Which flight guide

[Chequeredflag]

Can I call on the forums experience reference Flight Guides? The leading commercial guides seem to be from Pooleys, AFE and Jepperson. Do these all give more or less the same information, presented in a similar manner, or is there one that is definitively better, and "the" one to go for.

Many thanks

Mike N

[FlyingForFun]

There is no one which is definitively better than the others. Browse all 3, look specifically at airfields which you know very well, and see which one you prefer the best. Also, if you're into this kind of thing, have a look at which ones contain the most unlicensed fields - they will all contain all of the licensed public-use airfields, but they may vary in which smaller fields they show.

FFF
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[dublinpilot]

I think it's very much a personal choice.

I haven't seen the Jeppseson one.

The AFE one I thought had more consistent provision of Taxi phone numbers (can be extremely handy), than the Pooleys one did.

On the other hand, I thought the layout of the information in the Pooleys one was a little better than the AFE one.

Having said that, I don't think there is much difference between these two. Take a look at them, and see which format you prefer yourself.

If you want, you could bye AFE one year, and Pooleys the other next year. That way you'd always have an up to date one, but still be able to check the older one for any additional info.

dp

[ozplane]

I have used, and been very happy with, the Jeppesen UK Manual for the last 9 years. It doesn't have as many fields as the other two but it does have excellent maps of the surrounding area in addition to the actual airfield maps. I find this is useful when plotting my route. I set myself a minimum field length of 600 metres so Bottlang and a copy of Lockyears seems to cover most of the fields I'm likely to use.

[cubflyer]

AFE seems to have a lot more airfields than the others which seem to cater more for the licensed airfields only.
Quality seems to be similar between all of them although Ive heard people say that Poolies isnt as accurate as it used to be.
Lots of other good gen in both of them about things like filing flightplans, what you need to do before flying abroad etc

[18greens]

Don't forget there's always www.ais.org.uk which has all of the flight guide info for free (albeit in a less friendly format).

[stuartforrest]

In my second year with it and never found any wrong details in it. Seems to have the most airfields.

On a similar subject I considered buying a copy of Lockyears Farm Strip guide but wondered if most of the strips are short and no good for a Bonanza. I prefer 600-700 metres.

Can anyone tell me if I would be wasting my money buying a Lockyears?