SkyDemon for iPad

[Flylogical]

iPad for in-flight nav

My collection of thoughts on this topic based on a few months of experience:

1) iPad 2 not stable enough to be considered as a truly solid piece of avionics kit. Irrespective of the software package (I've tested SkyDemon, AirNavPro, MemoryMap), the iPad seems to crash (requiring a re-start of the app or even a reboot of the device) a few percent of the times I use it.

2) Because of 1), I use my trusty Garmin 430 as primary GPS device (fair enough -- it is IFR approved, and I fly quite a bit in IMC). I use the iPad as a convenient source of useful flight information (via 3G) -- mostly when on the ground, pre-flight, and as a fun backup "toy" in-flight (i.e., not ever relying on it -- except if my aircraft were ever to suffer a total electrical power failure).

3) An external receiver (I find the GNS unit to be highly reliable -- just remember to keep charging it between flights) is a "must" if using the iPad as a GPS moving-map in flight. The built-in GPS is effectively useless in flight (failed due to lost satellites on every route I have tried it on. By contrast, the GNS has only lost satellites a handful of times).

4) The iPad is essentially too big for my cockpit (Scottish Aviation Bulldog). With a stick (rather than a yoke), there is simply nowhere to put it (mounted on the knee, it gets in the way of the stick, anywhere else forward of my seat, it blocks too many instruments or my ability to see out the windows). I therefore tend to jam it between the seats, and only get it out for a look every so often.

5) All in all, the best use I've found for the iPad in flight is for reading the approach plates from the Jeppesen TC iPad app. This app crashes, too, but quite rarely. It is a great solution for keeping plates up-to-date (no need to spend ages each month stuffing paper amendments into the binder etc...I know, I know I'm obliged to carry the fully up-to-date paper plates on-board when IFR....).

In summary, the iPad is a fun accessory with slick apps. But don't over-rely on it in-flight...

[flybymike]

I'm not sure that paper plates are actually a legal requirement.

There are varying opinions on GPS signal reliability on the Ipad. My Ipad 2 has never lost a signal but I dont keep it stuffed between the seats.

[peterh337]

No requirement for carrying paper "anything".

Otherwise I more or less agree with Flylogical.

I print out everything that I plan to need, so I don't need a backup for that.

[tmmorris]

BA are about to issue iPads to all their pilots. Not sure exactly what for, but the indications are that it will replace the complete set of airways manuals/approach plates which are carried at present in the cockpit, with paper charts still issued for each trip for intended destinations and diversions, and the iPad for everything else. Also I believe w&b, fuel, performance, management &c will be on the iPad.

Tim

[Humaround]

The iPad is a general purpose consumer device, and is therefore likely to be less reliable than a dedicated unit running closed software. I always bear that in mind and have backups available.

Having said that mine has been pretty reliable - the only time it didn't work in flight I had failed to hit the Go Flying button!

[peterh337]

The Ipad is a consumer electronics device, with a build quality near the top of what is out there. But it can obviously fail so you would never use it for anything which is critical, without a backup.

I think the airlines use them for airway manuals, which are a huge waste of space and weight, not to mention a huge ground cost due to the manpower to stuff the updates into them every AIRAC cycle. I knew a man whose wife worked full time at an airline, stuffing in the updates They probably also use them for reference manuals. But they will carry a second one, for sure.

There is a residual issue with electronic displays of any sort: if you have two the same, say two Ipads, then a bug in the display software could well crash when displaying a particular PDF page, on both units Any software developer will be familiar with this

So carrying two Ipads only protects against a hardware failure. With the poor quality of Jeppesen software, this would concern me quite a bit. I saw the new JV4 the other day... it has a feature whereby you hover over an airport in the airport list, a popup appears showing that airport's details. Unfortunately the popup remains in place even when you move the cursor away from the airport name and just covers a part of the screen There appears to be no config for disabling the popup.

[Flylogical]

Paper not a requirement ? Great !

I'm pleased (and pleasantly surprised) to learn from peterh337 that paper plates are not a a legal requirement. Is the requirement (for private, non-commercial IFR) only that I am carrying the most up-to-date plates on-board (and therefore they can be electronic, e.g., Jep TC on iPad) ? Very good if true.

Regarding printing out everything before flight, I do the same. However, this is not always possible/practical (e.g., when in a location without a printer or a printer which has run out of paper etc). In those circumstances, I tend to use email-attached PDF versions of all important planning docs (even Jep software which annoyingly doesnt render PDF directly can be made to comply by using a PDF printer driver on the PC, for example -- "Bullzip PDF" is an excellent little app I use for this purpose). By carrying two smartphones plus an iPad, all of which can extract PDF docs from email, with all the relevant docs pre-loaded into device memory on the ground before flight (i.e., when there is a reliable 3G or Wifi connection) I can honestly say I've never had the situation where I could not get reliable access to a PDF doc in-flight.

The biggest advantage of the iPad-plus-moving-map-app is the ease of which a route can be quickly created or uploaded. By contrast, I find that the GNS 430 is a (relative) "dog" to configure in detail especially if/when short of time. As such, these days, I tend to pre-plan with printouts or PDF, then simply apply successive "Direct-To" actions on the 430 when in-flight, referring to the printout-or-PDF to obtain the next waypoint to use. This at least is quick and easy compared with entering/editing entire routes via the multiple knobs and menus....It would be very nice to be able to rely on the iPad for all of this...but in my experience it is not sufficiently robust, so I don't. Yes, as pointed out by flybymike, stuffing it between the seats may be the cause of the problems I experience, but there is simply nowhere else to put it in my cockpit without causing undue clutter, I'm afraid...

[piperarcher]

Does anyone know which item I need to buy from the Jeppesen website just to get UK IFR plates for the UK or Europe? I have downloaded Jeppesen Mobile TC onto my iPad but I want to be careful which subscription I buy. Its not clear, and some are very expensive

PiperArcher

[Flylogical]

Jep IFR charts for iPad UK

PiperArcher, this is a bit disorganised/confusing on the part of Jeppesen. Here's what I ordered last year, then renewed this year. It gives me IFR charts for UK and Ireland on my iPad (via Jep TC). Not sure what you would require for Europe.

Below is *precisely* what appeared on the invoice. Item JVUKI143 seems to be the important one. The others are included in the initial price for JVUKI143 (hence have a price of zero), but you will be invoiced for these in successive years (with non-zero prices). Beware: when I got my automated renewal invoice a year later, it included a line-item "paper charts revision" which I didn't ask for. I had to call their sales support (in Germany) three times by telephone to get rid of this line-item. In the end, they made the price zero for that line-item, but I still get mailed the paper charts which I don't want (I throw them in the bin). I called Jeppesen again to advise them of this, and they said "you get those for free with your electronic charts subscription". Go figure...

Anyway, hope this helps...


ID Description Quantity Purchase Price Subtotal
JVUKI143 United Kingdom & Ireland Electronic Charts 1 321,10 € 321,10 €
AUKI0141 United Kingdom & Ireland - JeppView Initial Service 1 0,00 € 0,00 €
JVGBSW41 JeppView Initial Software 1 0,00 € 0,00 €
AUKI0143 United Kingdom & Ireland - JeppView Revision Service 1 0,00 € 0,00 €

[piperarcher]

Thanks flylogical, thats great. I think the code number has changed now but the equivalent item price today is is Euro 422. I went through to the checkout to see what it was with UK taxes and the grand total was Euro 451. At the moment I do a bit of IMC flying but not much in the way of IFR approaches, so I will use the UK AIP and gCAP ones for the moment. Once it's clearer whats happening with the new EASA IR, I will probably do that, broaden my horizons a bit, and then I can justify the cost.

Thanks again

PiperArcher

[Flylogical]

Jep e-charts pricing etc

PiperArcher, you are welcome.

For what it's worth, although expensive, in my opinion the Jep TC charts on the iPad are well worth it in terms of minimising hassle -- especially with the updates. That works very smoothly on the iPad. I've never had a problem.

I also keep a PC version of JeppView up-to-date (all included in the price, at least that's something to celebrate!). I use this in my office for printing-off fully up-to-date physical charts (using the excellent Bullzip PDF print driver on Windows) as backup.

As a PPL+IMC Rating, I also only do a bit of IMC here an there. But the Jepp charts are so much better than the UK AIP equivalent, I don't think you will be disappointed.

Finally, I used to subscribe to the AERAD paper charts (my IMC instructor preferred them over Jep). However, the double bound volumes were extremely heavy and bulky, and moreover, the updates were a total hassle (stuffing paper binders every month etc). Before cancelling AERAD and subscribing to Jep e-charts, I enquired about e-charts from AERAD (apparently they were in the process of developing such for iPad ??) - even got the "key" person on the phone a couple of times. Alas, nothing ever came of it. So, I flipped to Jep e-charts. Happy ever since. I also subscribe to the VFR e-charts for UK from Jep. They do the job, too (though I still keep my trusty AFE VFR Flight Guide close to hand -- surprisingly, still easier to use in the cockpit than having to lookup an airfield via Jep on IPad)....

[peterh337]

AERAD never got their act together on electronic data...

I too used to use their paper ones; they were nicer than Jepps, I thought. But even then I went to the paper Jepps which, due to thinner paper, did the whole UK in one binder whereas the only way I could get the UK Aerad into one binder was by chucking out LGW, LHR, and all sids and stars (my IMCR days ).

I think the European Jepps is about €1400/year, but you have to be careful because that only gets you N Europe west of the Iron Curtain. It doesn't cover Czech etc. To get all of what normal people call Europe you have to buy more than one package and IIRC it comes to over €2k.

It has to be said that most private pilots that use Jepps get their plates from a friendly airline or bizjet pilot. €2k is just too much. But if you want it on your MFD (example) then you can't do that. This is where the latest eye candy gets awfully expensive, if you want your cockpit to look like the adverts

[Phil Histine]

Plates on FD

For IMC-rated pilots who are only able to use approaches in the UK, worth bearing in mind that all the CAA plates, including IFR ones, are now available at the touch of a button from within the latest version of SkyDemon. Perhaps not as nice as Jeppesen ones, but completely free and perfectly usable for my infrequent let-downs to 600'

[tmmorris]

Are they predownloaded or do you need 3G/wifi?

Tim

[piperarcher]

For IMC-rated pilots who are only able to use approaches in the UK, worth bearing in mind that all the CAA plates, including IFR ones, are now available at the touch of a button from within the latest version of SkyDemon. Perhaps not as nice as Jeppesen ones, but completely free and perfectly usable for my infrequent let-downs to 600'

I think SkyDemon just accesses the freely available plates on the NATS AIS website? You can (hopefully still), buy individual Jepp IFR plates from Transair. They were something like 40p a page, and a place like Cambridge for example might have 7 pages covering their airport. I found this a lot cheaper than the full package, which online is about £400.

I used to download the free plates from the AIS website, however recently I was given an NDB approach to follow, and I was struggling to read the tiny writing when you print it onto A5. Now I print off the gCap ones which have only the pertinent details and is much easier to read in flight.

[BabyBear]

Originally Posted by Phil

For IMC-rated pilots who are only able to use approaches in the UK, worth bearing in mind that all the CAA plates, including IFR ones, are now available at the touch of a button from within the latest version of SkyDemon. Perhaps not as nice as Jeppesen ones, but completely free and perfectly usable for my infrequent let-downs to 600

How do you access the approach plates, Phil? I can only access the aerodrome chart with the option of the subscription AFE charts.

Cheers,

BB

[2high2fastagain]

Select the 'Filtering' option on the airfield plates window. You'll be presented with a range of options which includes an IFR section.

[BabyBear]

Thanks, don't know how I missed it!

BB

[Ken Ewers]

I intent to mount mine on the P2 yoke,at an angle towards the P1.

[polkadotwellies]

Ipad 3 mount

For a permanent ipad 3 mount see ebay item No 170903284605

No connection, just a satisfied customer!