PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Paper free cockpits
View Single Post
Old 18th Apr 2010, 16:23
  #25 (permalink)  
keithskye

The Ego
Has Landed
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Somewhere not too far from the airplane...
Age: 66
Posts: 52
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
This is better than a late night movie!

Wow...how about everyone play nice here?

Been using Class 1 EFB's since 2001. No problems, no worries, no legality issues. In our late model CL604, we have in the cockpit two Compaq tablet PCs, each loaded with Jeppview and FlightDeck. We paid the princely sum of $1100 USD for each (on sale at Best Buy). It's not necessary to use an "Aviation Approved" $5,000 EFB. We have a worldwide electronic chart subscription from Jeppesen, and it comes with paper enroute charts, area charts, notams, etc. The entire world coverage went from 16 big leather Jepp binders down to just 4, and those are not stuffed full, either. I could probably squeeze it all into 3 binders, but what the heck. Big savings on space, and certainly a bit lighter weight. Procedurally, both EFBs are powered and displaying the appropriate chart at all times during the departure and arrival phases of flight. Enroute, we put them into "sleep" mode. Never had an issue on battery life that way in over two years of operation now, and that is on 8-hour flights! It just so happens that we did get an STC mod to have two power outlets ("mains" to the UK folks) mounted behind each pilot seat, so in a pinch, we can keep them powered if the batteries do get low or we want to charge them up while we have the APU running on the ground.

I bought a 3rd tablet PC and a printer as a backup means of producing charts, but they are still in their boxes under the divan in the back and have never seen the light of day. For those of you who are not aware of it, eletronic chart subscriptions from Jeppesen are much cheaper now than the paper subscriptions, and the difference in cost for world coverage will easily pay for two EFBs in only a year or two at most!

If you want to spend the money for one of the smaller Flight Deck Resources EFBs, they will fit on the yoke of many aircraft (I made a nifty velcro mount for each of them on our last aircraft - worked great)!
keithskye is offline