon behind the last field). Alternatively the parser recognizes a comma instead of a semicolon (the file for the german airfields had a comma instead of a semicolon in the line for the airfield EDSN, and an “E” instead of an “O” (german “Ost” for “East”)). The sequence of fields is:
name
ICAO registration
latitude
longitude
Name and registration are strings. latitude and longitude have the format „Ldd°mm'ss"“ where „L“ is the character „N“, „S“ (latitude), „O“, „W“ (longitude). Instead of „O“ you can also use the English „E“ instead. Additional white space or other characters around the separators are not allowed. However, white space behind the separator is ignored in the fields for the coordinates, thus the following example can be imported.
This is an example for a line (the entry for EDSN mentioned above, note the comma separating the longitude and the blank following the comma):
Neuhausen ob Eck;EDSN;N47°'37'', E08°'19''