Memory-Map + CAA 1:500,000 + iPhone

[1800ed]

I've been trying to find out some information and/or reviews regarding Memory Map on the iPhone, but I haven't found that much useful information.

I understand that you can buy the Memory-Map app for both your PC and iPhone for £25 and then pay an additional fee for the CAA charts. How much do the electronic CAA charts cost?

What can you then do with the software, is it possible to plot some waypoints on your PC and transfer the route onto the phone/generate a route on the fly?

Does anyone on here use this software and would the recommend it for use in addition to your traditional navigation? I appreciate that the iPhone only uses AGPS so if I were to start using this I think I'd get a TomTom cradle with a it's better GPS reciever and the ability to plug it into the aircrafts aux power supply.

(Sorry for starting a new thread on this, I appreciate this has been discussed in other threads but I'm looking for some definitive information :))

[IO540]

My girlfriend has an Iphone 4 which I set up for her.

Then (last Dec) there were two versions of MM for sale in the Church of Jesus Jobs online shop: one for about £10 and one for about £25.

The £10 one didn't do anything as it came but you could download maps into it.

I bought the £25 one, which has a feature whereby the Iphone becomes a web server (or something like that; I've forgotten) and you can transfer the standard MM QCT format maps to the Iphone, from a PC.

That £25 app also automatically downloads street maps (the O/S 1:25k ones, apparently) around your present position. I don't know how long this works for - MM never reply to any emails. It is similar to the free Google Maps app on the Iphone, though arguably more readable.

I transferred a load of QCT maps I had to it, and they work fine.

The MM app is a bit clunky but does work adequately. But you don't buy MM for the program, you buy it for the maps :)

The CAA charts are now sold in the encrypted QC3 format which is locked to the device so it cannot be copied. I have no experience of this format and would not touch any such locked products with a bargepole :) I used to buy the 1:500k QCT maps each year (they were about £20 each i.e. £60/year for all of UK) but stopped when they went to the secure format.

Luckily there are various (evidently scanned from print) QCT CAA charts floating around on the P2P scene, including one for the whole UK.

The GPS in the Iphone is excellent on the ground. I have not tried it airborne but someone I know with an Ipad reports that it loses the signal easily. Unfortunately I don't think you can run an Iphone with an external (bluetooth) GPS without jailbreaking it.

[1800ed]

Is it just personal preference that you don't buy the locked maps anymore, or is there a specific reason?

I think the only way to get an external GPS to work with the iPhone is to use the TomTom kit; this has the advantage of powering the phone too, while airborne - there are a few apps in the store that pretend to be aeroplane GPS's that recommend using this.

Though adding it all up, the Aware GPS seems to do everything I want for not much more cash. Their website isn't crap either, so I'd have a reasonable idea of what I was buying!

[IO540]

Is it just personal preference that you don't buy the locked maps anymore, or is there a specific reason?

I hate copy protected software, on principle :)

Years ago I used to do design consultancy, designing integrated circuits among other stuff. I spent about £10k on some dongled FPGA design software. Then the dongle broke, and the company said "it is no longer supported". Luckily for me, I found a very clever Russian programmer who cracked it, for a small fee ;)

A lot of people burnt their fingers on copy protection.

OK, MM is just £20 or whatever, but the principle is the same. I never even install any such software, not least because the methods they use to stop people reinstalling trial versions etc leave all kinds of hidden garbage behind, which comes back a long time later to bite you.

If the CAA genuinely cared about flight safety, they would make these charts available online, instead of giving MM a monopoly like this.

[Mickey Kaye]

Thats the problem peter I don't think the CAA care

[tinpilot]

There's a free app & a paid app (£10).

The free app is for iphone use only, you pay for & download maps directly to your iphone, you can transfer gpx data via email or through websites, but you wont be able to use the same maps on your PC.

The paid app allows you to use the same maps on your PC & you can transfer MM files using wifi.

The PC software is free, you pay for the maps. The CAA charts are £20 each on DVD, I think the downloadable charts are cheaper. What you're paying for is a licence to use the charts on one computer & one mobile device; you can migrate the licence to new hardware when you upgrade your PC or phone simply by going online & signing in to your MM account - no charge.

More info:
youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCHwAjQuOY)
MM (http://www.memory-map.co.uk/iphone/index.html)
MM support forum (http://www.memory-map.co.uk/supportforum/viewforum.php?f=54&sid=4e8bdd523dbdcf3062be02988ee300cc)

You can plan routes on the PC & transfer them to the iphone, you can also plan routes on the iphone. You can print a route card off the PC. I think that MM latest iphone app is purely GPS, no 'A'.

I used MM on a WM5 smartphone for 5 years without any problems. I've just gone Android & will buy the Android app when it comes out.

It's the OS that give MM their monopoly, not the CAA.

[PhillC]

...use the same maps on your PC....

The PC software is free.....

....when you upgrade your PC....

You can plan routes on the PC....

You can print a route card off the PC.....



Keep in mind that said PC needs to be using the Windows operating system (XP, Vista or Win7).

Memory Map products will not work on PCs using Max OSx or Linux operating systems. So, if you do have an iPhone and only a Mac home computer, you won't be able to do any of the "PC" stuff tinpilot has outlined.

[1800ed]

Thanks for the info guys - I think I'm beginning to sway towards the Aware GPS now.

Thought I'd say though: With regards to the type of GPS Memory Map uses on the iPhone, the software is dependant on the hardware and the iPhones use an AGPS chip which I wouldn't rely on working too well in the air as it uses cellular data as well as GPS to determine your position; hence why I mention the TomTom cradle.

[NavEx]

I have an IPhone with Memory Map (free app) on plus 1/4 mil CAA charts on it. For the cost of the charts (about £16) I now have a basic GPS with map.
I fly open cockpit aircraft and with the phone tucked into flying suit knee pad it work just fine. Cheap, cheerful and simple, it's only a back up to map and compass

[Slopey]

Thought I'd say though: With regards to the type of GPS Memory Map uses on the iPhone, the software is dependant on the hardware and the iPhones use an AGPS chip which I wouldn't rely on working too well in the air as it uses cellular data as well as GPS to determine your position; hence why I mention the TomTom cradle.


The iPhone is perfectly capable of showing your position with with cellular network turned off.

The cellular assistance just helps it get a fix quicker initially - it has no major bearing on on-going position updates once it has worked out its position, except again as an additional hint. If there's no cell info available, it can take longer to acquire the initial location/satellites, but it'll work fine from then on.

I've used my iPhone to track my flight path while it's sat on the RHS, and it has worked perfectly.

The Tom Tom cradle is apparently good in that it has additional GPS hardware in it, but it doesn't charge your iphone only maintains the existing charge, and there are reports it doesn't work with the iPhone 4. You'd also have to check if the GPS in the cradle works with apps other than the TomTom one.

[IO540]

The cellular assistance just helps it get a fix quicker initially - it has no major bearing on on-going position updates once it has worked out its position, except again as an additional hint. If there's no cell info available, it can take longer to acquire the initial location/satellites, but it'll work fine from then onMy impression, from speaking to pilots and from my own ground usage, is that the Iphone GPS works spectacularly well (far ahead of any GPS I have ever used) when in receipt of a GSM signal, and only average when working alone.

The Iphone 4 is wonderful for running TomTom :)

[Jodelman]

Memory Map products will not work on PCs using Max OSx or Linux operating systems

It works just fine using Linux running it under wine.

[tinpilot]

The basic £160 Aware won't do the route planning you mentioned. You will need the £45 Fastplan software (Windows only) to plan & then send the route to the Aware. If you want to draw a route directly on the Aware, you will need the £260 Aware Plus.

That's £300 to get the same route planning functions that you can get for less than £30 through MM.

What you're paying for on the Aware is its airspace database & its ability to give you inflight warnings if you get too close. You won't get that from MM.

Re iphone gps: one of the MM chaps posted this on the support forum at the end of January:
The problem with the previous version is the iphone would give a cell-tower position and claim it is accurate to better than 100m. Then a few minutes later it would get GPS fix, giving a sudden jump in position, often by more than 100m. This caused zig-zaggy track logs, and wildly inaccurate estimates of speed and direction.

In this version we found a way of determining when it is actually a valid GPS signal, and we are ignoring the cell-tower-based location reports.

[eharding]

Did use an iPhone 3GS plus MM last year for a transit in the front seat of an Extra 300. No problems obtaining a position fix, but the little heading indicator on the location bug remained resolutely at 90 degrees to the direction of travel.

Combined with the phone's inherent desire to turn the screen off to save power, the whole thing was a bit too fiddly to be of regular, practical use, and I haven't tried it since.

I do think Memory Map have missed a trick by not opening up the platform to third party extensions - they seem to spend most of the development budget on increasingly sophisticated licensing techniques, but the map viewers themselves haven't really changed in years. Had they invested in extension APIs, they would probably have seen a plethora of web-enabled active content available as overlays within the map viewer applications - NOTAMs, weather, airfield data from the aviation perspective, and the equivalent for the hiking or marine markets.

I did write an active MM route card template which would take a route defined in the map viewer, and use a web-service to get forecast winds aloft to generate a PLOG, plus a NOTAM narrow route brief, but never got round to releasing it for general consumption.

[IO540]

You need to look at Oziexplorer (http://www.oziexplorer.com).

[tinpilot]

The red triangle on the GPS fix in MM works off the iphone's internal compass, it won't be of any use near large lumps of metal. The velocity vector is much more useful.

The power saving options on modern phones aren't as flexible as my old WM phone with its transflective screen. I think the best way to use mapping software on the iphone or Androids is with the screen permanently on, at a high brightness setting & plugged into an external power source, which is how most people use the Aware.

MM have spent most of their development budget tweaking the software to run on out-sourced proprietary hardware. They see themselves as competitors to Garmin & the like as providers of moving maps to hikers & bikers; they don't see themselves as providers of an aviation service in the way that Airspace, SkyDemon or Pocket FMS do. I wouldn't spend hundreds on MM, but they are good value as cheap moving map software.

You need to look at Oziexplorer (http://www.oziexplorer.com/). I did. You need to spend about £75 for the PC & mobile software, assuming you dodge the VAT, and then you still face the hassle & expense of scanning the paper chart & cutting it into tiles at various zoom levels. It reminds me of your comments about DIY maintenance on permit aircraft, ie factor in the hassle of finding a suitable place to do the work, work out how much your time is worth & in the end you're probably better off paying someone else to do it for you.

I see that Ozi have an Android alpha version out. If I was going to do the self scan option, I'd do it with freeware, eg Orux (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.orux.oruxmaps)

[IO540]

then you still face the hassle & expense of scanning the paper chart & cutting it into tiles at various zoom levels.

You can find (on P2P) a whole-UK CAA chart for OziEx, in OZF2 format which already has the various zoom levels.

The free utility IMG2OZF takes in a TIFF, BMP, etc and generates an OZF2 file.

My point was just that MM is a bit of a dead end, especially now that they have gone DRM. It's also never been easy to convert generic graphic images to the QCT format; it's a very long winded procedure.

There isn't a perfect solution but Ozi is probably the most generic way to do GPS moving maps.

As MM move to DRM, more ex-MM maps will find their way onto the P2P scene. Mostly they start life as scanned maps. You need only to find somebody who has done this, once every year, and loads of copy shops have A1 or A0 scanners. I don't know how the 3 maps are stiched together but evidently it works.

[tinpilot]

The MM Navigator version costs less than Ozi & can import & calibrate images & 3rd party maps.

But if you're going to use free maps, why bother paying for expensive software? Why not use freeware, Orux for Android, TerraPerfecta or Quo for WM?

I've searched for MM chart torrents a few times but I've never found anything useful. There's a 2007 version of MM with some charts & a 2009 ozf image that's a screen grab from something like See You, not a CAA chart. Orux has a utility to batch convert Ozi files into Orux & it would be interesting to see if the Ozi scans are any good.

[Garricks]

Just my view here but I bought the Memory Map data CAA 1:500,000 for Scotland for use as a backup on my iPhone.

Whilst it might be OK on an iPad, the iPhone screen is so small as to make it almost useless. the zoom function does it in steps so you cannot get the map displayed at an optimal size for you - it either steps up or down a size (too big or too small).

I tried it in the air a couple of times and frankly the iPhone is not up to it, it takes ages to get any kind of a fix and is too unreliable even as a backup.

Waste of money in my view - Having said that I may be in the minority here.

[FleetFlyer]

I use this on an Iphone 3 and it works for me. Its not perfect and it can't compete with a dedicated GPS but its still impressive for your phone + a £25 investment.

I had an Iphone4 for a few months and that was a marked improvement. The only downside to it is the short battery life. If in constant use then you only get about two hours.

Its a good complement to whatever existing GPS you have or as a back up to your old fashioned proper VFR nav but I wouldn't reccomend it as your sole means of navigation.

[IO540]

The MM Navigator version costs less than Ozi & can import & calibrate images & 3rd party maps.

If that price difference is important to you then you need to stick with MM, but it is a whole lot more work to do own maps in that, and I predict that program will eventually die because they are busy screwing themselves with copy protection.

And nobody is going to put in any effort to generate non-UK maps for MM anyway.

[pitofrost]

I have got memory map with the CAA 1:50000 and also Air Nav pro both on my iphone 4. The air nav pro is well worth the £20. It uses free mapping and has far more navigation features than memory map.