Salut! Grüezi! Hei! pgpilot now speaks your language
pgpilot, 2026-09-28
Bonjour! Grüezi! Hallo! Ciao! Hola! Olá! Merhaba! नमस्ते! Hei! Hello!
pgpilot speaks your language
Welcome to the first pgpilot newsletter! As any pilots with a keen eye will notice, a lot is happening with pgpilot. Last weekend we were at the Coupe Icare, and one big request there was a multilingual app. So this weekend we are shipping it! More on that and other new features below. We plan to write to you every month or two, so we hope you will tag along for the journey :) Oh, and on Thursday at 19:00 CEST we are doing a webinar on pgpilot, see below or just sign up here. Let'se go!
Coupe Icare and a multilingual pgpilot!
A week before Coupe Icare we got the happy message from the organizers that there was a slot for us at the festival! A very hectic week of merch production, logistical headaches and a small logo redesign later, we managed to get the stand up just in time!
It was really fun to show all the work that has gone into pgpilot, together with several keen pgpilot super users (promoted to ambassadors for the weekend for a free t-shirt). I think what impressed you the most was the radio integration: The fact that you can buy a radio for 70 eur (see our hardware guide), can connect it to pgpilot over bluetooth and you have a full comms system working over both internet AND VHF radio straight in your flight companion!
Close to 800 new pilots signed up for pgpilot during the Coupe Icare week. Welcome, all of you :) The biggest request I received at the festival was multilingual support. I am happy to announce that we from today support 8 languages in the new app release!
We did not stop the grind during Coupe Icare either. With so many people joining there were bound to be new bugs, and we shipped two new betas with support for new varios over the weekend! ;)
The second biggest request was to integrate the French FFVL safety service, so French pilots do not have to run a second tracking app. With great help from Pierre, it is now available in the app! ;)
Lastly, we hosted a small pgpilot "capture-the-whale" Area Contest competition around the area of St. Hilaire. The winner was Victor Berchet, ahead of Olivier Peyre and Sajid Khan. Congratulations!
Thank you to everyone who stopped by. See you next year!
What have we landed since last time?
pgpilot in your language. The app is now in German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Turkish, next to English. Languages are hard, and this first version is a machine translation, with English wherever a line is still missing. So some words will be wrong, and here I need your help! Sign in, go to Settings, Appearance, Language, turn on Suggest translations and long-press any text that reads oddly. Pilots who review each language approve the suggestions, and the fix is live the next time you open the app. In the same menu you can also volunteer to review your own language. Please do, it helps everyone who flies in it :)
Messages. You can now message any pilot directly, from their profile, their marker on the map or search, with photos and voice. Found a bug? Report it in the pgpilot thread and our answer comes back into the app.
Safety, with or without coverage. This is where most of our time goes right now. After landing, pgpilot asks how it went: landed safely, need a ride, or emergency. If you trigger an SOS, nearby pilots, your ground contacts and tracking radios nearby get your status and position. This now works over the internet (other pgpilot users and email), FANET and Meshtastic (see below)!
VHF radio. Connect a small VHF radio to your phone and the radio channel and your pgpilot group hear each other. It works today, also with several pilots with radios in the same group. We keep working on cleaner audio and a steadier link in the air.
Coming up: The Bir season: Offline mesh network, improved radio and airspaces
FANET and Bircom. The autumn season in Bir-Billing, India, is starting, and much of this month's work has been a collaboration with pilots there (thank you Jigish, Ketan and Vlad!). Due to the restriction of satellite messaging in India, locals have set up their own LoRa based (think of it as a type of radio: FANET and Meshtastic) system to track and be able to send distress messages. It works as a mesh network, so a position or SOS message can hop between pilots until it reaches an internet connection. pgpilot now supports both Bircom and FANET if you connect a device such as a LilyGO T-Echo or Capsense card (hardware guide), and you can flash it directly in the app! 90% is done, and the remaining 10% will land within the next week. Hopefully the makers of FANET-compatible varios will follow to also support SOS messages etc. to make Search and Rescue as fast as possible (if you are one, reach out!). For more information, check out Bircom.
VHF and airspace improvements. I have also worked hard on improving the VHF integration for Bir, and the sound should now be cleaner and the radio should connect more easily than before. This is never-ending work in progress, so it's not done ;) And lastly, the Bir airspaces (aka don't land in the Dalai Lama's garden) are already in the app, so it's easy for pilots new to the Himalayas.
And if you are going to Bir, we are planning a pgpilot gathering in the evening on the 14th of October. Come to meet fellow pilots, and make plans for Bir! It's free and simple, sign up here. See you there?
pgpilot tutorial (webinar) this Thursday 1 October 19:00 CEST!
Join us for a live pgpilot webinar on Thursday 1 October at 19:00 CEST (17:00 UTC). That is 18:00 in the UK, 13:00 in New York, 10:00 in California and 22:30 in India.
About an hour: a tour of the app, how to get started, and ask me anything! Many of you have asked for a walkthrough, so I hope an online version will be helpful and fun!
Sign up for the webinar · Add to your calendar
I think that is all for now. I have a lot of plans to dig into: regional forecasts, better and personalized thermal and wind algorithms and maybe make some fun hike & fly competitions for the non-thermic winter :)
Questions, ideas or complaints? Write to me at hello@pgpilot.app, or send me a message in the new in-app support message thread. I read everything!
Fly safe and have fun,
Simen
pgpilot team