PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Weather information in FliteDeck (JeppView)....
Old 31st Oct 2010, 08:52
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IO540
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
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Flitedeck is a freebie which comes bundled with (the very expensive) Jeppview 3 which is basically an approach plate viewer. It provides a GPS moving map, showing your planned route from the routepack, over the Jeppview map. It is a clunky bug-ridden piece of crap which I have played with and managed to crash many times, and I don't use it anymore. For a moving map on a portable battery-backed device (which is a desirable backup function) I run Oziexplorer and various VFR charts which have been converted to Ozi format and posted on bit-torrent

I don't know if Flitedeck supports weather display but Flitestar (the desktop flight planning program) does, and has done so for a long time. There is a basic free access level which delivers basic GFS stuff which can be found for free all over the internet. Flitestar's weather function has recently been revamped for somewhat better functionality but in a stupid way: the program now runs a windoze service which always runs (even when no Jepp software is running) and accesses the internet in the background. The only way to prevent this silent access appears to be to disable the Jepp weather service in Control Panel (and disable it after every program update). The stupid installation program installs this feature even if you click NO on the XM data option (which every European user will do).

Even if this stuff was available in flight, it would be pricey because a satellite phone is the only means of delivery in Europe. Thuraya costs $1/minute for 9600bits/sec (and is unreliable) and Iridium costs about 2x that for 2400bits/sec. Not really viable for anything beyond tafs and metars, unless you are really keen. I've spent a lot of time playing with this stuff.

No one who has and uses JeppView with FliteDeck, and flying in Europe here?
Not many private pilots use Jepp stuff here. Look up the pricing and you will see why To cover Europe (including Norway and the other "bits that stick out") you are looking at about 2500 euros/year, for Jeppview, and then another chunk for Flitestar IFR Europe.

A lot of private pilots use Jepp plates but they usually get them from an airline pilot friend, as a PDF
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