I've been getting more and more into VFR in Europe. Anyone know of an American distributor for ICAO charts?

http://www.jeppesen.com is what most pilots here use...

If you're just looking for a good centralized place to get charts for online flying (judging by your sig block) then I suggest www.airnav.com. That's what I use.

Read a few of your VFR flight tours in Computer Pilot.I do not have a reference to your specific needs but suggest you consider the two volumes of The Pilot's Free Flight Atlas. These are 1:2,000,000 scale charts with navaid locations (ID, frequency, no compass rose), RNAV waypoints,small, medium to large airports all on topos (no airways). The volume you might want is Europe, South Africa, Middle East. You still can see rivers and valleys to follow, major roads, city/town/village names. Magnetic variation is shown for the large area. The scale translates to about 35 nm per inch. I think it might be helpful where sectionals are difficultg to come by. I use these along with the NIMA facilities info (Simplates 2004 inclusion) for non-US random VFR flights of fancy in interesting areas. You can get a general topo and navaid based route but not the detail in VFR sectionals.http://www.stopoverstore.com/product/index.cfm/nid/415

http://www.eurocontrol.int/aim/public/stan...ge/web_eur.html gives links to many of the national AIP sites in Europe. Quite a few enable the official charts etc to be freely downloaded, although you may have to register, again free, for some of them.

These tend to be AIP/aerodrome- not vfr charts.

Thanks, all, for the suggestions. I've got the previous ed. of Free Flight Atlas (Europe only). It's better than nothing, but there's not enough topo detail for real VFR. Best substitute for ICAO charts that I've found so far are the US-published ONCs (1:1,000,000) and TPCs (1:500,000). The latter have the same resolution as VFR sectionals, but aren't as current and don't have frequency information or airspace altitudes. The upside for North American customers is you can buy one from Sporty's for about US$7 plus $4 shipping. http://www.sportys.com/acb/showdetl.cfm?DI...D=4173&CATID=92 The trick is knowing which one(s) you need. Start by finding the ONC sector here: http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/images/onc.jpg. The TPCs will start with that number, then divide the area into four more quadrants: A, B, C, and D. For example, ONC E-2 covers most of Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, northern France, and eastern England at a resolution of 1:1,000,000. TPC E-2C covers most of southern Germany (up to Berlin) with parts of Poland, Austria, and the Czech Republic.I notice that this particular chart is "Crown Copyright 1994. Revised 1993. Printed by Military Survey (UK)." Anyone know how this bears on scanning a portion of the chart, calibrating it for Rana Hossain's moving map program, and uploading it to the AVSIM file library?

Here is another source to investigate. They have a good stock of international charts:http://www.pilotshoppe.com/html/dod_nima.html

TPC or ONC charts are a good economical way to go. Sometimes though the airports are very outdated, up to 20 years or more.Off topic question:why is Australia not covered with ONC charts? I asked my NACO chart representitive and they weren't able to give me a definitive answer.

Have a look at http://www.transair.co.uk or http://www.flightstore.co.uk or http://www.skywaysdirect.com Okay, they're not in the U.S., but they will ship.ICAO charts vary in quality from country to country. The CAA charts covering the UK are regarded as the dog's nadgers (3 charts cover the country at half-mil scale). The French SIA charts are very good (4 cover the country), but only show airspace up to 5000ft!The Jeppesen VFR/GPS charts tend to be smaller than the ICAO charts (7 charts to cover France, for example) and contain less information. But they have the great advantage of consistency. Most pilots opt for the Jepp charts if they are touring through multiple countries for just that reason.You could also try EBay as a source of cheap expired charts... Look out also for Bottlang Trip Kits and the French 'Documents VFR' pack, which are well worth having.

Now we're getting somewhere -- thank you, Tim.