Service · Performance Databases
We create our own SCAP performance databases — and we built the tools that make it possible. Graphite reads an AFM the way an engineer reads it: it finds the figures, works out what each one certifies, and captures the thousands of points behind every curve at a precision no hand-plotted reading can reach.
Why this exists
Every takeoff and landing number an operator computes comes out of a performance database. When that database is missing a case, stops short of the envelope certified in the AFM, or does not exist for your aircraft at all, an operator is usually told nothing can be done.
Something can be done. We create our own SCAP databases — and we built the tools that make it possible.
Capabilities
Maximum takeoff weight and V-speeds against the runway as it really is — and against what stands beyond the end of it. Obstacle clearance is computed from the obstacles of that aerodrome, not assumed away by a generic gradient.
Maximum landing weight and certified landing distances, normal and non-normal, with the approach speeds that go with the configuration actually being flown.
The escape path when an engine quits on departure — built on the same certified database, so the procedure and the takeoff weight it permits come from one source rather than two.
And it can be delivered however the operation runs. The same tooling drives runway analysis on a stand-alone workstation, the same thing web based, regular per-airport performance charts, or our own eLila EFB on the iPad. One database behind all of them.
The tool
An AFM is thousands of printed curves, and every performance number an operator will ever compute traces back to how faithfully those curves were read. So we wrote the software that reads them.
Graphite scans the AFM, parses its own table of contents as ground truth, and identifies which figures the manual actually contains. Each one is classified against what the regulation requires — WAT limit, approach climb OEI, landing climb, VREF, VAPP and VGA, landing distance dry, wet and gravel, tyre speed and brake energy — and anything it cannot place is flagged for review rather than quietly skipped. The result is a coverage report: what this AFM certifies, and what is missing.
Manufacturer, model, engine, certifying authority, document number and revision are read out of the AFM’s own headers and footers. A database is only as traceable as the paper behind it, so the paper is identified before a single point is taken.
Axes are calibrated against known reference points, linear or logarithmic, with the orientation detected from the points themselves. Curves are traced automatically or taken by hand with a live magnifier and a calibrated readout, nudging in increments as fine as a twentieth of a pixel. On a chart spanning 40,000 lb, that is the difference between a reading you can certify and one you can only defend.
Points are resampled onto uniform intervals — linear, cubic spline, Akima or logarithmic, whichever the curve calls for — and written straight into SCAP form. Each curve keeps its own extent, so a figure where the heavy weights are not certified at high altitude is stored exactly as certified, with nothing extrapolated the AFM never said.
Every value carries its source. Each figure records the axes it was read from and the reading tolerance it was taken at, and every reference value carries where it came from and when it was checked. This is a performance tool: invented data is worse than no data, and the software is built so that nothing can be entered without saying where it came from.
A worked example
An operator's takeoff database refused every calculation above 8,400 ft pressure altitude with an environmental-envelope error. The AFM for that aircraft permits 9,000 ft. The airports in question sat in between.
How we validate
Our own engine agreeing with our own database proves nothing. Every database we build is exercised across its whole envelope and checked back against the AFM it came from, figure by figure. A number we cannot demonstrate that way does not get delivered.
Tell us the aircraft and the case it refuses. We will tell you whether it is a data limit, a coded limit, or genuinely the certified edge of the aeroplane.