September 17th 06, 01:50 AM
To all current and former AirPlan user's/subscribers
After much careful and difficult deliberation, I have decided to cease
all new sales of AirPlan on my website as of October 1, 2006.
I started working on AirPlan in 1997 with hopes that I could create a
successful business selling flight planning software to pilots for less
than the price of other products on the market that seemed too
expensive to me at the time. I sold my first copy of AirPlan online in
January 1998.
Over the years I have worked to try to make AirPlan as useful and
valuable as I could. This has been a long and time consuming effort on
my part. Given that I have held a full-time job as an electrical
engineer for the entire time that I have been working on AirPlan, it
has been difficult to devote the time, energy, and money to promoting
AirPlan and working on it that it probably needed to be able to reach
enough customers to be self-sustaining. Add to that the smallness of
the overall market for flight planning software, and the fierce
competition from competitors and free flight planning resources, there
simply hasn't been enough business lately to justify continuing. Add
to that the loss of the DAFIF and the difficulty of obtaining worldwide
navigation data at a reasonable cost, I just can't afford to continue
sinking so much of my personal time into this product and business. My
total new customer sales for 2006 to date has been 17, and too few of
my existing customers are renewing their subscriptions to cover my
fixed costs.
I will leave my website up until the end of 2006 to provide online
update support to current subscribers, after that date you can contact
me at for any assistance you may need. Once the
website goes off-line, I will start mailing CD ROM updates to all of my
current subscribers until their update period expires. These CD ROM
updates will include sectional chart updates as well as the software
and database updates.
Starting in December, database updates will only cover the Americas
with the exception of Canada which I have been unable to get digital
data for due to copyright restrictions. I contacted NavCanada about
licensing their data, and while I received and initial response saying
that I could get data, subsequent inquiries have gone without response
from them. Copyright claims on navigation data by Canada and Australia
is the main reason the DAFIF is being restricted from public access by
the U.S. NGA.
Any person who has every purchased AirPlan will be able to buy a CD
ROMs from me with the latest database (with the above described limited
coverage) by mailing $10 to the following address for as long as I am
maintaining it for my own personal use, which should be for some time
into the future:
P.O. Box 170055
Boise, Idaho 83717-0055
USA
I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this causes any of
you, and greatly appreciate the positive support that so many of you
have given me over the years. Once again, I plan on continuing to make
database updates available into the future for anyone who wishes to buy
a CD from me, and all update subscriptions will be honored to the
completion of their term.
Sincerely,
Dean Wilkinson
Razor's Edge Software
After much careful and difficult deliberation, I have decided to cease
all new sales of AirPlan on my website as of October 1, 2006.
I started working on AirPlan in 1997 with hopes that I could create a
successful business selling flight planning software to pilots for less
than the price of other products on the market that seemed too
expensive to me at the time. I sold my first copy of AirPlan online in
January 1998.
Over the years I have worked to try to make AirPlan as useful and
valuable as I could. This has been a long and time consuming effort on
my part. Given that I have held a full-time job as an electrical
engineer for the entire time that I have been working on AirPlan, it
has been difficult to devote the time, energy, and money to promoting
AirPlan and working on it that it probably needed to be able to reach
enough customers to be self-sustaining. Add to that the smallness of
the overall market for flight planning software, and the fierce
competition from competitors and free flight planning resources, there
simply hasn't been enough business lately to justify continuing. Add
to that the loss of the DAFIF and the difficulty of obtaining worldwide
navigation data at a reasonable cost, I just can't afford to continue
sinking so much of my personal time into this product and business. My
total new customer sales for 2006 to date has been 17, and too few of
my existing customers are renewing their subscriptions to cover my
fixed costs.
I will leave my website up until the end of 2006 to provide online
update support to current subscribers, after that date you can contact
me at for any assistance you may need. Once the
website goes off-line, I will start mailing CD ROM updates to all of my
current subscribers until their update period expires. These CD ROM
updates will include sectional chart updates as well as the software
and database updates.
Starting in December, database updates will only cover the Americas
with the exception of Canada which I have been unable to get digital
data for due to copyright restrictions. I contacted NavCanada about
licensing their data, and while I received and initial response saying
that I could get data, subsequent inquiries have gone without response
from them. Copyright claims on navigation data by Canada and Australia
is the main reason the DAFIF is being restricted from public access by
the U.S. NGA.
Any person who has every purchased AirPlan will be able to buy a CD
ROMs from me with the latest database (with the above described limited
coverage) by mailing $10 to the following address for as long as I am
maintaining it for my own personal use, which should be for some time
into the future:
P.O. Box 170055
Boise, Idaho 83717-0055
USA
I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this causes any of
you, and greatly appreciate the positive support that so many of you
have given me over the years. Once again, I plan on continuing to make
database updates available into the future for anyone who wishes to buy
a CD from me, and all update subscriptions will be honored to the
completion of their term.
Sincerely,
Dean Wilkinson
Razor's Edge Software