iPad or Ipad mini to fly General Aviation?

[flyfly4]

Hi everyone, I am thinking into getting an iPad with some Navigation apps to improve my flying. The problem comes when having to decide between ipad or ipad mini?

If anyone here uses an ipad for GA flying, shed some light! Thanks a lot and have a safe flight :ok:

[Johnny F@rt Pants]

Sorry to appear "intolerant" (best word I can think of), but how will having an iPad with navigation apps "improve your flying"??

If you mean stop you getting lost, then I suggest more instruction is required in navigation techniques from your local flying school, after all it's not that long ago that we had to navigate using a map, planning and looking out of the window, heaven knows how we ever managed.

[rjtjrt]

Not sure if I can help much, as I have only used iPad Mini in flight (due no room for full size iPad in aircraft I fly which has a stick and need to have iPad strapped to my thigh).
But iPad mini is big enough to be perfectly useable with navigation app here in Australia.

[Flying Binghi]

Under the heading Hints and Tricks...

When your Ipad screen goes all funny with lines across it just bang the edges of it against something hard until it works again. No harder then you would hit a pane of glass though. Remember which part of the pad yer hit because thats where you'll need to hit it again later when it plays up again. I'm onto my forth Ipad now, the bigger pro, and now have a second mid size Ipad as back-up.




.

[Niner Lima Charlie]

Looked at the iPad and iPad mini, but decided to go with the iPhone 6+ due to cockpit size. GPS position comes from a Bad Elf Pro (bluetooth) sensor. The cellphone GPS sensor will not update fast enough for aviation use.

I am using ForeFlight which gives me VFR and IFR charts, real time PIREP, METAR and TAF plus radar and satellite weather, terrain and obstacles, flight planning, weight & balance, logbook, etc. etc.

ForeFlight also runs on the home computer so I can do flight planning and transfer everything to the iPhone when I am ready to go out the door to the airport.

[ChickenHouse]

A tablet computer will improve your comfort, not your skills. If your piloting skills can be improved by a tablet, better stay on the ground ;).

So, choices - tablet means more comfort in cockpit, long term - androids a bit less compared to ipads. You were asking iPad or iPad Mini. Answer is not difficult, which paper size do you use now for your stuff in cockpit? If you use full Letter/DinA4 size, go iPad, if you use half size/A5, go Mini. I do prefer Mini, because it is more convinient in my cockpit. In addition, I do use iPhone6+ for backup and both do their job well.

[Aubrey.]

The cellphone GPS sensor will not update fast enough for aviation use.

I use an iPhone 6 plus with Skydemon and never had any signal issues with the inbuilt GPS, it always works like a dream. That said I've got a glass canopy on my aircraft (Eurostar) so I'm not sure how a metal roof GA aircraft would fair, but I recently tried it on a B737 flight from Austria and it worked perfectly there too, even in the cruise. I was sat by the window though which may have helped, it was very impressive to see 460kts on the GPS log!

I've also got an iPad mini with Bad Elf plug in GPS for longer flights which I feel is the ideal size for a small aircraft.

[ahramin]

I much prefer a full sized iPad but the mini works fine.

Not sure how it could improve one's flying though.

[ExSp33db1rd]

..............heaven knows how we ever managed.

A young pilot recently asked me .... "What's a sextant". :rolleyes:

[aterpster]

Aubrey:

I've also got an iPad mini with Bad Elf plug in GPS for longer flights which I feel is the ideal size for a small aircraft.

The consensus seems to be that the Bad Elf is a much more robust GPS receiver than Apple's.

[ChickenHouse]

Usually the iOS devices internal GPS do a sufficient job, as they are the same as in every other GPS. There is one thing to keep in mind though - if you do not fit a SIM card in the mobile slot, the unified mobile net + GPS chip will slow down, because it frequently scans for a card inserted.

[Piltdown Man]

Spend your money on flying training. Gizmos do not improve your flying in fact they probably do the opposite. Fly speed and time, look out of the window and use good old fashioned nav. So my advice is buy a better whizz wheel and spend more time flying. That will make you better pilot.

PM

[flyfly4]

thanks everyone for your answers, I know it will not improve my skills, but when doing time building, with a gps you will feel safer knowing where you are in case you get lost.

i will definitely go with the ipad mini, but i've seen some people saying that the internal GPS doesn't work properly for GA use. Is this true? my plan is to stick in close to the window with a suction cup, so it will be in direct view with the sky.

:ok:

[ChickenHouse]

Every once in a while there is someone villainizing GPS in mobil devices, but up to now I never heard of a single case, which was not either software bug in OS or program or the simple use without a SIM card fitted.

I have flown with iPads from the first one on and yes, there were unstable times due to software issues, but if you rely on it, do not follow every release. Wait for others to test each new release and give programmers time to fix the inevitable bugs of each release.

I collected some well above 1000h iPad assisted now and only had one issue, which was caused by overheating in bright sun. So, sky view is not as important as receiption is well even in tin cans like a King Air, but keep the tablets away from sun exposure as they collect heat.

[Johnny F@rt Pants]

Spend your money on flying training. Gizmos do not improve your flying in fact they probably do the opposite. Fly speed and time, look out of the window and use good old fashioned nav. So my advice is buy a better whizz wheel and spend more time flying. That will make you better pilot.


but when doing time building, with a gps you will feel safer knowing where you are in case you get lost.

How did we manage eh????

Getting lost is part of learning too you know.

[ChickenHouse]

Getting lost is part of learning too you know.

That is a "Radio Eriwan" issue. In principle, yes. But, training syllabus usually shows a King Arthur approach, always round the table, and 90% is spent in traffic circuits. I see an even increasing number of students now coming to the last 10% x-country with G1000, must-have GNS430s und iPads thought as mandatory. Quite some of my fellow trainer let them do, even though the flight school explicitly does not want them to. Yes, there is still an item "how to re-orient when lost geo awareness" on the list, but how many times does a student really do this, one or two times? I still have a mandatory check flight with students before exams without any GPS or moving map and am always surprised how little effort students want to spend to learn how to orient in space. Is biological capability for orientation really a fading anachronism?

But let us open a new thread on that, not to obscure the quest for iPad or iPad Mini.

[ExSp33db1rd]

Despite my Old Fart approach to basic flying training and navigation, my Coastguard SAR unit uses an iPad for navigational requirements, and the programme we have loaded enables us to pre-plan a 'creeping line' ahead search pattern, and the pilot can also follow this visually, negating the requirement for the navigator to keep updating the required heading, and the turning points, orally, and after the event the precise area covered is there for all to see at any debrief.

Got to admit - they have their uses at times.

[flyfly4]

That is a "Radio Eriwan" issue. In principle, yes. But, training syllabus usually shows a King Arthur approach, always round the table, and 90% is spent in traffic circuits. I see an even increasing number of students now coming to the last 10% x-country with G1000, must-have GNS430s und iPads thought as mandatory. Quite some of my fellow trainer let them do, even though the flight school explicitly does not want them to. Yes, there is still an item "how to re-orient when lost geo awareness" on the list, but how many times does a student really do this, one or two times? I still have a mandatory check flight with students before exams without any GPS or moving map and am always surprised how little effort students want to spend to learn how to orient in space. Is biological capability for orientation really a fading anachronism?

But let us open a new thread on that, not to obscure the quest for iPad or iPad Mini.

very interesting debate chickenhouse!

[ehwatezedoing]

iPad mini!

Before I got flamed away by Jhonny f@rt pants ;) I started flying in the Canadian bush only with a map, a thumb, a compas and a clock.

This makes me fully appreciate all the use you can have with an iPad mini.

Apps we are using:

Foreflight for anything in North America.
JeppFD outside North America.
Good reader for our library.
Numbers for our W&B
Etc....

No more pounds and pounds of docs to carry, it is all in it besides bear minimum as backup of course.

I did the transition between iPad and iPad mini...
The size of the mini makes it very handy in a cockpit.

[ShyTorque]

In my younger day, we had to manually start all the engines, cars, motorcycles, aeroplanes.

These new fangled starter motors are totally unnecessary electrical gizmos.

[ehwatezedoing]

In my younger day, we had to manually start all the engines, cars, motorcycles, aeroplanes.

These new fangled starter motors are totally unnecessary electrical gizmos.

You still start your chimney's fire with two stones? :}

[ShyTorque]

One avoided chimney fires by sending a young lad up there with a stiff brush and small dustpan.

[Geosync]

We use both the full size and the mini ipad with Foreflight. Not much difference between the two, but I can fit my ipad mini on a kneepad or on the yoke clip on. Can't do that with the full size. Foreflight works great and I have no reason to change now, but I have seen the Garmin product at their mock up booth at NBAA and it's pretty snazzy.

Now, none of this will improve your flying, so if you are training I'd go with as little bells and whistles as possible, and then use them later once you got the basics down. DME,VORs and paper charts are a good way to learn. Get that down and you won't skip a beat if the ipad freezes up on you, like it has on me.