What you suggest for the VFR charts

[rantax82]

HI guys,

sorry to abuse your time.

End of may i will fly from LIDH to LZTN in VFR with a C172.
My question is regarding the airports chart.
The best solution?

- Trip kit Jeppesen?
- AIP charts?

For the AIP I guess the cost will be almost zero... but for the trip kit (that I would prefer to "read") what will be the cost? If I get the trip kit I will have a serial as well for Jeppview on the iPad??

Thanks a lot...

[peterh337]

The advantage of the 1:500k Jepp VFR charts is that you get a uniform presentation style over the entire area.

I am not familiar with the current ICAO VFR charts published by Italy and Switzerland but when I flew via Switzerland (on the way to Crete (http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/crete/index.html)) in 2004 I used the Swiss one and it was quite dangerous in the way it mixed elevations in feet and metres on the same chart. I have recently heard this lethal practice has been abandoned but I have not seen the current chart.

OTOH the Jepp charts sometimes show some bizzare stuff. This example (http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m74/peterh337/jepp-joke.jpg) has been derided by Swiss pilots as being a misinterpretation of the real airspace, showing some airspace which is actiave only by notam.

[rantax82]

Actually I have the Swiss charts, but I don't need them...

I will fly over Italy, Slovenia, hungary and Slovakia.. maybe Austria on the way back...

[172driver]

Have crossed Europe a number of times, always using the Jepps. Uniform presentation and IMHO the most 'readable' of the lot.

As for the trip kit - these days you can get that info online for free (well, the printer ink will set you back a couple of quid...). May need some Googling, though.

[rantax82]

Dear 172,

do you have full Europe VFR coverage? how much is that?

I'm waiting jeppesen answer since 10 days now...

[Fitter2]

The trip kit consists of airfield plates for the licensed airfields in the relevant country, and is not a substitute for VFR Charts.

Unless you are flying to very large airfields with complex taxiways, and arriving at night, it is probably not necessary.

As a number of people hav suggested, the Jepp VFR/GPS charts give consistent mapping across the whole of Europe, and are preferable for that reason to ICAO charts of different countries. For France, I find the 'local' IGN series clearer, but still use Jepp VFR charts for multi-country consistency.

At around £10 per chart, and use the ones that fit your routing, not expensive.

[172driver]

rantax, I normally find and download the plates for the airfields I intend to use, plus diversions, plus others along my route. I do, of course, also have an up-to-date database in my GPS, so at least the frequencies of all airfields are there at the press of a button. In the pre-internet days you had to buy a 'trip kit' (or several), as this was the only way to get at the airport info. Not anymore. :ok:

PS: Haven't checked in a long time, but the prices for these kits used to be on the websites of the usual pilot shops and, of course, Jepp itself.